2008 NCAA Division I Football Tournament

This is the 5th year I’ve done this bracket, and it still makes me sad that it can’t happen in reality. If anybody has NCAA Football 09, sim it out and post the results.

[B][U]Last Four In[/U][/B]

Cal
BYU
Ball State
Northwestern

[B][U]First Four Out[/U][/B]

Iowa
Nebraska
West Virginia
Miami

There’s a similar one on CBSsports…64 teams, though.

So you gonna make my Pirates face UT the first game? Ouch…

UNC #6 seed (after a thrashing at NCSU) and BYU(ranked 17) #7 seed? Ole Miss (ranked 20 and a win against Florida) a # 7 seed also? Take off those blue tinted glasses.:shades:

[QUOTE=pir8fan05;368881]There’s a similar one on CBSsports…64 teams, though.

So you gonna make my Pirates face UT the first game? Ouch…[/QUOTE]

64 is way too many, considering there are only 120 DI teams. I would be okay with 16, just as I-AA has, but 32 presents some good matchups also. The next 32 can play in the NIT for football, or their usual meaningless bowl games.

ECU’s power rating got smacked with their loss to USM and Houston, and the fact that CUSA is rated so low this year. They would not have gotten in as an at-large.

[QUOTE=Mullins Maniac;368890]UNC #6 seed (after a thrashing at NCSU) and BYU(ranked 17) #7 seed? Ole Miss (ranked 20 and a win against Florida) a # 7 seed also? Take off those blue tinted glasses.:shades:[/QUOTE]

UNC is 8-4 against the #10 SOS (Sagarine Ratings). BYU was 5 spots lower in the Sagarine ratings and played the #84 schedule. Mississippi beat Florida, but lost to Vandy. Their record was the same as UNC-CH’s, but their SOS was #43.

This is the 5th year I've done this bracket, and it still makes me sad that it can't happen in reality. If anybody has NCAA Football 09, sim it out and post the results.

Last Four In

Cal
BYU
Ball State
Northwestern

First Four Out

Iowa
Nebraska
West Virginia
Miami

Why have a regular season if teams with 4 losses have a chance to win a national title?

[QUOTE=pir8fan05;368881]There’s a similar one on CBSsports…64 teams, though.

So you gonna make my Pirates face UT the first game? Ouch…[/QUOTE]

If you mean Tennessee (geocities is blocked), then don’t worry, the Vols suck.

[QUOTE=Charlotte2002;368900]Why have a regular season if teams with 4 losses have a chance to win a national title?[/QUOTE]

Why play at all? Let’s just have intramurals on campus. :huh:

So what if they have four losses. If they’ve lost to good teams and have 8 wins to boot also against good teams, then they should get a shot.

Makes a helluva lot more sense than a system that allows Oklahoma to get to play for a “National Title” over a team that beat them in the regular season and has the same record that they have. :ohmy:

Why play at all? Let's just have intramurals on campus. :huh:

So what if they have four losses. If they’ve lost to good teams and have 8 wins to boot also against good teams, then they should get a shot.

Makes a helluva lot more sense than a system that allows Oklahoma to get to play for a “National Title” over a team that beat them in the regular season and has the same record that they have. :ohmy:

I’m not saying that the current structure is good, I think it is awful, but it does create an importance of the regular season more than any other sport. The Texas / Oklahoma situation is a result of a Big 12 rule, because if Texas plays and beats Missouri, they are playing Florida for the title.

10 teams - 6 BCS Champs and 4 at large. Top 4 seeds get a bye. This keeps the regular season relevant by having BCS Conference champs gain automatic bids, while giving strong conferences or strong non-BCS teams the opportunity to fill spots 7-10.

Why have a regular season if teams with 4 losses have a chance to win a national title?
Does that mean you want the basketball tourney to be like 16 or 32 teams? Plenty of basketball teams that lose a third of their games get in that tournament, and I've never actually heard anyone say that is a bad thing.

[QUOTE]I’m not saying that the current structure is good, I think it is awful, but it does create an importance of the regular season more than any other sport. The Texas / Oklahoma situation is a result of a Big 12 rule, because if Texas plays and beats Missouri, they are playing Florida for the title.

10 teams - 6 BCS Champs and 4 at large. Top 4 seeds get a bye. This keeps the regular season relevant by having BCS Conference champs gain automatic bids, while giving strong conferences or strong non-BCS teams the opportunity to fill spots 7-10. [/QUOTE]

The regular season is not of much importance. It’s basically a what-have-you-done-lately system in how they choose their two teams to play for a “championship”. Losses in September and October against weak competition are better than a tough November loss to a good team. Human bias in polls determine who gets to play. If FCS/I-AA can hold a 16-team Tourney BEFORE Christmas, certainly FBS/DI can hold a 16 or 32 team tournament that is done by January 8 (when the current BCS title game is played).

[QUOTE=49or bust;368924]Does that mean you want the basketball tourney to be like 16 or 32 teams? Plenty of basketball teams that lose a third of their games get in that tournament, and I’ve never actually heard anyone say that is a bad thing.[/QUOTE]

Exactly. 8-4 in football is the same as 20-10 in basketball, which is a good record and will get you in the Dance provided you have played a good enough schedule.

Does that mean you want the basketball tourney to be like 16 or 32 teams? Plenty of basketball teams that lose a third of their games get in that tournament, and I've never actually heard anyone say that is a bad thing.

Right, but the difference is the number of regular season games. College basketball plays 3 times the amount of games. The college basketball season is not nearly as meaningful as the college football season and if you were to create too large of a playoff inclusive of teams with 4 or 5 losses you would lose the luster of a college team having to try to run the table to win a title.

[QUOTE=Charlotte2002;368923]I’m not saying that the current structure is good, I think it is awful, but it does create an importance of the regular season more than any other sport. The Texas / Oklahoma situation is a result of a Big 12 rule, because if Texas plays and beats Missouri, they are playing Florida for the title.

10 teams - 6 BCS Champs and 4 at large. Top 4 seeds get a bye. This keeps the regular season relevant by having BCS Conference champs gain automatic bids, while giving strong conferences or strong non-BCS teams the opportunity to fill spots 7-10.[/QUOTE]

So, 6 teams play and produce 3 winners, and you pair that with 4 bye teams in round 2? 7 teams?

(Not a terrible idea, I just dont follow).

So, 6 teams play and produce 3 winners, and you pair that with 4 bye teams in round 2? 7 teams?

(Not a terrible idea, I just dont follow).

My bad…no byes, but the 7-10 (the at-large teams) play play-in games.

10 teams make the playoff…6 BCS Winners and 4 At-Large.

#1 will play the winner of #8/#9
#4 plays #5

#2 will play the winner of #7/#10
#3 plays #6

Where is Charlotte? They were undefeated again this year.
They always get shafted.

[QUOTE=Charlotte2002;368946]My bad…no byes, but the 7-10 (the at-large teams) play play-in games.

10 teams make the playoff…6 BCS Winners and 4 At-Large.

#1 will play the winner of #8/#9
#4 plays #5

#2 will play the winner of #7/#10
#3 plays #6[/QUOTE]

I’d like it better if they just took the top 10 teams in the BCS rankings and ignored conference winners.

I'd like it better if they just took the top 10 teams in the BCS rankings and ignored conference winners.

But then why have conferences? Plus that would give too much pull to the voters and would take away from the playoff system.

If you can’t win your own conference you probably don’t deserve to play for a national title anyway, but if your conference is that good and your team is that good there are 4 at-large spots that you can receive.

Just copy/pasting this from someone else…but I like it:

[COLOR=darkgreen]there are 120 schools in the BCS subdivision and 124 in the FCS subdivision.

the BCS should be cut back to 96 schools in 8 conferences (12 teams each)
with two divisions (6 teams each) in each conference. The remaining teams form a new 80 team FCS subdivision with the better FCS conferences, the rest of the conferences and independents form another subdivision. Each subdivision has it’s own playoffs.

get rid of the MAC and Sunbelt for starters along with a couple of other noncompetitive schools to get there.

Start them all playing the closest Saturday to Sept 1 and run a 12 game schedule over 13 weeks.

Bye weeks scheduled for the weeks 5, 6, and 7 (two teams from each division) based upon the previous years conference standings. The better your previous year’s finish the earlier your bye week

Each team plays all division opponents, 3 from the other division of their conference (rotated yearly), and 4 nonconference opponents. This gives teams the ability to preserve nonconference rivalries (SC vs Clemson, Georgia vs Georgia Tech for example) and schedule other opponents (to beef up strength of schedule) as well.

All conferences have a championship game, the winner gets an automatic bid to a 16 team playoff. The other 8 slots are at large bids.[/COLOR]

Yeah, but then you’re putting in teams like Cincy and VaTech who don’t deserve a shot at a national title. If you’re gonna do it that way, just make it 1 autobid and 12 teams. 11 conference winners.

Here would be my format for the regular season and playoffs:

All teams would play 12 regular season games in 13 weeks beginning the last weekend in August and finishing the third weekend of November. All games must be played against Division 1 opponents unless there was an odd number of total teams, then somebody would have to play a FBS opponent. Conference championship games would not be played.

[B][U]Playoff Schedule[/U][/B]

1st Round: Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend (@ Higher Seed)
2nd Round: First weekend in December (@ Higher Seed)
3rd Round: Third weekend in December (Regional/Neutral Sites)
Semi-Finals: New Year’s Day (Neutral Site(s))
Championship: January 8 (or thereabout) (Neutral Site)

Now, the good thing about having the opening weekend of playoffs on Thanksgiving weekend is that [B]a)[/B] it will allow most fans an extra day or two off to get to their destination and [B]b )[/B] all the games can probably be watched by college football fans over the course of the day on television, whereas if they were all played on Saturday many would be on at the same time. The drawback is that the students at each institution will technically be away on break and would not have a dorm to sleep in, and it’s a tough time to travel (though several rivalry games are played on that weekend currently). I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks though. I skipped the second weekend of December so that exams could be taken/prepared for the week before or after that weekend depending on each university’s schedule.

Bowl games can still be held for the 32 not-invited teams that are currently considered bowl eligible, and even for the 1st round losers if the NCAA desires. They are meaningless money-makers now, so they can be the same with a playoff in place.

[QUOTE=pir8fan05;368952]Just copy/pasting this from someone else…but I like it:

[COLOR=darkgreen]
get rid of the MAC and Sunbelt for starters along with a couple of other noncompetitive schools to get there.
[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

Don’t look now, but the MAC is rated higher than CUSA this year. CUSA members might be “gotten rid of” under that proposal instead.

[URL=http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbc08.htm][B][U][COLOR=Blue]2008 Sagarin College Football Conference Ratings[/COLOR][/U][/B][/URL]

[URL=http://www.warrennolan.com/football/2008/conferencenpi][B][U][COLOR=Red]2008 Warren Nolan College Footbal Conference NPI Ratings[/COLOR][/U][/B][/URL]

Your format for the regular season is similar to what I came up with, minus the conference championship games. The idea of a Division I playoff should make the Championship more inclusive instead of exclusive. So long as the NCAA requirements are met for DI status, those teams should have a chance to play for the title in the end when the season begins so long as they are victorious on the field.