Keep media members off of the playoff selection committee, please

When the BCS commissioners flesh out the details of the still gestating four-team seeded playoff, the one group that should kept far away from the selection committee is the media.

The sports media folks already have venues for making their influence felt when it comes to ranking college football teams. Their print, broadcast and internet platforms give them a loud enough voice, but they also have this thing called the Associated Press Top 25 poll.

While there’s less conflict of interest in the AP Poll than there is in the USAToday Coaches Poll, there’s enough bias and outright incompetence to write books about.

For an extreme example, have a look at Craig James’ AP ballot.

Before anyone accuses me of unfairly using an anecdotal example as evidence of general media incompetence, consider this question: How trustworthy is a poll that would even consider giving Craig James a voice?

Thomas Watts at BamaHammer.com has an excellent post about the wisdom of having a selection committee choose the four teams who ultimately play for the national championship. He’s got a point—the human element of the BCS formula is responsible for matching Alabama against LSU in the 2012 BCS Championship Game. If the BCS got the matchup wrong, it wasn’t the computers’ fault.

It was the two polls. For all intents and purposes, what are polls if they aren’t just a big fat selection committee?

Do we really want to concentrate the human element into a smaller group and dramatically increase the chance that bias or incompetence screw it up?

The James example helps to illustrate the folly of including media on the selection panel. James wasn’t clever enough to conceal his level of asshattery. But there are many horribly biased members of the media who are clever enough and including even one or two of them on a panel of this importance is a risk we shouldn’t be willing to accept.

Don’t get me wrong. There are capable and at least superficially unbiased members of the media. Andy Staples would be a good one. Stewart Mandel is another. Tony Barnhart is trustworthy. Ivan Maisel is thoughtful and seems fair-minded. As much as I would like to see the analytical competence of Gary Danielson participating in the selection process, it wouldn’t be worth the risk of having someone like Skip Bayless or Jason Whitlock muck everything up.

If you’re going to have panel members who aren’t former coaches, athletic directors or conference commissioners, you’re better served by having bloggers on it. There are more of them to choose from, they’re at least as knowledgeable as your nationally syndicated morning talk show host and unlike said host, their bias is as clear as the colors of their blog background. Rather than concealing their bias they embrace it without letting it get in the way of delivering the truth.

Better still, go find six avid college football fans from around the country. Joe Sixpack consumes college football all day Saturday, from the opening credits of Game Day to the midnight wrap up on Sportscenter. They’re the real experts. They’re better equipped to pick the best four teams than the guy who turns a cute phrase in a thrice-weekly column and the guy who bloviates for hours on end during his radio broadcast. For far too many of those knuckleheads, picking the best four consists of “eenie, meenie, minie moe, they stay home and they shall go” then stroking each other on Twitter about their thoughtful and difficult selections.

We should recognize that empanelling a selection committee will introduce bias to the process and that there will be controversy over who gets those coveted last two spots in the four-team playoff. Let’s not feed the inferno of outrage by including people who already have sufficient venues of influence. The risk of some clown getting in there and screwing it all up is too great.

UPDATE: Just moments after this post went up, CBS’ Dennis Dodd posted his recommendation for a 50-person selection committee. The overwhelming majority? Media members.

The most glaring omission? Andy Staples. The nuttiest inclusion? Mike Bianchi or Glenn Guilbeau in a tie.

I rest my case.

UPDATE II: Bruce Feldman reads IBCR. Or, great minds think alike.

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ESPN to Big East: “We fart in your general direction.”

As the BCS Commissioners gather in a smoky backroom to hammer out the future of major college football’s postseason, all the major media outlets have a take on what to expect, what’s at stake, yadda yadda.

IBCR News shared two earlier today.

Here’s ESPN’s, and what’s most interesting is who they don’t think will have much influence in whatever deliberations take place, emphasis mine:

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Where does each of the conferences stand on the biggest issues?

Here's an educated guess on what each of the five major FBS leagues wants:

ACC: ACC commissioner John Swofford was the only BCS conference commissioner who supported SEC commissioner Mike Slive's plus-one proposal in 2008…

Big 12: The Big 12 and SEC announced last month that their champions will play in a postseason bowl game, a relationship similar to the Big Ten and Pac-12 meeting in the Rose Bowl. As such, interim Big 12 commissioner Chuck Neinas said his league has lined up with the SEC…

Big Ten: More than anything else, Big Ten presidents want to make sure they protect their league's traditional relationship with the Rose Bowl. They actually prefer keeping the current BCS system because of that reason…

Pac-12: Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott also wants to make sure his league maintains its traditional alliance with the Rose Bowl, and he went as far as saying the SEC's new postseason arrangement with the Big 12 puts the plus-one model back on the table…

SEC: Slive dug in his heels and said his league, which has won the past six BCS national championships, wants a playoff that includes the top four teams -- and nothing else. Why wouldn't he?

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Big East? Meh… Who cares.

To be fair to ESPN, they do include the Big East in the matrix of preferences expressed by the different conferences and Notre Dame. But the “five major FBS conference” meme is telling: The World Wide Leader was snubbed by the Big East last year when the conference presidents turned down its offer of a $1.4 to $1.9 billion media rights deal. The conference presidents later forced Commissioner John Marinatto to resign.

The defections of Pitt and Syracuse to the ACC, West Virginia to the Big 12 and TCU reneging on its agreement to join the league have also hurt the Big East’s ability to bill itself as a going concern. Boise State—which pledged to join the league in 2013—was reported to have been reconsidering its decision as well. The league has lured Temple, Central Florida, Houston, SMU, San Diego State and Navy, but Houston is the only program to have been nationally relevant in recent years.

As events unfold over the days ahead, it will be interesting to see if the league with the most to lose gets anything it really wants out of the BCS meetings.

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With new bowl deal, Mike Slive outmaneuvers Jim Delany

Friday afternoon, Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive and outgoing Big 12 Commissioner announced a five-year agreement to send their conference champions to an as-yet unnamed New Years Day bowl, if those conference champions are left out of the pending four-team playoff being considered by the college football powers that be.

With one press release, Mike Slive shows why he is the Jedi Master of The Deal and Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany is just another politician.

The deal with the Big 12 does four things:

1. It virtually guarantees that the conference champions of the two most dominant and demographically dynamic conferences will meet in the postseason, whether that’s in the four team playoff that is poised to replace the BCS or in the Unnamed Bowl.
2. It guarantees that if the selection process somehow finds a way to screw the Big 12 and SEC champs out of berths in the final four, it creates a path for the winner of the Unnamed Bowl to be named the Associated Press National Champions. It weakens the credibility of the Delany-driven four team selection process.
3. It places intense new pressure on Notre Dame to join a conference. Delany’s insistence on “conference champions only” in the final four is one thing. Cutting Notre Dame out of a second major postseason matchup with national championship implications is another matter entirely. Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick brushed off Friday’s development, telling the NY Times Pete Thamel that the deal had no near term implications. pffft.
4. It places new competitive pressure on the Sugar Bowl, an event that traditionally hosts the SEC champion. In the BCS era however, the Sugar only hosts the SEC champion if it was hosting the BCS Championship Game or the SEC champ wasn’t playing for the title. Now, the Sugar Bowl may have to compete with another venue. There happens to be a big one just outside of Dallas.

Delany and PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott have both expressed strong desire to maintain their relationship with the Rose Bowl, which itself had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the BCS rotation. Their goal is to have at least one of the semifinal games in the new playoff played in Pasadena (assuming that the Big 10 and PAC-12 can both get teams in the four team field).

Hypothetically, a scenario is possible wherein the Big 10, PAC-12 and ACC all get final four berths along with Notre Dame at large. While that hasn’t happened yet, it’s certainly within the realm of possibilities. This is especially true if teams not named Notre Dame must be conference champs and the teams are selected by a human committee in some smoky backroom in Indianapolis. The folks who’ve watched six straight SEC teams win the BCS Championship were drooling over this; praying for it to happen, even.

Until Friday afternoon.

In the doomsday scenario above, a highly ranked SEC team will play a highly ranked Big 12 team on New Year’s Day, in prime time. Maybe the winning team won’t hoist a crystal ball, but it might host the AP Trophy while the two conferences rake in the cash.

Your move, Jim Delany.

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Kill the Kramer Rule

After reading the elegant post at BamaHammer.com urging the Southeastern Conference to resist Jim Delany’s attempt to manipulate the college football postseason, I decided to grant myself permission to reprint the following, which appeared in this space on February 29, 2012.

College football fans should not be subjected to this nonsense. We don’t want the highest ranked conference champions to square off in a four team playoff. We want the four best teams to play for the championship, and nothing short of that is an improvement over the system in place now.

NOTHING.

The Kramer Rule on a four-team playoff should be DOA

No, Stewart Mandel. You are not on an island full of Alabama fans. You are squarely in the neighborhood of common sense and good reason. The requirement that all of the participants in a four-team FBS playoff be conference champions—which shall henceforth be referred to derogatorily as the “Kramer Rule”—is a bad idea.

It’s bad on many different levels, too.

To start with, such a requirement is an arbitrary standard because all conferences are not the same size or have equal levels of competition. The Big East Champion is not the same as the Southeastern Conference Champion, who is not the same as the Big 12 Champion. Rewarding a 9-3 Big East Champion while excluding an 11-1 SEC West runner-up is arbitrary.

The current BCS faces imminent antitrust litigation from Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who will challenge the BCS under the Sherman Antitrust Act for arbitrarily limiting competition. Do you really want to make Shurtleff’s case easier by adding even more arbitrariness to the selection process?

Of course not.

Secondly, what to do about Notre Dame? The school holds a chair at the same table as the conference commissioners of the SEC, PAC-12, ACC, Big 12 and Big East. Imposing a conference champions only rule arbitrarily excludes Notre Dame because as an independent, they cannot be a conference champion.

So with a wink and a nod, do you make an exception for the Fighting Irish? Should the four teams in the playoff be conference champions plus Notre Dame if they otherwise meet BCS Bowl eligibility standards? That gives college football’s perennial media darling an advantage not afforded to any other school in any other conference (including mid-majors in the WAC, Mountain West and Conference USA).

I guarantee you that if Notre Dame is 9-3 or 10-2, the old school media will bang the drum loudly and make sure that they’re ranked highly enough to get in the playoff.

Good luck selling that, Mr. Kramer.

Third, the fans won’t stand for it as soon as they realize what would have happened in 2011 had there been a conference champions only, four-team playoff. It would have pitted No. 3 Oklahoma State against No. 5 Oregon and No. 1 LSU vs. No. 10 Oregon. No Stanford, no Alabama, no Arkansas. Fans clamored for the two best teams to be paired against each other for the championship two decades ago. They weren’t asking for the two best conference champions.

By extension, fans won’t care to see the four highest ranked conference champions in a four-team playoff. If they demanded that the two highest ranked teams be paired in 1992, they’ll holler just as loudly for the four highest ranked teams in 2012.

Fourth, money talks. When the conference commissioners start cutting nuts and putting details of a new postseason plan together, CBS and ESPN will counsel their partners about installing a plan that puts good inventory on the schedule, not some high-brow notion of inclusiveness and “fairness.” The public and the media might think it’s “more fair” to include a 10th ranked conference champion in a playoff, but that doesn’t mean college football fans will buy tickets or watch the game.

Which playoff game would you rather watch: Alabama vs Oklahoma State, or LSU vs. Oregon in a rematch? If you’re a TV executive, you already know the answer to that question and you’re already showing the commissioners how much damage could be done by pursuing such folly.

Fifth, there is a big difference between “winning the case” and “not getting sued,” which takes us back to  Shurtleff’s pending lawsuit against the BCS. The BCS is vulnerable on antitrust grounds, but that doesn’t mean Shurtleff will win (or lose) his case. Deciding to reduce the arbitrary nature of BCS selection by instituting a four-team playoff reduces that vulnerability. It’s a lot easier to argue having four teams with access to the championship is an improvement over only two. Why give Shurtleff his bullets back by substituting one arbitrary standard for another?

If you institute a four-team playoff and you make sure that the four highest ranked teams are chosen regardless of conference affiliation or conference championship status, you’ve probably eliminated the entire basis for Shurtleff’s complaint. Not getting sued is the right course of action. That’s doubly true if the only requirement for gaining access is winning enough to be ranked in the top four.

Even Notre Dame and Utah should be happy with that.

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Even a four-team playoff is a dangerous step on a slippery slope

The Birmingham News’ Kevin Scarbinsky has an interesting column on the danger posed by the college football playoff proposals being batted around the conferences.

Various reports have the conference big wigs putting a specific proposal before the FBS presidents in June. The playoff zealots and BCS anarchists are beside themselves with glee—they’ve already counted all of the chickens.

Assuming that the conference chiefs can agree on a workable and sensible model, and assuming that the presidents endorse and adopt the plan, the danger lies in what becomes of the playoff in the not-so-distant future.

Scarbinsky describes the Football Championship Division’s latest proposal:

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It'll include, not four teams, but 24 teams.

It'll extend an automatic bid to every conference that wants one, and the rest of the spots in the field will be at-large bids extended by a selection committee.

The committee will seed the top eight teams, give them first-round byes and award them home games in the second round.

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The playoff zealots and BCS anarchists ask: “What’s wrong with this?”

This, as Krazy3 explains, represents a desire for inclusion rather than excellence.

This country was built on the ideal of equal opportunity. Everyone has a chance to succeed and the best of the best are handsomely rewarded. There are nice parting gifts for those who fall a bit shy of the mark. But not everyone can enjoy the fruits of others’ labor. There is no dishonor in losing to a superior opponent and you are not entitled to stand on the same dais with him and bask in his glory.

Some have fewer opportunities and have to work harder to earn their success. Others have better opportunities and have a shorter path to glory. That’s life. It’s not fair, but the only people who still believe life should be fair are kindergartners and leftists.

We ought not be entering the territory where equal rewards are handed out like trophies at kindergarten basketball camps. Feel-good leftists like Buzz Bissinger can’t comprehend why competition should allow the emergence of a single winner. In their narrow little minds, if  sport can’t be for the greater good of all participants, then it should simply be banned.

Krazy points out that the No. 4 team has rarely been worthy of a shot at the national championship, and it hasn’t happened yet in the history of the BCS. The BCS bowls that don’t host the championship game sometimes make boneheaded decisions on who they invite to their games, but the BCS has succeeded in its original goal of putting the two best teams on the same field to play for the national championship.

The BCS doesn’t work perfectly but it does work. No system conceived by the human mind is perfect and the BCS hasn’t been without controversy. Does anyone think that a four team bracket won’t escape controversy? If Jim Delany has his way, will the model be an improvement? “Hell no.”

The BCS has had the incidental effect of placing college football in the forefront of public attention. College football is arguably the nation’s second favorite sport, trailing only the NFL in national following and popularity. But the game of college football is nothing like the game played on Sundays. Accordingly, its post season shouldn’t be patterned after the NFL playoffs. There is no Super Bowl in college football and duplication will lead to destruction.

Mark my words.

It should be noted that I disagree on one point with Krazy. I believe a four team playoff is the right idea because while history hasn’t produced a winner from the No. 4 spot yet, the conference realignments and scheduling schemes being concocted over the next two years may well do so. It’s prudent to plan for a legitimate slate of four contenders and a scenario where all three games are pick’ems.

There will never be a legitimate slate of six contenders. Or eight, or any other number greater than four. Once you step on that slope, you’re on your way down to handing out trophies at the end of the season and simply rewarding people for showing up.

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UConn Paper: Schools lose money in BCS

In a very thorough investigative piece on schools’ financial exposure to BCS bowls, the UConn Daily Campus lays out the bottom line impacts of the extravaganzas and concludes what many already knew—the BCS bowls are not cash cows for their participants.

Specifically, large chunks of cash come out of program coffers for mandatory ticket allotments and mandatory lodging requirements, both stipulations imposed by the bowls themselves. The schools are unable to negotiate their own accommodations and face minimum required stays (eight nights for UConn’s trip to the 2011 Fiest Bowl, where it lost an estimated $1.9 million).

Other findings from the Daily Campus review:

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• Schools that participated in the BCS between 2010 and 2012 lost close to $130,000 on average. If you factor in the cost of unsold tickets that conferences bought up, that number jumps to over $400,000.
• On average, schools spent $2.3 million at BCS bowl games, including $576,009 on transportation, $764,948 on meals and lodging, $420,778 on unsold tickets and $559,971 on other expenses, such as awards, entertainment, promotion and equipment.
• The last three national champions all lost money. In 2010, Alabama lost $1.86 million at the BCS National Championship game. In 2011, Auburn lost $614,106, and this past year, Alabama lost $1.9 million.
• More than half of all teams whose data was available (16 of 26) incurred greater expenses than revenue at their game. Five of those teams ended up posting small profits after their conferences helped buy up tickets, and the remaining 11 posted losses.

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While it’s true that the participating schools have little chance of making money on a BCS Bowl trip, the real bottom line is that the bowl system is highly profitable for both the bowls and the conferences they’re aligned with.

At its annual Destin, Florida meetings In June 2011, the Southeastern Conference distributed a record $220 million in sports-related revenues, including $31.3 million from bowls. The revenues distributed did not include the bowl payout money retained by each of the participating schools, which came to about $14.2 million total.

The average (total) distribution was about $18 million each.

In what’s clearly a case of the “haves” vs. the “have nots,” the BCS and the revenue sharing system works pretty well for the SEC. Maybe it doesn’t work so well for other conferences and their member schools.

As this entry goes to the innnerwebs, the commissioners of the BCS conferences are meeting in a sunny Florida location, where they are expected to at least come up with a new and improved college football postseason that includes a four-team playoff (we’re optimistic that they will, anyway). That system has the potential to more than double the amount of revenue generated by the conferences and schools.

While it’s true that individual programs lose money in BCS bowls, they end up made more than whole when the final packages are handed out in the offseason.

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Jim McElwain: NFL draft a measuring stick for college football programs

By: @LivingCrimson

Alabama is expected to have five players go in the first round of the Draft next week ▬ Mark Barron, Dont’a Hightower, Dre Kirkpatrick, Trent Richardson and Courtney Upshaw. If the predictions prove true, the Crimson Tide will take second place in NFL draft history for first-rounders taken in the same Draft. Miami currently holds the record with six first-rounders in 2004. Alabama would also become tops in the SEC, after tying for the lead in 2011 with four first-rounders.

Jim McElwain, head coach at Colorado State University and former Bama offensive coordinator, is working to mold his football program into a successful pipeline to the NFL as well. And he is finally able to give insight into The Process under Nick Saban.

"The opportunity to play at the next level, that's everybody's dream. [T]here is a skill set there to get invited to the Combine, to get drafted into the National Football League, to be part of an NFL program. And that is a skill set we're looking to find as coaches as well."

Seems straightforward enough, no surprises there. We already knew Saban (and his coaching tree) evaluates high school recruits based on prototypical measurables position by position.

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Ah, but then McElwain gives us the twist ▬ lower round guys that make it in the NFL are the real success.

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“Our responsibility is to develop these guys for the rest of their lives by what we do academically, what we do spiritually, what we do psychologically. And if they desire a chance to play in the National Football League, it's our responsibility to put them in a system that's going to help them succeed. ... The guys at the top of the draft, it doesn't matter what system they were in. It's the back end, the later rounds, the (undrafted) free agents. Those guys might be the (best) measure of your developmental skills. Teams see them on film and see how what you do has a chance to translate to the NFL.”

McElwain says "the whole package" matters to him and to Saban. Well-rounded players will be more attractive to NFL teams, and a college degree will stand any player in good stead for the rest of his life.

The Process is working. The Tide leads the SEC in Academic Honor Roll placement and ranks fifth nationally in BCS academics. In addition to winning national championships on the collegiate level, each year brings more success on NFL draft day ▬ including more players drafted in the lower rounds. Players who otherwise might not have been drafted at all if it weren’t for their successful development at Bama.

• In 2008, zero Alabama players drafted, the first draft following Nick Saban’s inaugural season in Tuscaloosa. However, the Tide had four undrafted free agents who went on to play at least a couple of years in the NFL. DE Wallace Gilberry remains active.
• In 2009, four Alabama players drafted. All were drafted third round or higher with only one first-round pick in OT Andre Smith.
• In 2010, six Alabama players drafted, two in the first round, two in the second round, and two in the seventh round – DE Brandon Deaderick and DB Marquis Johnson. Deaderick found himself starting in the Super Bowl after only his second season.
• In 2011, five Alabama players drafted, four in the first round and QB Greg McElroy in the seventh round. Plus undrafted free agent LB Chavis Williams was picked up by the Ravens and re-signed for 2012.

In 2012, seventeen Alabama players have a realistic opportunity to be drafted or picked up as undrafted free agents ▬ the five predicted first-rounders, John Michael Boswell (FA), Josh Chapman (3-4 Rd), Nick Gentry (FA), Darius Hanks (FA), Jerrell Harris (FA), Phelon Jones (FA), Alfred McCullough (FA), Marquis Maze (7 Rd), DeQuan Menzie (4-5 Rd), Brad Smelley (6 Rd), William Vlachos (FA), and Alex Watkins (FA).

What McElwain is really saying about Saban’s system is that when an average player reaches the end of his eligibility, he is more likely to get a shot in the NFL because Alabama has equipped its athletes with the tools to succeed. Then he is more likely to capitalize on his opportunity in the NFL because he is able to put all that development into practice.

Of course, winning the NFL Draft with the most first-rounders certainly doesn’t detract from any program.

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The Kramer Rule on a four-team playoff should be DOA

No, Stewart Mandel. You are not on an island full of Alabama fans. You are squarely in the neighborhood of common sense and good reason. The requirement that all of the participants in a four-team FBS playoff be conference champions—which shall henceforth be referred to derogatorily as the “Kramer Rule”—is a bad idea.

It’s bad on many different levels, too.

To start with, such a requirement is an arbitrary standard because all conferences are not the same size or have equal levels of competition. The Big East Champion is not the same as the Southeastern Conference Champion, who is not the same as the Big 12 Champion. Rewarding a 9-3 Big East Champion while excluding an 11-1 SEC West runner-up is arbitrary.

The current BCS faces imminent antitrust litigation from Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who will challenge the BCS under the Sherman Antitrust Act for arbitrarily limiting competition. Do you really want to make Shurtleff’s case easier by adding even more arbitrariness to the selection process?

Of course not.

Secondly, what to do about Notre Dame? The school holds a chair at the same table as the conference commissioners of the SEC, PAC-12, ACC, Big 12 and Big East. Imposing a conference champions only rule arbitrarily excludes Notre Dame because as an independent, they cannot be a conference champion.

So with a wink and a nod, do you make an exception for the Fighting Irish? Should the four teams in the playoff be conference champions plus Notre Dame if they otherwise meet BCS Bowl eligibility standards? That gives college football’s perennial media darling an advantage not afforded to any other school in any other conference (including mid-majors in the WAC, Mountain West and Conference USA).

I guarantee you that if Notre Dame is 9-3 or 10-2, the old school media will bang the drum loudly and make sure that they’re ranked highly enough to get in the playoff.

Good luck selling that, Mr. Kramer.

Third, the fans won’t stand for it as soon as they realize what would have happened in 2011 had there been a conference champions only, four-team playoff. It would have pitted No. 3 Oklahoma State against No. 5 Oregon and No. 1 LSU vs. No. 10 Oregon. No Stanford, no Alabama, no Arkansas. Fans clamored for the two best teams to be paired against each other for the championship two decades ago. They weren’t asking for the two best conference champions.

By extension, fans won’t care to see the four highest ranked conference champions in a four-team playoff. If they demanded that the two highest ranked teams be paired in 1992, they’ll holler just as loudly for the four highest ranked teams in 2012.

Fourth, money talks. When the conference commissioners start cutting nuts and putting details of a new postseason plan together, CBS and ESPN will counsel their partners about installing a plan that puts good inventory on the schedule, not some high-brow notion of inclusiveness and “fairness.” The public and the media might think it’s “more fair” to include a 10th ranked conference champion in a playoff, but that doesn’t mean college football fans will buy tickets or watch the game.

Which playoff game would you rather watch: Alabama vs Oklahoma State, or LSU vs. Oregon in a rematch? If you’re a TV executive, you already know the answer to that question and you’re already showing the commissioners how much damage could be done by pursuing such folly.

Fifth, there is a big difference between “winning the case” and “not getting sued,” which takes us back to  Shurtleff’s pending lawsuit against the BCS. The BCS is vulnerable on antitrust grounds, but that doesn’t mean Shurtleff will win (or lose) his case. Deciding to reduce the arbitrary nature of BCS selection by instituting a four-team playoff reduces that vulnerability. It’s a lot easier to argue having four teams with access to the championship is an improvement over only two. Why give Shurtleff his bullets back by substituting one arbitrary standard for another?

If you institute a four-team playoff and you make sure that the four highest ranked teams are chosen regardless of conference affiliation or conference championship status, you’ve probably eliminated the entire basis for Shurtleff’s complaint. Not getting sued is the right course of action. That’s doubly true if the only requirement for gaining access is winning enough to be ranked in the top four.

Even Notre Dame and Utah should be happy with that.

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Music City Bowl worth millions to Nashville economy

Last month, IBCR reported that the Gulf Coast experienced millions in economic impact from bowl games and related tourism, drawing visitors to the coastal regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. According to the Tennessean, the Music City Bowl also has a sizable impact on the Nashville community.

It’s not the approximate $400 million seen along the Gulf Coast (two BCS bowls and two minor bowls), but the impact of a $22 million boost in local economic activity is still significant.

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Almost 37,000 fans came to Nashville for the game, generating 25,805 hotel room nights, an economic analysis of the event found.

“The bowl continued to exhibit the strong momentum it has shown in recent years, based on attendance, ratings and economic impact,” said Brad Lampley, the bowl’s chairman.

The close proximity of the schools to Nashville — Mississippi State is 279 miles away in Starkville, Miss., while Wake Forest was 435 miles from its Winston-Salem, N.C. campus — helped boost attendance and the monetary impact compared to previous years’ games, officials said.

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The economic impact of successful bowl games is substantial and should be an important consideration in any process that alters the college football post season. If you’re going to make the argument that there are too many bowl games, then you’re going to have to justify the decision to contract the market by deciding which regional economies you’re going to harm by eliminating their bowl game.

In this economy, taking away an economic impact measured in hundreds of millions of dollars means a lot of people don’t have jobs. When people are out of work, or sympathizing with their brethren in that city down the road, they tend to care less about whether major college football has a postseason deemed acceptable by the zealots.

We may see a tightening of the number of bowl games in the years ahead. Falling average attendance figures point strongly to a market that’s nearing saturation. But completely eliminating the bowl games is not only a political impossibility, it’s bad economic policy.

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I don’t trust Jim Delany, and neither should you

For a conference commissioner, Jim Delany makes one hell of a politician. Like all shrewd politicians, he knows how to read public opinion and reverse course when his original position has become untenable. It other words, Delany was against a college football playoff before he was for it, and somewhere John Kerry smiles.

If anyone thinks Delany’s apparent change of heart is being made in the interests of the sport of college football, they probably think the former Democrat nominee for President opposed the Iraq war during the 2004 campaign out of dedication to principle.

The only person you should trust less than a politician who reverses positions is a politician whose change of heart is offering you something that sounds too good to be true. The Big 10 balloon-float of a plus one playoff model for major college football, as described in the Chicago Tribune report on Monday, is just such a proposal.

It has all the goodies that make BCS anarchists like Dan Wetzel positively giddy over the possibilities:

• Seeding a four-team, three game playoff with the semifinals held on the college campus(es) of the higher seed(s).
• Competitive bidding from cities seeking to host the final game.
• College football’s national champion settled on the field.
• Wresting control of the college football postseason from greedy, corrupt bowl executives.
• Promising prospects of higher attendance and larger TV audiences for compelling matchups.

What’s not to like about a proposal fleshed out around these bones? Not much. It sounds too good to be true and therefore, it probably is.

Call me a curmudgeon, but anyone gleefully embracing a politician’s offer of shiny objects has failed to learn the lessons of life. And if you came of age during Watergate and still think there’s no hook, no gotcha, no catch… Well, some people are just hopeless.

Yesterday, I touched on the relationship between the Big 10, the PAC 12 and the Rose Bowl. That relationship has existed since the end of World War II. While some of the younger set dismiss the pact as a relic of a bygone era, few such critics sit in positions of authority and most of those who do exercise control are steeped in that tradition.

Accordingly, I don’t believe the commissioner of the Big 10 will propose or support a plan that would likely end the matchup between his conference champion and the champion of the PAC-12 in the Granddaddy of Them All. There’s a catch here somewhere.

I’ve always been an enthusiastic and optimistic supporter of a limited playoff model and many times I’ve expressed support for a plus one. The game of college football is nothing like the NFL, so its postseason should look nothing like the pro’s. A multi-round, seeded playoff model that matches Alabama or LSU against the Conference USA champ is a recipe for disaster, and at least one Big 10 official agrees with me.

The plus one model is the best tradeoff between fan demand for a legitimate championship and university presidents’ legitimate concerns over academics, logistics and finance. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good compromise and the campus semifinals angle makes it even better.

I just don’t believe that college sports’ shrewdest politician will be its principled proponent. Against it before you for for it; for it  before you were against it? I believe Delany has had a heart-changing epiphany about as much as I believe John Kerry did eight years ago.

I don’t trust either one of them. And neither should you.

Jarrett Lee, talking about BCS snub, bugs LSU fans

As many of you know, I am close friends with an LSU graduate and booster. We’ve spent the better part of our adult lives working together on many different civic projects. We’re brothers for 51 weeks out of normal years, but had to take two off in 2011.

He says he echoes a lot of his fellow purple and gold brethren when he says, “I love Jarrett Lee for what he’s done as a Tiger. But now I just wish he’d STFU.

“He’s not helping.”

Lee is making headlines again this week after an interview with the Baton Rouge Advocate’s Scott Rabalais, in which he waxes melancholic about not being called on in the BCS Championship Game against eventual champion Alabama.

Lee says he thinks he could have helped. My friend doesn’t know one way or another, but he wishes Lee would just let the wounds start the long, painful healing process.

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“I’m definitely very proud and appreciative of what people have been saying and all those good things,” Lee said. “Each day at LSU I tried to give it my all and work hard.

“I’m definitely proud to be an LSU Tiger.”

“I felt, if I was given the opportunity, I could have come in and done things to help.

“I don’t know what happened. Obviously, the coaches had a reason for doing what they did. As a player, you have to respect that. But there were some players and plays that could have helped us win.”

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Wondering whether or not Lee could have made an impact or changed the outcome of the game is a lot like wondering what would have happened had Nick Saban chosen to go for it on any of the 2,433 missed field goals in the first game on November 5. Or if the replay officials had given Patrick Peterson that interception or if the officials had called pass interference against LSU in the end zone that fateful night or if Bama didn’t get two scores in two minutes to win on that other fateful night 1998 or…  any other time I or my friend had our hopes dashed.

“It is what it is,” he said to me. “I wish he’d move on.”

I lived in southeast Louisiana for two years as a senior project manager, working on several very big storm risk reduction and flood control projects. I made many more great friends in the Bayou State. There’s no more passionate fan base in the country than LSU fans. Anywhere. I love them all for 51 weeks out of the year.

They still love Jarrett Lee but right now, they just want him to hush.

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Is the Big 10 seriously going to propose a Rose Bowl killing Plus One?

If anyone thinks the Big 10 will propose or even support a plus one playoff that endangers the Rose Bowl and its relationship with that conference, they haven’t been paying attention.

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune’s Teddy Greenstein reported that the league was kicking around an idea that would have a four team playoff with semifinals played on college campuses.

Citing “sources,”Greenstein says the plan would remove the top four teams from the BCS pool, have semifinal games played on the campus of the highest seed and have cities bid on hosting the championship match.

The idea sounded so good on the surface that all of the usual playoff zealots felt something move.

Unfortunately for them, they’re drawing to an inside straight and their outs are all in the muck pile.

Just two months ago, Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany told the same reporter that he had no interest in furthering a plus-one proposal and gave his grounds for opposition:

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Delany remains opposed to a Plus-One because he believes it would lead to an eight- or 16-team playoff that would harm college football’s regular season and bowl system.

“Our view is we’d like to stay where we are,” Delany told the Tribune in a telephone interview. “We do believe in the slippery-slope theory.”

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Later, ESPN reported that he remained steadfastly opposed to the plus one model and made an even more blunt statement of the league’s position: “As long as I can go to the Rose Bowl, I don’t really care,” he said, addressing what tweaks might be made to the BCS.

The Rose Bowl hosts the champions of the Big 10 and PAC-12. If one or both are in a four-team elimination round down in Baton Rouge, Tuscaloosa or Athens, they get stuck with Boise State vs. Oklahoma State, or something? Right.

Delany and others in the league value their relationship with the Rose Bowl much more highly than they do their role in the BCS. So much so, that they wouldn’t support a model that lets the above scenario take place outside of a BCS rotation that eventually lets the Rose recoup the losses in a year or three.

If a playoff system comes along that does not further the two leagues’ relationship with each other and the Rose Bowl, expect the Big 10 and PAC-12 to abandon ship. They’ll let the other guys duke it out in a plus one format and they’ll go play grandaddy in Pasadena.

Don’t believe me? Perhaps you’ll listen to Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon:

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"This whole notion of a playoff is ridiculous because I don't care what you come up with, it's not going to be a fair playoff. You've got a bunch of teams that don't play one another and play different competition and in different time zones in different conferences in different stadiums in front of different crowds and different weather and suddenly at some point in the year you are trying to arbitrarily decide which one is better and which one deserves to be in a four-team playoff or a six-team playoff.

"No matter where you draw that line, you're going to have controversy and people who are honked off because their team got cut off."

"… put that Alabama defense [from the national title game] out there against the winner of some small, Division I conference, and someone is going to get hurt. I think some judgment around how you create matchups that are fair and challenging and interesting is an important part of the bowl system. If you take that away and start to create seeding of a bunch of conferences that aren't anywhere near equal in terms of their talent level, I don't think that's going to be good for college football or create excitement in the postseason."

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I strongly disagree with the notion that a playoff would be ridiculous and hopelessly unfair. A Final Four type of model is my preference because it balances the interests of the schools against the demands of the marketplace. It’s a good tradeoff.

I also recognize that there is passionate objection to the plan in the Big 10, and likely in the PAC-12, too.

It’s curious that Greenstein would have sources in the Big 10 tell him that the league is kicking around a playoff model when the most vocal sources in that group are its staunchest opponents.

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Senior Bowl poll: Players split on BCS vs. Playoffs; like Nick Saban

Each year, the Mobile Press-Register’s Tommy Hicks surveys participants of the Senior Bowl to gauge their opinions on some of the hot topics of the day.

At publish time there was no link to the story, but here is a sampling of some of the questions and answers. (story link here, now)

Not all players answered all questions. Some of the answers are surprising, some are not. All are interesting.

Which plan do you favor for determining the National Championship?

BCS	18
Playoff	10
Plus One	8

If you were starting a team, who would you pick to be the head coach?

Alabama’s Nick Saban	10
Ohio State’s Urban Meyer	6

Will the SEC claim its seventh national championship next season?

No	22
Yes	21

If it had played in the BCS title game against LSU, would Oklahoma State have won the championship?

No	24
Yes	19

If it had played in the BCS title game against Alabama, would Oklahoma State have won the championship?

No	24
Yes	19

Among other fun questions, players chose Halle Berry by a slim margin over Kim Kardashian as their choice to head the cheerleading team for a new NFL squad; and chose Oregon’s uniforms as their favorite by an overwhelming margin.

Both the North and South squads will do walk throughs of the game plan this morning. The game—which is nearly sold out—will be played tomorrow at Mobile’s Ladd-Peebles Memorial Stadium. Kickoff is at 3:00 pm CST and will be televised by the NFL Network.

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Bowl eligibility standard may be increasing (but beware fuzzy math)

The college football postseason landscape may consist of a somewhat smaller territory if the powers that be increase the bowl eligibility threshold to seven games. CBS’ Brett McMurphy says such a measure enjoys strong support. If passed, a likely result is that some smaller bowls go dark, as there won’t be enough 7-5 or better teams at the end of the season to fill all of the existing available slots.

Currently, there are 35 bowls available for Football Bowl Subdivision programs. Following the 2011 regular season, a total of 13 teams entered post-season play at 6-6, meaning six bowls would likely not have had teams to fill their slots (the seventh could have selected 7-5 Western Kentucky at-large).

The discussion over which bowls to eliminate figures to be as calm and collegial as the negotiations in a Hollywood divorce.

Don’t expect any significant reduction in the number of bowls in the next few years. Conferences have contractual arrangements with bowl games to provide teams. Bowls have contractual arrangements with sponsors, local governments and area business stakeholders. The conferences and the bowls have contractual arrangements with broadcasters. Don’t expect any of these complicated arrangements to be torn up as soon as the NCAA membership votes to change eligibility.

ESPN owns and operates seven bowls: The Meineke Car Car Bowl, the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl, the Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl, the Maaco Bowl, the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl, the New Mexico Bowl and the BBVA Compass Bowl. Four of the teams hosted in those bowls came in with 6-6 records.

Considering the amount of influence that organization wields over college sports in general and football in particular, seeing how many ESPN bowls are eliminated versus independents like the GoDaddy.com or Independence Bowls will be interesting, especially as ESPN decides which bowls it wants to broadcast.

Resist the argument that declining average bowl attendance means that fans aren’t interested in the current college football postseason. It’s simply not true and no fuzzy math manipulation of the data can hide the fact that the long term trend of bowl attendance is up, not down. Fans still love college football. They’ll still watch and if they can afford it, they’ll travel to support their team. If some want to argue that the bowl market is saturated, go right ahead. Increasing eligibility standards and cutting production is what industries do when they’ve fully saturated a market and the last increments added are less than productive.

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The 2012 Conference Realignment Season in full swing!

Remember how much fun the 2011 Conference Realignment Season was?

The Big 12, the SEC, the Big East, even Conference Jambalaya were reshuffled to one extent or another during a months-long ride on a dizzying carousel. It broke longstanding regional bonds, ended traditional rivalries and tested the trust of conference commissioners, university presidents and fans.

The 2012 season is just beginning.

Yesterday, Navy and the Big East announced that the service academy would end its status as an independent and join the conference beginning in 2015 for football only.

And in another development, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Brad Wolverton reports that sources say that the Big 12 will also reopen conference expansion talks, with the possibility of expanding back to 12 members on the table.

Wolverton was told that possible candidates for admission are Louisville, a Big 12 candidate last year, and current independent Brigham Young.

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Further Big 12 expansion is “very possible,” two high-ranking sources told The Chronicle. An expansion committee, dormant for months after the conference accepted West Virginia and TCU into league play, will meet today to discuss its options.

While conference officials stressed that no decision is imminent–and there is some opposition to moving beyond the current 10 member institutions–two schools are at the top of the list, should the league make a move.

Louisville, which the Big 12 considered adding last year, is the likeliest choice, according to people with knowledge of the talks. And Brigham Young, another university the conference has considered, continues to be a possible target. One official said the league was open to adding just one institution. “The Big Ten made 11 work for a number of years,” the source told The Chronicle.

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Geography played only a backup role in the 2011 round of reshuffling. It’s a coin flip as to whether commissioners and university officials incorporate that novel concept in 2012.

It’s also worth noting that the conference commissioners have already met once to discuss the future of the BCS, with more meetings to be held in the months ahead. Ironically, the BCS’ system of automatic qualification for the five major conferences is on the table at the same time that AQ status is driving conference realignment.

The period between spring drills and fall camp is normally a very quiet time for college football enthusiasts. That all changed with the 2011 season and it looks like the 2012 season will be just as interesting and just as unpredictable.

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Change is a’comin to college football

Emerging from the Football Bowl Subdivision conference commissioners meeting and the NCAA Annual Convention is an apparent consensus that the major college football postseason needs to be changed and that some sort of playoff is in the near future.

It won’t be done before the 2012 season starts, so don’t look for a “Plus One” to settle the who’s No. 1 debate next year. The Orange Bowl will host the BCS No. 1 and No. 2 teams next January, and the Rose will pit 1 vs 2 in January 2013. But if things play out along the path they started this week we could have a seeded Football Final Four by 2014.

There’s good reason for optimism if we’re to take Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany’s words at face value. Here’s what he told the New York Times’ Pete Thamel yesterday in New Orleans:

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“The environment has changed in the sense that we had five people who didn’t want to talk about it of the seven founders,” Delany said, comparing Tuesday with four years ago. “And I think the seven founders were the conferences plus Notre Dame, and four years ago five of us didn’t want to have the conversation. Now people want to have the conversation.”

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The “four years ago” conversation Delany references occurred right after LSU won its second BCS Championship and the conference commissioners met to discuss the future, just as they do every year. The 2008 meeting was important in that the BCS’ contract with Fox was expiring and the organization was about to begin negotiating a new television contract between the BCS, the bowls and broadcasters. Southeastern Conference Commissioner Mike Slive and ACC Commissioner Jim Swofford proposed that the BCS develop a four-team seeded playoff. The other conferences wanted none of it. Since that fateful meeting, Florida, Alabama, Auburn and Alabama again have won the BCS National Championship.

Now, the conference commissioners who’ve been outside looking in are eager to talk. It’s funny how things like that work, isn’t it?

Meanwhile in Indianapolis, NCAA President Mark Emmert was delivering a “State of the Association” address to the league’s annual convention. Striking a harmonious chord with the conference commissioners, he stated his support for a four-team football playoff but expressed reservations about expanding it to a multi-round 8- or 16-team affair when asked about the New Orleans discussions.

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"The notion of having a Final Four approach is probably a sound one," Emmert said when asked what he heard coming out of New Orleans this week. "Moving toward a 16-team playoff is highly problematic because I think that's too much to ask a young man's body to do. It's too many games, it intrudes into the school year and, of course, it would probably necessitate a complete end to the bowl system that so many people like now."

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These developments are great news for college football fans, who have been clamoring for just such a system for years. While some may float specious arguments about falling attendance and declining ratings as protest votes by fans, the truth is that demand for the college football postseason product has been growing for decades. In fact, college sports is probably the only bright spot in a dismal US economy.

College sports is big business, and the only viable solution to the current, much-maligned BCS is one that delivers a good product to consumers and enhances the revenue earned by the schools. Many schools are hurting for cash and the prospect of adding hundreds of millions in new revenue is the only way to lure the college presidents into giving Slive’s idea a try.

Playoff zealots and BCS anarchists pushing for more than a Final Four model will be disappointed. Expanding beyond a four team system means significant disruptions in academic calendars and would almost certainly require shortening the regular season. That means programs giving up the revenue associated with a home game and incurring the additional academic and travel costs. Try selling that to an already reticent group of college administrators. It doesn’t matter what extra revenue would be generated by the playoffs. Nothing offsets the millions in revenue from gate receipts, television, concessions, etc., not to mention the howls of protest from the local community over lost lodging and entertainment business.

It’s a Final Four, and that’s it. Fortunately though, it looks like it’s really about to start happening.

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Alabama locker room post game celebration (VIDEO)

A jubilant Alabama Crimson Tide locker room erupts in celebration following the team’s win in Monday night’s BCS Championship Game.

Alabama defeated the LSU Bengal Tigers 21-0 to claim its second championship in three years, and coach Nick Saban became the only three-title winner in the BCS era.

Note the face of a famous former player at the very beginning.

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Helmet Tap to @LAmeetsDC on Twitter for the raw video.

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Getting the playoff argument wrong

A lot of people still don’t get it.

Let the record show that I favor replacing or reforming the Bowl Championship Series with a some form of playoff. My preference is the “Plus One” model floated by the SEC and ACC four years ago and gaining favor among conferences originally opposed to it. Both the Big 12 and the Pac-12 Commissioners have warmed to the idea and only the Big East and Big 10 likely stand in the way.

I want to see a playoff but if we’re going to make a successful argument and convince the BCS commissioners and college presidents that a four-team, two-round “Plus One” postseason is good for college football, some people will either need to change their line of reasoning or simply STFU and GTFU.

For starters, let’s dismiss the notion that bowl attendance is falling and that fans are no longer interested in traveling to support their teams in postseason play. It’s not only bogus, it’s dishonest. The long term trend clearly shows that college football fans are taking advantage of more postseason opportunities and total bowl attendance has more than doubled over the modern era.

Let’s also avoid the temptation to cast an apparent decline in BCS television ratings as a protest by the public over the refusal of the college presidents to institute a playoff system. By doing so, you are making the classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation (more on that later).

When Fox’s contract with the BCS ended after the 2009 season, ESPN won the rights to the broadcasts and put all of the BCS bowls on its cable channels, ending the era of major bowls being televised on over-the-air networks. You fail to recognize the significance of that at your own peril.

Estimates vary, but between 10% and 15% of American homes don’t have cable or satellite service at all. They either receive television with an antenna or don’t have televisions. With about 310 million people in the US, between 31 and 46.5 million—or something on the order of about 12 to 15 million households—couldn’t watch the BCS Championship Game between Alabama and LSU. Further, recent research shows that even more people are dropping cable/satellite service—but aren’t switching to internet-based entertainment. 

The article linked above suggests that economic factors are driving the cable and satellite industry’s troubles. How can you make an argument that fans are tuning out in protest when tens of millions don’t even have that option?

Fans constitute the economic engine that drives the postseason industry, and they aren’t stupid. They’re rational consumers of the college football postseason product. They are willing to pay a reasonable price to watch their team play in the postseason. Survey after survey shows high fan support for a playoff, but given that the college presidents have failed to deliver the product they demand, they are doing what any rational consumer would do—they are choosing a substitute that provides less satisfaction but still provides the some of the opportunity they seek.

The decline in ratings since the Fox deal ended is a function of many different factors, the largest of which is the inability to reach those without cable. Given the numbers above, a broadcast of the BCS Championship Game over ABC (which owns ESPN), CBS or Fox would have had access to as many as 15 million additional homes. With the rating and share figures from the game itself, this would have resulted in several million more viewers for both the 2011 and 2012 BCS Championship Games.

Another factor to consider—some of the country had little interest in the 2012 game and ignored it in much the same way that fans routinely ignore World Series matches not involving the Yankees, Red Sox or other large market teams. The same can be said for the NBA Finals not featuring Lakers, Celtics or Bulls and Super Bowls not featuring Packers, Steelers, Raiders or Cowboys. It’s not a protest. It’s a lack of national interest in a regional matchup and as big of a business as Southeastern Conference football is, it’s still a rematch of a regional matchup. Why would college football be any different from the other sports? Trust me. It’s not.

If you pointed to a decline in ratings and said “aha! the fans are protesting;” or, you said the ratings indicate an approaching critical mass; or you went so far as to proclaim the college football patient as terminally ill, you aren’t getting it.

Did you know that there is a statistically valid correlation between the number of miles I run down Fort Morgan Road during the summer and the amount of rainfall in the sub-Saharan region of Africa? If I made the same mistake these people are making—if I confused correlation with causation—I’d literally run myself to death to keep the poor dirt farmers in Africa from dying of famine.

TV ratings are no more of an indication of fan protest than rainfall in Africa is an indication of my running prowess. Get the college postseason off of cable and ratings will go up. Get the American economy back in full gear and both ratings and attendance will go up. Get a playoff system installed and produce more postseason inventory and they’ll soar even higher. But don’t tell me that fans are not going to bowls or changing channels out of protest. Those arguments are flawed at best and downright dishonest at worst.

If you’re arguing for a playoff, your selling points to the BCS commissioners and college presidents are more inventory for broadcast networks, improved quality of the inventory and greater fan interest and attendance. The commissioners and presidents won’t be fooled by specious protest and low ratings arguments.

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NEAUX DEBATE

Two months ago, there were no excuses. Today, there’s simply NEAUX debate. In last night’s BCS Championship Game, the Alabama Crimson Tide marked its second national title in three years and left absolutely no one of sound mind with any questions as to who was the best team in the country in 2012.

To be the best, you have to beat the best. Alabama beat the best team the nation had to offer.

They did it with offense. Hey Matt Hayes, AJ McCarron has a question for you, sir—”How do you like me now?” The Tide quarterback played the best game of his career, going 23-34 for 234 yards. Trent Richardson carried the ball 20 times for 96 yards and a stake-in-the-heart 4th quarter touchdown. They did it with Kevin Norwood, a tight end that sent most people not wearing crimson in the press box scrambling for their programs and media guides.

They did it with defense. When was the last time LSU was held scoreless for four quarters? Ten years ago, when Alabama beat LSU 31-0. The ruthlessly efficient Alabama defense held the Tigers to five first downs and 2-12 on third down efficiency. Vaunted dual threat quarterback Jordan Jefferson was kept in the pocket all night and frankly made to look like he was lost. They gained 92 yards in total offense, with only 39 on the ground. Jefferson was never a threat to throw it deep because the Tide front seven was in his face all night.

And yes, they even did it with special teams.

This takes nothing away from the LSU Tigers, who had an absolutely stellar season. Along the way to their 13-1 record, the beat the Rose Bowl champs, the Cotton Bowl champs, the Orange Bowl champs and the Crimson Tide. But hey… Ask the 2007 New England Patriots about beating the last team on the schedule.

It really wasn’t fair that LSU had to beat Alabama twice to win their third BCS crown. Some might even argue that they deserved a shot at a cupcake like Oklahoma State or Boise State. But the only people who still think life is supposed to be fair are kindergartners, liberals and certain knuckleheads in the mainstream sports media.

I have many very close friends who are LSU grads and LSU fans. Their hearts are broken this morning and I really do sympathize with them. That’s how Alabama fans felt on the morning of November 6 and on New Year’s Day, 1974—the last time Alabama lost a bowl game said to be for all the Mercedes Benzes.

Honestly, most reasonable Alabama fans would have been just fine with LSU claiming a split title if the game had played out like I predicted. National championship debates are as much a part of the college football fabric as bowl games and tailgate traditions.

But last night, the combined effort of the Alabama Crimson Tide offense, defense and special teams made it clear.

There should be NEAUX DEBATE.

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Bowls are cash cows for Gulf Coast leisure and tourism industry

Yesterday, a USA Today story tried to foist the notion on us that bowl attendance was at a historical low by using mathematical trickeration. You’re supposed to believe that bowls are money pits, sucking the life out of college football like a black hole sucks up solar systems.

But from Mobile to New Orleans and beyond, business is booming during what used to be one of the slowest parts of the year for the tourism industry.

The Godaddy.com Bowl will be played Sunday night at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, which is hosting Arkansas State and Northern Illinois. Yesterday, the Mobile Press-Register reported that the game was nearly sold out and hotels throughout the city are booked.

Monday night, the New Orleans Superdome has the BCS Championship game between Alabama and LSU, and the tourism business from the Big Easy to Biloxi is booming.

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Taryn Sammons, media relations manager with the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau, said that while the bureau has "no idea" precisely how much south Mississippi will rack up as a result of the game, it's likely substantial.

"The New Orleans folks are saying regionally it's a more than $400 million economic impact," Sammons said. "New Orleans is 100 percent sold out, and people are staying in Baton Rouge and Mississippi.

"It's very positive for us and we're very excited."

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Yesterday’s USA Today story produces a reasonable argument that the market for bowl games is approaching saturation. With 35 bowl games being played this year, fans have had ample opportunity to participate in the annual college football postseason tradition. But flat to falling average attendance indicates that the likelihood of adding any more bowls to an already crowded slate is remote. Indeed, the number of Football Bowl Subdivision schools would have to increase substantially in order to produce a pool of bowl eligible teams capable of filling slots in any more bowls.

But for the bowls we have, the economic impact is substantial and should be an important consideration in any process that alters the college football post season. If you’re going to make the argument that there are too many bowl games, then you’re going to have to justify the decision to contract the market by deciding which regional economies you’re going to harm by eliminating their bowl game.

At the same time, you’re going to have to convince college presidents, conference officials, players, coaches and fans that your high and mighty agenda is much more important than their postseason. Good luck with that.

In this economy, taking away an economic impact measured in hundreds of millions of dollars means a lot of people don’t have jobs.

Exit Question: So, playoff zealots, BCS anarchists, Grinches and Tim Brando’s, answer this: Which community are you going to ruin Christmas for next year? Shreveport?

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