JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
Dan Wetzel wrote Death to the BCS. A good read.
He is an advocate of a 16 team FBS playoff, with teams with higher seed getting the home field until the title game.
I just don't see this as realistic. Take yesterday's weather as a case in point. Wisconsin, Michigan State and Ohio State would have likely been top 8 seeds, and therefore hosted playoff games.
We know the weather that took place, and that could take place on any December weekend.
People want to bring up NFL games in December. There is a huge difference here; NFL franchises are located in cities that have close to a million people living in them, or quite a bit more. Those people don't have far too far to make it to the stadium, most of them just navigating the city roads in which they live without having to experience much rural transit.
That's not the case at the major college level. Madison is not a huge city. People drive upwards of three hours to come to Wisconsin home games (of course with a good number being closer) and the majority of the fans in attendance have at least 20 to 30 miles of rural driving to traverse. State College, PA is hardly a metropolis, and the rural travel there is greater. Same with Iowa. Even if you live in Cedar Rapids or Davenport, you have a stretch of rural driving to deal with. Des Moines season ticket holders would have had a decision yesterday; risk putting the car in the ditch or go to a home playoff game.
Don't think that these playoff games are going to be 11am starts, either. People talk about the huge money that could come from this, and it would be huge. However, the TV networks are going to be paying the freight for that...which is why these games will be on mid afternoon and night in nearly every case. That means the drive home, potentially in dangerous or rough conditions, will be at night.
Imagine leaving Kinnick in conditions like we saw last night...you probably would need to go to a hotel. Good luck finding a room anywhere in Iowa City, as those rooms would already be booked. That's the case for home games in September.
So you are going to brave the drive to Davenport or Des Moines, or Cedar Falls, etc...and then you, and scores of others, ditch your car. The sheer number of incidents and emergency calls would likely overtax the system, and you could be in for a long wait. If you were injured, that adds exponential layers to the problem.
This problem would not come up every year, and many of the teams in a playoff probably dont have this weather to deal with if you look at the historically great teams. But you are probably going to have one or two teams that are hosting games, once every couple of years or possibly a few times in the same FB playoff season, that will have to deal with this sort of thing...and it's a problem with this model. I am localizing this from an Iowa perspective, but you can insert several bad winter weather locales in place of Iowa here. Go look at the BCS standings and the top six or seven teams in the final rankings in recent years and you can find some cold weather programs that would have hosted December playoff games.
A 16 team FBS playoff with home games for the higher seeds is just not feasible. Nor would it be right to play the games in the warmer climates for the sake of weather, as the travel aspects come into play.
I realize there is a 16 team playoff at the FCS level. But you are talking about programs that get 10-15k people at their games...far more local fan base, far fewer people that travel decent distances.
It's just not something that will work.
He is an advocate of a 16 team FBS playoff, with teams with higher seed getting the home field until the title game.
I just don't see this as realistic. Take yesterday's weather as a case in point. Wisconsin, Michigan State and Ohio State would have likely been top 8 seeds, and therefore hosted playoff games.
We know the weather that took place, and that could take place on any December weekend.
People want to bring up NFL games in December. There is a huge difference here; NFL franchises are located in cities that have close to a million people living in them, or quite a bit more. Those people don't have far too far to make it to the stadium, most of them just navigating the city roads in which they live without having to experience much rural transit.
That's not the case at the major college level. Madison is not a huge city. People drive upwards of three hours to come to Wisconsin home games (of course with a good number being closer) and the majority of the fans in attendance have at least 20 to 30 miles of rural driving to traverse. State College, PA is hardly a metropolis, and the rural travel there is greater. Same with Iowa. Even if you live in Cedar Rapids or Davenport, you have a stretch of rural driving to deal with. Des Moines season ticket holders would have had a decision yesterday; risk putting the car in the ditch or go to a home playoff game.
Don't think that these playoff games are going to be 11am starts, either. People talk about the huge money that could come from this, and it would be huge. However, the TV networks are going to be paying the freight for that...which is why these games will be on mid afternoon and night in nearly every case. That means the drive home, potentially in dangerous or rough conditions, will be at night.
Imagine leaving Kinnick in conditions like we saw last night...you probably would need to go to a hotel. Good luck finding a room anywhere in Iowa City, as those rooms would already be booked. That's the case for home games in September.
So you are going to brave the drive to Davenport or Des Moines, or Cedar Falls, etc...and then you, and scores of others, ditch your car. The sheer number of incidents and emergency calls would likely overtax the system, and you could be in for a long wait. If you were injured, that adds exponential layers to the problem.
This problem would not come up every year, and many of the teams in a playoff probably dont have this weather to deal with if you look at the historically great teams. But you are probably going to have one or two teams that are hosting games, once every couple of years or possibly a few times in the same FB playoff season, that will have to deal with this sort of thing...and it's a problem with this model. I am localizing this from an Iowa perspective, but you can insert several bad winter weather locales in place of Iowa here. Go look at the BCS standings and the top six or seven teams in the final rankings in recent years and you can find some cold weather programs that would have hosted December playoff games.
A 16 team FBS playoff with home games for the higher seeds is just not feasible. Nor would it be right to play the games in the warmer climates for the sake of weather, as the travel aspects come into play.
I realize there is a 16 team playoff at the FCS level. But you are talking about programs that get 10-15k people at their games...far more local fan base, far fewer people that travel decent distances.
It's just not something that will work.
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