Winter Weather & CFB Playoff
- Thread starter JonDMiller
- Start date
NewMexHawk
Well-Known Member
I think it would be great for a change...
temps below zero
Alabama vs. Wisconsin at Madison
USC vs. Iowa at Iowa City
Florida vs. Michigan at Ann Arbor
Would even things out a little bit, especially about the 3rd or 4th quarter when that ground got hard or the stings in the hits hurt a little more and the boys from down south couldn't feel their fingers or toes anymore.
That is football and the breaks. The northern teams have had to basically play the southern teams on their home fields for years. Their fans have not had to travel or travel very far. Let's even the playing surface...
temps below zero
Alabama vs. Wisconsin at Madison
USC vs. Iowa at Iowa City
Florida vs. Michigan at Ann Arbor
Would even things out a little bit, especially about the 3rd or 4th quarter when that ground got hard or the stings in the hits hurt a little more and the boys from down south couldn't feel their fingers or toes anymore.
That is football and the breaks. The northern teams have had to basically play the southern teams on their home fields for years. Their fans have not had to travel or travel very far. Let's even the playing surface...
Haverhill
Well-Known Member
The NFL is always looking for money. Have the games in nearby big cities then with lots of hotels in case of bad weather. I'll use the 3 games suggested by NewMexHawk...
Alabama vs Wisconsin at Soldier Field
USC vs Iowa at Arrowhead Stadium
Florida vs Michigan at Ford Field (not really a problem since the University of Michigan is near Detroit anyway)
Alabama vs Wisconsin at Soldier Field
USC vs Iowa at Arrowhead Stadium
Florida vs Michigan at Ford Field (not really a problem since the University of Michigan is near Detroit anyway)
SDK46
Well-Known Member
I have to go back to my original ideas and say that I think the likelihood of a paralyzing blizzard during the 1st and 2nd weeks of December is probably remote.
(I have no data, but gut feeling)
With that said, I think to say, "It'll never work (at-home playoff set up) because of this weekend's blizzard" is too broad of a brush to negatively paint the entire at-home bowl scenerio Wetzel advocates.
If a blizzard were to happen, yup, bummer and things would be chaotic. But again, TV revenues would far exceed any loss of fan-specific revenues.
All I know is....the BCS is a God-awful mess, with too many agendas.
(I have no data, but gut feeling)
With that said, I think to say, "It'll never work (at-home playoff set up) because of this weekend's blizzard" is too broad of a brush to negatively paint the entire at-home bowl scenerio Wetzel advocates.
If a blizzard were to happen, yup, bummer and things would be chaotic. But again, TV revenues would far exceed any loss of fan-specific revenues.
All I know is....the BCS is a God-awful mess, with too many agendas.
As usual everyone is missing the biggest problem with a playoff in college football.
How do you determine who gets home field? Home field is HUGE in college football and would drastically shape who wins or plays for the title. Going to base it off the same rankings we use now that everyone complains about? Idiotic to reward the top 8 teams in any ranking with home field.
Only plausible way would be to give major conference champions a homefield game and auto entry into the playoff. At large bids would have to almost entirely be considered wild card teams and expect to play on the road....then try to justify OSU having to play at UCONN....or at TCU.
Then again we already have the NFL for that...and the NFC West looks alot like the big east....
Why ruin the greatest regular season in any sport? Why ruin the greatest week of the year between Christmas and New Years filled with bowl games?
How do you determine who gets home field? Home field is HUGE in college football and would drastically shape who wins or plays for the title. Going to base it off the same rankings we use now that everyone complains about? Idiotic to reward the top 8 teams in any ranking with home field.
Only plausible way would be to give major conference champions a homefield game and auto entry into the playoff. At large bids would have to almost entirely be considered wild card teams and expect to play on the road....then try to justify OSU having to play at UCONN....or at TCU.
Then again we already have the NFL for that...and the NFC West looks alot like the big east....
Why ruin the greatest regular season in any sport? Why ruin the greatest week of the year between Christmas and New Years filled with bowl games?
SDK46
Well-Known Member
Best idea I've read comes from Wetzel....You put together a non-biased, educated, disinterested seeding committee...just like the NCAA men's BB tourney. SOS, records, conference SOS, scores between teams, etc are used.
Is it perfect? No....#17 is always going to gripe, but, it'll be a 3-loss team or a 2-loss mid-major team if you will...and I'm fine with that. Everybody gripes at being #66 for the men's tourney, but 1-65 are pretty decent.
The seeding committee does away with the absolutely biased and stupid 2-human and 1-computer BCS polls you have now which determine who gets into the NC game and who gets the juicy BCS games.
There's a 37-day gap between the last regular season football game and the NC game. You could have that void filled right now, AND, you could STILL have your minor bowl games.
The playoff would not, in any way shape or form, take away from the bowls...it would, rather, add to them. Do some of the really silly bowls perish? Probably. Good riddance....just like it needs to be good riddance to the cartel known as the BCS.
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JonDMiller
Publisher/Founder
My gut feeling is that when you take the Big Ten Footprint into consideration, and the liklihood of a B10 team hosting a playoff game being high (at least one), paralyzing blizzards happen most years inside the first two weeks of December.
SDK46
Well-Known Member
I'm not disagreeing with your premise a blizzard would blow up a playoff game. It would be a mess, and would cause innumerable issues.
However, since your basic premise in your original post to why a homefield-playoff-game-plan just wouldn't work, ever, in the Big-10 geographical area is the potential for blizzards, I think some data mining would be in order to validate weather (pun intended) your theory has merit.
DwayneTwill
Well-Known Member
Two excellent questions.
SDK46
Well-Known Member
Why does having a playoff ruin the existing bowls?
Chickenlounge
Well-Known Member
If we're worried about the lack of hotel rooms, I'm willing to put up 10 fans in my basement for $150 each. Bring your own sleeping bag. 
SDK46
Well-Known Member
My blizzard mathematical formula is pretty straight forward.
# of consecutive two-day paralyzing blizzards/# of potential 2-day playoff days for all 11 league teams for the past 50 years
Assumption #1: Why 50 years?....seems statistically relevant to me. You could use 100 years I guess.
Assumption #2: I use 2 consecutive days of blizzards as the rejection threshold because you would logically institute a plan for pushing a playoff game to the next day if the first date is a blizzard but the following day is not. Two consecutive days of blizzards cancels that particular playoff event.
This equals = (unknown)/50 x 11 x 2 = 1,100 potential playoff days.
Multiply by 100 and you'd get a percentage prediction for any one team to suffer a consecutive 2-day blizzard.
NWS could mine the numerator data in a day I’d imagine.
# of consecutive two-day paralyzing blizzards/# of potential 2-day playoff days for all 11 league teams for the past 50 years
Assumption #1: Why 50 years?....seems statistically relevant to me. You could use 100 years I guess.
Assumption #2: I use 2 consecutive days of blizzards as the rejection threshold because you would logically institute a plan for pushing a playoff game to the next day if the first date is a blizzard but the following day is not. Two consecutive days of blizzards cancels that particular playoff event.
This equals = (unknown)/50 x 11 x 2 = 1,100 potential playoff days.
Multiply by 100 and you'd get a percentage prediction for any one team to suffer a consecutive 2-day blizzard.
NWS could mine the numerator data in a day I’d imagine.
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silvanthalas
Well-Known Member
Because it isn't that great, and the bowls aren't that great either.
SDK46
Well-Known Member
Why 8?
Sorry Jon, I have to disagree with you.
First of all lets be honest, this isn't about butts in seats its about money. The tickets would already have been bought and thats all in the end that really matters. If people want to go to games, they're going to go. Madison is a big enough area with a large enough student enrollment/fan base they'd be just fine. Same with MSU. Columbus is in an are with over a million people. Even if it was a smaller school/town hosting, a crappy weather day is something that would ruin the system.
Plus, if we could have had weather like we had on Friday happen on Saturday, you could argue it exactly the other way.
First of all lets be honest, this isn't about butts in seats its about money. The tickets would already have been bought and thats all in the end that really matters. If people want to go to games, they're going to go. Madison is a big enough area with a large enough student enrollment/fan base they'd be just fine. Same with MSU. Columbus is in an are with over a million people. Even if it was a smaller school/town hosting, a crappy weather day is something that would ruin the system.
Plus, if we could have had weather like we had on Friday happen on Saturday, you could argue it exactly the other way.
swanssy
Well-Known Member
You contradicted yourself there, the Big East is a perfect example of what is wrong with the current setup. UCONN has no business playing in a BCS bowl game, but once again we are stuck with another awful mismatch. With a 16 team playoff you still would have to allow automatic qualifiers but the pretenders would get weeded out in the early rounds.
As far as the rankings go, that is an easy fix. Use the committee method that we have for March Madness to select at large teams and seedings. No method is perfect, but that's as close as you're going to get.
Anyone that wasn't completely amped up for the blizzard game yesterday at Soldier Field isn't a true football fan. Unfortunately the Bears sucked but imagine some of the classic matchups we could see in a college playoff in snow! Man up people!
