I love American football (note the adjective "American" to eliminate Canadian and soccer from this argument).
I have been an avid follower of the NFL for almost 20 years now - before that, it was all about finger-painting and avoiding the dreaded square block in round hole trick - and have tried mightily to follow the NCAA football season.
I enjoy the game as much as anyone else, and am awed by the sheer number of teams and players involved. If medicine had this kind of funding, I wouldn't have a stuffed nose right now.
But now that the "regular season" is done, and the bowl match-ups are set, I am throughly confused.
Hawaii finished the season at 12-0, the only undefeated team in the country. Yet, because of their "weak" conference and competition, they do not qualify for the national championship game, or anything remotely close.
Instead, the one-loss Ohio State Buckeyes play the two-loss LSU Tigers, although head coach Les Miles would want to add "undefeated in regulation."
The logic (or lack thereof) in picking who plays in which bowl seems preposterous to me. Every league at every level has some sort of playoff system to determine the champion, and the best example of this is in the NCAA itself, with their 64-team basketball tournament.
It seems a simple fix to me: have the top 16 teams (guaranteeing all conference champs a spot regardless of record) play a single-elimination tournament. That would mean 8 games one week, 4 games the next, and so on until a champion is crowned. There aren't any games scheduled in the first three weeks in December anyway, so logistically it would work.
It would also create excitement throughout the month, instead of now, where all other bowl games are meaningless in the big picture.
And, oh yeah, it would create a true national champion based on winning, not on computer formulas and polls.
One of these days, the NCAA will wake up and change their format for determining a winner in college football.
This season proves that day needs to come now.
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Dude, if you can even explain to me how the NCAA format/lottery/organized chaos works, it would be greatly appreciated.
I don't have the slightest idea how that stuff is determined. And I bet neither do the NCAA officials. If you worked everything out on a Thursday you would have one match up, but if you did it on Friday, you would get a completely different one.
The problem is that the Americans just accept this way of doing it.The NCAA needs to switch to a more simple, playoff format so us Canadians can understand.
No wait...the NHL needs to adopt this format. That way the Leafs have a chance of winning the cup.
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