Looking at the final BCS match-ups I have realized a few things.

The BCS got the title game right. But did we even need the BCS system to tell us that? No. I mean Ohio St. was invited eventhough the final BCS rankings were out.

My problem with the BCS is why is Florida St. in the BCS. I know they won the ACC but teams with better records from the ACC are more deserving of the BCS spot.

As for Notre Dame and Kansas St., they both deserved to be in the BCS this year, more so than Florida St. They both got jobbed.

As for Rodrigez and the crew at West Virginia: "Screw You!". Notre Dame would have whooped your a$$ this year. Notre Dame beat 3 ranked teams and lost against 1. Had a 10-2 record. West Virginia? 9-3 and a 2-2 split against ranked teams. If the big East decides to drop its deal with Notre Dame, the conference won't look as attractive to bowls when the contracts are up for renewal.

BTW, they should rename the Continental Bowl to the Whiner Bowl because of the tirades of both West Virginia's and Virginia's Head Coaches.

tigerfan or more realistic Iris fan, disagree with you on your prognosis of the BE frustrations with Notre Dame.

Since you claim to be a Clemson fan, let the ACC take the Notre Dame deal and replace NC State in the Gator with Notre Dame and the 1.5 million revenue and see how your ACC teams would like that deal.

As for future of the Big East bowl deals, they do not need Notre Dame. The ACC may need Notre Dame after your 7 ACC teams post a losing bowl record this year and the grips start over Florida State having a BCS bid with four loses and should lose the Sugar bowl and will end up with 5 loses.

As for West Virgina, the Tire Bowl in Charolotte has to be linking their chops as the game will most likly be a sell out and is getting more publicity out west than the Gator.

Not only did the Gator make a mistake taking Notre Dame they like wise made a mistake taking NC State over Virginia or Maryland. Hopfully the Gator Bowl will be competative or even the Notre Dame appeal will not help the TV ratings for this lack luster matchup.

i would argue that notre dame-west virginia would be a lot closer than you suggest, tigerfan. they playde miami tough and beat virginia tech and pittsburgh, plus they beat the boston college team that beat notre dame. yes, the irish beat the same maryland team that beat west virginia, but losses in september are a lot less telling than those in november. witness how good nc state, iowa state and florida state looked in the early months. nothing should be taken away from notre dame's season, but over a full big east schedule, i don't know if they would finish better than third. playing on the road at either blacksburg or morgantown, one of those is a loss.

catdaddy2402,

I'd definitely like to see the 16 team playoff system in place. I realize that the timing of the Division IAA playoff system is different, but with most of the dozens of IA bowl teams now playing as many as 14, or with a conference title game, 15 games per year, I can't believe that some accomodation can't be made for a playoff system. First of all, there's be fewer teams involved in the psot season (depending on whether any non-tourney bowl games survived). Second, most schools seasons would be shortened to 12 or, more likely, 11 games during the season. I don't see how the university presidents could complain about academics when the vast majority of student athletes at participating schools will have a shorter season and more time to study and attend class overall.

I don't buy the arguments about loss of tradition either. The only real tradition left in the college football bowl season, the Rose Bowl, has already been tossed aside for money. If we're going to roll back the clock pre-BCS and put the Big 12 champs in the Orange, the Big 10 and Pac 10 in the Rose, and the SEC champs in the Sugar, that's one thing. But it's not like there's any real tradition under the BCS system. The Big 10 folks still love the idea of the Rose Bowl, but I doubt the Ohio State fans are complaining right now. They'd much rather have one of the greatest games in history and an uncontested national title than a win over Washington State and a title split with Miami (or that's my guess anyway) with most pollsters and the media favoring Miami as the "real" champs. If we're not gonna go backward, we ought to go forward. The BCS has done it's job of matching up 1 and 2 reasonably well. But several of the games have been duds because a hair separates the #2 team that's on its way down (sadly for me that seems to be FSU most of the time) or the #3 squad with the same or similar record that has a fighting chance (Miami, Oregon). If we move forward to a playoff system, I think we're more likely to get better title games year in and year out. More importantly, we won't have so many lackluster "locked-in" lower tier bowls where the underdog wins by a landslide because the other team could care less. I'm not making excuses for the losers, in fact I'm happy with most of the major bowl upsets, but I can't imagine that Oregon was at all excited about taking a relatively short trip to Seattle to play Wake Forest. Same goes for Tennessee playing Maryland, nor Notre Dame playing NC State. Unless you were itching to see some major programs take a beating, most of these bowl games stunk. In a playoff system, barring some unbelievable locker room problems, every team would give its all in every game. Imagine a bowl season where every game had title implications and every game was played with total heart. That's what we're missing out on.

Something else to consider. How many times has a team lost on huge match-up and gone totally flat because they are out of the running for the title. I've definitely seen that happen with FSU a few times. I'm not saying losers deserve a second chance, but wouldn't the egular season be improved if everyone knew they still needed to lay their best to have an outside shot at the title. The very top programs, like Texas, Oklahoma, ND, etc., would have added incentive to bounce back from a crushing loss to finish strong. That could only be could for the regular season. And in a small tournament of 16, with at least the first round played at home, even an undefeated top seed would have tremendous motivation to finish undefeated in order to maintain its advantage. For teams with no shot at the playoffs, rivalry games would mean even more. A chance to knock your rival down or out of the playoffs would be huge incentive to play your butt off (it's what the Dodgers have lived for against the Giants). When you really think about it, there aren't too many negative efects on the regular, season, and there are new forces at work to improve the seasons as they are played now. With the playoff system, you can't be content to go 7-6 and play in the Tire Bowl.

One thought regarding conferences, I think it would be ideal for each conference to have a title game, though perhaps 10 team conferences could be allowed to do so so expansion would not necessarily water down competition. I think the playoff system would even benefit the mid majors. They don't have any truly major bowl payouts now. Just landing their conference champ in the playoff would be a coup. And for once, they'd actually have a shot (at least it'd be in their own hands) of ultimately playing for a title. I think the interest in C-USA, MWC, and WAC football would probably get a serious boost. A modified BCS formula could seed them appropriately, so an unwelcome dud of a conference champ would receive its deserved drubbing at the hands of a team like Miami early on. However, if a team like Boise St. joined the MWC and ran the table with a couple of wins over BCS teams (a big if), some unlucky at-large team that lost one game too many with a weak schedule out of conference would have to play their first round game in the snow on the blue carpet.

Since a playoff is several years away at best, we'll probably know by then whether the MAC will still be around. I think the MWC or the WAC deserve a BCS if either conference raids the other for the top teams. Otherwise, there ought to be a play-in between conference champs (same for Sun Belt, etc.). Even a play-in game would get better ratings that the bowls these teams currently play in. Fans on both sides would have more at stake, and teams already in the playoff would watch to see who they might have to play the following week.