Just an observation
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Last night was the 2nd SEC Championship game in the same building airing on a network that owns the SEC Network. That same network conducts polls which are somewhat influential and gives a larger dose of highlights from that league than any other league.
They don’t hold playoff games in places other than where it’s warm and generally, besides California are located in states that house SEC teams.
Again, just an observation.
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@wissox Hasn’t the Fiesta bowl been used for playoffs?
Anyway, the SEC is where it is warm, except Cal, NM, and Az. Bowl games always were in warm climes only, before indoor stadiums. Alabama and the SEC were football powers long before ESPN. I don’t see how the ESPN poll is very influential–number of appearances, more likely.
The only real complaint anyone can make about the process in my view is that they use polls at all and thus it is set up to reward reputation at the beginning of the season, so a team like UCF gets screwed because despite being undefeated they get left out by starting so far back. Historically, ND always got more visibility than anyone else, thanks to NBC.
Unfortunately, polls have always determined football championships. The only better way might be for coaches to all vote, once, at the end of November, and take the top 4. (Still rewards reputation, though, because we know from polls in general that coaches are lazy about them.)
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@mayjay, now that the championships are moving away from bowls they ought to even the playing field and have games played in all parts of the country. Fans in my neck of the woods are very passionate about college football too, but unless they shell out some big bucks to travel to a warmer southern clime to watch a postseason game, they’ll never have a chance to see one of these college football playoffs.
This year, let’s say they let a one loss Wisconsin in, or even a two loss OSU, or a Pac12 team (I know the league was crappy, but just for the sake of argument) they’d have to go play a playoff game in a different part of the country where they’ll likely play an SEC school in their back yard.
LSU got to win two championships, both in the 2000’s, both times playing in the Superdome, once against OK and once against OSU. Home field advantage? Probably. They lost once in the national championship to Alabama which was also in the Superdome.
And to finalize my rant, Wisconsin, getting screwed all year by national media, goes to the south to play in the orange bowl against Miami, an obvious home game for Miami. Wisconsin wins that game in a comfortable manor and drops in the polls! And all year, you know who’s been running down Wisconsin? (I know this because I care!) ESPN. It took them to being one of the last two unbeatens before they were talked about as good enough to be in the playoff. It’s a brilliant scheme for the SEC.
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Why that’s just damned CIA-MEMED CONSPIRACY THEORY talk!!!
HOWLING!
You’re not suggesting D1 football is as legally rigged as D1 basketball appears and as the California Democratic primary was reputedly found to have been in court, are you?
The reputed 2016 California primary rigging scandal seems kind of crucial to remember. The court reputedly found that Private organizations like the DNC and RNC are reputedly legally allowed to rig their own primaries, if they want to. IF TRUE, THINK ABOUT THAT!
(Note: seems like it’s time to form a party that guaranties it runs an honest primary. Now there is a party I would be eager to join. Let’s call it the Honest Party!!!)
Aren’t the athletic departments of D1 programs private not for profits, like DNC and RNC? Isnt the NCAA a private not for profit? Would it therefore be legal for the private NCAA and the private athletic departments to rig both the March Carney and the Bollwevil Bowl football championship how ever they see fit, so long as other laws are NOT broken?
We as laymen can only wonder.
But wake the F up, people!!!
The founders left us this system thinking we weren’t total saps!
Let’s not let them down any longer.
