Anyway, those of us in1AA usually estoll the virtue of a playoff system. A friend from another school (in the Sunbelt) used the arguement that those who want a playoff in 1A don't have the wellfare of student athletes at heart, I suppose that means the NCAA and BCS do have the best interest of students at heart, but I digress. I see a number of problems with that arguement but instead of sharing I thought I would post on here and see what the rest of you "Towelheads" thought of this argument.

If I were a player I'd much rather play in a bowl.

Playoff: Find out your opponent and spend most of a frenzied week preparing for your opponent. If a road game fly out the day before on normal game schedule. Do walk through eat supper, do some sort of team activity hit the hay. Get up eat breakfast go to stadium. Play game, fly home. If you win repeat the process until you lose or hoist the trophy. After its all over you get a watch or ring if school or boosters cough up the money.

Bowl: Find out where you are going and who you are playing about 3 to 4 weeks in advance. Spend the next few weeks preparing so you have the opponent game plan down pat. Arrive at bowl site about 3 days early if not more. Spend a day at local amusement park or attraction. Go to barbeque or fiesta or whatever the local speciality is for the game promotion lunch. Go to pep rally with your cheerleaders, band and fans that have traveled. Collect goodie bag from bowl sponsors which will have such things as watches, bowl game gym bag or backpack, maybe an iPod or whatever gadget is hot right now. Play the game and you are done.

Playoffs are fine for the home teams, but a travel nightmare for fans of teams sent on the road. You cannot make travel plans far enough in advance for cheaper fares and if your work requires advance notice for leave you might not even be able to take off. If you win the process starts over.

Bowls are fan friendly. You generally get enough notice to book discounted advance fares. You have extra time to make arrangements to take leave. Once the game is over you are done.

Fly?? Unless your bowl game is on the West Coast, or some place like BOISE, you DRIVE to the bowl games! Much cheaper then the fly/rental car/hotel scenario. You find someone who lives near the bowl game, offer to buy them tickets and beer/dogs for the bowl day tailgating in exchange for lodging, and you're good to go. I've only flown to one bowl game (Rose Bowl) but that's it. Every other one has been in the family car, with the grill in tow, and the car plastered in magnetic logos and window flags of my alma mater.

Driving is better, too, IMHO. You meet fellow fans along the way, as well as the opponent's fans. There is nothing like flying down an interstate at 75 mph with fans beeping their horn and waving the #1 finger. It's even better when your team has a shot at winning. One game we went to (Penn State v Florida), we Lions knew we had a snowball's chance in heck of winning the game. But exchanging PA's cold weather and snow for the warmth and sunshine of FL was on every Lion's mind. As expected, our butts got kicked, but we all had a grand time. The Lion fans were yelling "Thanks for hosting us" and the Gator fans responded with "Thanks for coming" and "Enjoy the weather." It didn't matter that we were crushed, we were in warm weather, we were at a bowl game, we got to see our team play one more time, and, oh yeah, we were in warm weather. HA HA (I know that is hard for some of you SunBelters to understand, but transplant yourself to the middle of PA for a winter or two and you'll see what I mean).

I think there has been a detrimental growth of bowl games over the past couple of years. I think I-AA needs to have more teams involved, but NOT at the expense of expanding the bowl pool more than it is now. I don't know - what do you think?

So far there are some valid points. More realistic prep for your opponent, goodies given to the player, WARM weather...I donno, I can't get too excited about the bowls. It's like, OK team, you had a really good 7-4 or 8-3, or 9-2 season...you can now play in an exhibition game during you Christmas break. We know that in a perfect world, a team like, let say the '83 NC St bball team that had quite a few loses, could win the NCAA any year? Well not in D1 collage football. Unless you beat all your conference opponenets by an avg of 70+ and don't have a bad game on national TV, and reside in one of the six BCS conferences, you will NEVER win the big one. So make the alumni, the administration, and the fans happy, and go down south a play your meaningless exhibition, and build for next year... :laugh:

Ok, my response is not meant as a dig of any kind so please don't take it that way.

Based on your description, Topperjac, then no D1 basketball team should get excited about being invited to and playing in the NIT. The NCAA Dance is THE premiere post-season event. Here the non-BCS (for lack of a better acronym) schools have a shot at some glory, national recognition, the allure of "Cinderella," yadda yadda yadda. If you don't make the dance, then the NIT invitation shouldn't mean much, because it is perceived to be second-rate. You're not good enough to make the big one, so you settle for the alternative. But you go...to "make the alumni, the administration, and the fans happy, and [go play] a meaningless exhibition, and build for next year." :laugh:

What's the difference between a lowered-tier bowl game and the NIT?

Personally, RBM, I'd say nothing. If you're not in the "Big Dance" or one of the BCS bowls then it appears that you are "second rate". I don't believe that enough teams get a chance to truly "compete" for the National Title in college football. If you don't play in the Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, or Pac 10, then you suck. At least that's what the "powers that be" are telling all of us. I don't think it would matter if North Texas went undefeated this season, because they would not be considered a national title contender. I hate that.

Last year, I thought that Boise State, Utah, and Louisville all deserved to play for the title as much as the teams in the so called championship game did, yet they were thought of as second rate. I went to the Boise State & Louisville bowl game in Memphis, and it was, by far, the best game of the bowl season. I think it was a display of two of the tope teams in the nation, but you wouldn't know that if you watched Sportscenter that night. Also, Utah didn't lose last year, right? So, why weren't they the national champion? Did they lose any more games than USC? Did USC play them for the title?

Personally, I hate the current state of college football. It degrades all schools that aren't a part of the BCS (I know, all schools are now part of the BCS, but it's not that way, and you know it). The little guys will still have very little opportunity to be a part of the big money that the Big 6 schools share, and it will always keep the non-Big 6 schools at a disadvantage, which is wrong.

That's my 15 cents.

No racerbymarrage, NC St won the national title dispite quite a few in the "L" column. We know that would never happen without a playoff system. Now in college football if you have more than one loss in DI, all you and the fans and the alums and the admin have to look forward to is what amounts to an exhibition game in a warm climate with hopfully thousands of fans on their respective Xmas vactions. Now that might not be so bad in the grand scheme of things but from where most of us are looking, the bowl system is for the lack of a better word, totally bogus. It's all politics with the rich getting richer. Give me true on-the-field competition anyday to that stuff.

Oh I'll admit that the BCS is screwy and needs to be blown up or replaced in some way. If I remember correctly, Notre Dame was selected for a higher-tiered bowl game despite their dismal record...and I suspect it was because the bowl gods knew Notre Dame would bring the fans. Crappy, political reason, if you ask me, but it happened.

The question that comes up is whether or not the non-BCS schools could draw comparable fan support that the BCS schools do. Not the same, but I guess "proportional" might be a better word to use. In other words, is it worth the planning, securing a sponsor, etc, for a I-AA bowl game series that will (arguably) have schools with less name recognition play. I don't know. Maybe. The OVC has a sponsor now for its championship games. I guess it could happen.

I suspect the fan attendance has something to do with why the BCS schools are the BCS schools. Am I wrong on that? Yes, I know the big budgets have a huge influence. But fan support has to be a part of it.

The BCS schools you mentioned had these total attendance/average attendances in 2004:

SEC: 5,719,678/74,282
Big Ten: 4,591,722/69,572
Big 12: 4,126,492/57,312
Pac 10: 3,229,666/55,684
ACC: 3,678,508/55,735
Big East: 1,549,992/37,805

Sun Belt is dead last amongst 1A conferences (btw): 758,249/18,054

Now look at the #s for I-AA conferences:

SWAC: 521,986/11,600
Mid-Eastern: 469/089/10,424
Big Sky: 520,179/10,200
Southern: 448,341/9,963
Gateway: 453,748/9,864
Ivy: 393,993/9,850
Southland: 323,644/9,247
Atlantic 10: 533,692/7,966
OVC: 325,894/7,407

(I won't bother to do Indep's, Great West, Big South, Patriot, Pioneer, Northeast or Metro Atlantic, since they are all below the OVC).

Here are the overall and average attendance totals for I-A and I-AA:

I-A: 30,337,237/45,145 - 118 overall schools
I-AA: 4,891,014/7,666 - 119 overall schools

Bowl Games Stats: 28 games - 1,476,096/52,718

And here are the I-AA stats:

I-AA Neutral Sites: 19 - 742,942/39,102
I-AA Championship Game: 1 - 16,771/16,771

Stats from <a href='http://www.ncaa.org/stats/football/attendance/2004/2004_football_attendance.pdf' target='_blank'>http://www.ncaa.org/stats/football/attenda..._attendance.pdf</a>

As you know Penn State SUCKED in FB. Sucked, sucked, sucked. You couldn't swing a dead cat at PSU and scare up a win. Yet, we still managed to pack in over 100K per home game in 2004. We ranked #4 overall in attendance. (Criminey we sounds like the Chicago Cubs of college football). Now I know comparing PSU to WKU is comparing apples to oranges. But I would like to ask what WKU's average football attendance was last year? Do you know? MTSU's avg attendance was 13,388.

Marshall is/was a non-BCS team yet they have managed to do fairly well for themselves in FB. Are they an anomaly?

Two more questions: Are you saying that if I-AA had a bowl system, more fans would attend? Wouldn't you have a similar BCS situation with a I-AA bowl system, with the richer schools playing in the better bowl games, and the less rich ones languishing in the suckiest of bowl games?

(I don't want to piss off Galo or Ride, but the ****** cats avg'd 62,334 in attendance and the birds 40,531).

racerbymarriage Wrote:Do you know? MTSU's avg attendance was 13,388.

Yes, EVERYONE knows what MT's attendance was last year. It will change this year. Our new AD seems like he is not sleeping in order to get MT athletes the stuff they deserves. Including butts in the seats.

Raider - sorry I should have typed it better. It should read:

But I would like to ask what WKU's average football attendance was last year? Do you know?

MTSU's avg attendance was 13,388.

Meant it separate it into 2. WKU's avg. attendance wasn't listed on the NCAA #s I used.

Sounds like MTSU's avg attendance is a sore point (I wasn't intending to point it out as a sore point, just as a point of reference for a Sun Belt school that is all). Is this because of your conversion to IA? Or a previous AD?

Sorry, didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. :)

Ha, I'm not ruffled. I was there and bringing kids in to see us play. We're noted in every article about the NCAA attendence rule and we're mighty sick of hearing about it (meaning: we're fixing the problem). I can't blame it on the old AD. Since this new AD is doing things I would have never thought of in an administration. He's listening to the fans, the old AD did it his way, the way he'd been doing it for years, and it sucked.
Nothing to do with 1A.
I'd attribute our attendence problem to the obvious reason. There weren't a lot of people there to watch the games. It will be fixed this season.

Looked like bad loses is what hurt your attendance.

WINNING fixes everything.

All true.

If WKU goes 1A then every other year we will both have a sell out, if each of us could get a deal with Vandy for the "away year" then I don't think either school would have a problem meeting attendance requirements.

That Vanderbilt thing is a nice idea, but try to get 'em to come to WKU. That won't happen. We might get them to come with the next deal. We had to sign a 3 and 0 with 'em. (Which, coincidentally, after October 1st will be our record against them. If all goes as planned.)

Back to Galo, Did winning sell out your stadium. (It's a real question. I don't know the answer. But I know what I would like it to be.)

Raider_ATO Wrote:That Vanderbilt thing is a nice idea, but try to get 'em to come to WKU. That won't happen. We might get them to come with the next deal. We had to sign a 3 and 0 with 'em. (Which, coincidentally, after October 1st will be our record against them. If all goes as planned.)

Back to Galo, Did winning sell out your stadium. (It's a real question. I don't know the answer. But I know what I would like it to be.)

Hey I figure since I am daydreaming WKU into 1A why not daydream Vandy into Smith Stadium?