I don’t understand how in high school football all over the place they award playoff spots by districts and leagues and it’s fine yet college football is always having the best/deserving debate
The realistic argument is the uneven schedules side of this. There are a lot of blowouts in the first round(s) of high school playoff games too, it's just part of it if you bring in autobids
Indiana is already swimming in cash because of the Big Ten television deal and has been for years.
Indiana pulled down ~$60 mn last year just for being a founding B1G member. Notre Dame’s combined ACC and NBC deals were about $47 mn combined. All Big Ten schools make more TV money than Notre Dame.
I’m not crying poor for them to be clear, just noting that the Big Ten deal (because they went first and have such an enormous fan base) has been paying out insane numbers for 15 years.
Sure, my bigger point is that you could replace Indiana with Tulane or UCLA or whatever generally non football school you can think of, none of them are gonna hold up to ND or Texas or whatever and that’s fine. We don’t complain when Oakland university gets a 14 seed in the MCBB tournament.
It’s more “if anyone enjoys it, it needs to be monetized” culture. No one involved in creating the playoff cares about the sport or the athletes in any sense; it’s 100% money-focused.
It’s also a bit of “heighten the stakes of all this because otherwise everyone will realize it’s all meaningless.”
as long as the playoff is the sun that the whole sport revolves around, the best way to have a good 14 weeks is to give more teams a shot to play in it. most of the first-round games are going to be duds, just as most of the semifinals in the four-team format were duds. it's not a big crisis
Yeah people are comparing it to the NFL, where the top teams are roughly the same, and not to the alternative- college bowl games where half the team opts out
Are they giving out trophies for participation? And what do we make of March Madness? 68 teams to start. Division I Volleyball? 64 teams to start. Is that participation trophy culture at work? Hmmm.
unquestionably yes. the summit league champ is never going to win march madness, but the chance to participate gives the entire season more meaning. this is a good thing
March Madness pretty much always a delivers a nice Cinderella story of some “lowly” team making a dream run. That’s the best thing about it. It’s why I think the Football playoff should have been expanded; the problem is with the bizarre selection criteria.
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It’d be a lot more legitimate if it were Marshall or Ohio out there
This shouldn’t be that hard
Indiana pulled down ~$60 mn last year just for being a founding B1G member. Notre Dame’s combined ACC and NBC deals were about $47 mn combined. All Big Ten schools make more TV money than Notre Dame.
Shut the fuck up.
(might delete later)
It’s also a bit of “heighten the stakes of all this because otherwise everyone will realize it’s all meaningless.”
Clemson at Notre Dame
Arizona State at Ohio State
SMU at Tennessee
Boise State at Indiana
I’m not sure tbh