Quote:
Originally Posted by Lockup
You have a good arguement till you hit the bolded part. Are you kidding? every year there is some team that felt they got snubbed even with 65.
The competition commitee is not a bad idea though but understand no matter how many teams we had in a playoff somebody is not going to like it.
I just think it is better for the #17, #9 or #5 team to bitch then the current #3 or #4.
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Well, I'm certainly not gonna argue that point, since it's one that I use frequently in the argument against a playoff.
However, it's slightly different for basketball. We all know the tournament field is not as big as it is because there are 65 teams with a shot at the title. If the field were cut to 16, it would be more realistic. George Mason vs. Wichita State in the Sweet 16 is cute and a fun story, but proponents of football playoffs base their pitch on us getting to see three or four rounds of totally sweet matchups like USC vs. Ohio State or Florida vs. Texas. For pure competition, we'd have been better off with Tennessee vs. UNC in that Sweet 16 game.
Those teams that do complain (and there are rarely more than two each year) are complaining not because they think they can win the national championship, but because they're cut out of the money pie. The huge field of teams is about the money and the spectacle, plain and simple. And I don't hold any illusions that if a football playoff were to start off small like the basketball tourney did, it would eventually swell as the power brokers chased the money.
And frankly, basketball needs the spectacle. In football, game day Saturdays are a huge event that we look forward to all week. Basketball games are on Wednesday nights, or Sunday afternoons during the NFL playoffs, or Tuesday evenings. We live and die by football Saturdays, we tailgate, and we set aside three hours for no purpose other than watching the game. Why? Because it means the world. Look no further than BP itself for proof. Compare Ohio State vs. Northwestern game day threads in football and basketball. Hell, the football thread was started back in friggin April! It has 41 pages. The basketball thread was started two days before the game and has 4 pages. Yes, this is primarily a football site, but the basketball game threads that matter (like Tennessee last year in the tourney - 63 games) have big-ass threads of their own. Football games matter. Basketball games do not.