Far East Cynic

Why can’t the NCAA do this?

I was going bash my favorite group of deluded people tonight, namely, those who seem to think that after 8 years of effort, almost 5000 American lives wasted, and 5 times that number wounded-we should somehow go back into a country that proven itself completely unworthy of the sacrifice the first time. And now they want us to do it again?

But instead, I got sidetracked in working on my course work-and watching the World Cup-where, speaking of worthless Arabs- the damn Algerians beat South Korea.Incroyable! Arabes ne méritent pas le moment de la journée, et encore moins une victoire sportive. Vive l’Algérie française!

And as I watched the match-it made me wonder. Why couldn’t the NCAA conduct a real college playoff using the World Cup format?

I get that there are big differences between Futbol and US Football. But consider. There are 11 Conferences in NCAA division 1 football. That’s 11 Conference champions. Throw in some independent teams and take the 2nd place teams with the best records-you could easily come to 24 teams that could play in a tournament along the lines of the world cup. Create 6 groups of 4 teams each. Start from scratch-arranging the top teams across the six groups. Shorten the college football season so that it ends in the second week of November. Then, the day after Thanksgiving you start the group stage with teams playing every day until they reduce to 12 for the knockout phase. ( Play two games a day (or night) which would be in each group). Once the group stage is done-take a 4-day break then start the playoffs. You could arrange the timing so that it came down to the wire sometimes the 3rd week of December.

Groups of States could compete to host the playoffs and it could be rotated among geographic regions. An example: Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama could host the NCAA tournament. Between them, they have enough quality venues to host a good game with lots of fans. It could be a real money maker for them and for the ancillary industries in those states.

It certainly would be better than the current BCS system-and the out of control Bowls. Plus it would allow teams to come head to head to have to earn the title of #1 team in the nation. The college football season could stand to be 9 or 10 games instead of 11 or 12. ( As could the pro season stand to be shorter). Colleges would still get a homecoming weekend.

I think it would make a lot of sense and it would get folks fired up about sports like the World Cup does.

It’s just a thought. Tell me why it would not work. With 6 groups there would be six days between games in the group stage and once it went to the knock out stage you space the games out to give teams the right amount of rest, so there goes that argument. There would still be plenty of advertising revenue, and it seriously would not disrupt the pro season.

So what I have missed?