The Old Days. Kinda miss it

[CAVPUT]

A Sunday morning 2nd cup of coffee daydream, offseason thingy.

I know this'll bring some heat. There are those that want to keep adding teams to the SEC. NIL has changed the landscape and I get it. It'll never morph back to what it was.
It was kinda sweet to wake up on New years Day, suffer through the Rose Bowl parade and get the kickoff for the big bowl games, Cotton, Rose, Orange, Sugar and the others, and wake up on Jan 2 with the season over. Who remembers the 10 team SEC? I'm 68, so dang - seems like yesterday and a hundred years ago at the same time. Oh, and stay off my lawn - don't disturb me as I watch Ed Sullivan reruns.

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"Kinda"?? I miss the hades outta it. The game today...pro and college... is a vague shadow of what we used to have.

 

[zjcvols]

I've always thought that all the sport needed was the pre-bcs system with just a plus one title game after the bowl games.

I was fine with 4. 2003, 2004 and 2008 sucked for those schools involved. I just hated the committee. BCS standings with 4 would have been perfect.

 

[Lawrence Wright]

Just to build on this, here’s what the pre-BCS 90s title games would have looked like under a plus-one model. How good would this have been?

1995
12-0 Nebraska
11-1 Tennessee

Now, there’s no guarantee that the bowls would have played out the same way. The bowl coalition/alliance might not have even been needed if there was a plus-one title game, but in my opinion, this would still be the best system for college football.

I would have loved to see another team face that ‘95 Nebraska juggernaut, but on what planet would an undefeated 12-0 SEC champ be passed over for an 11-1 team who didn’t win their division in the BCS era?

 

[Boston Vol]

I would have loved to see another team face that ‘95 Nebraska juggernaut, but on what planet would an undefeated 12-0 SEC champ be passed over for an 11-1 team who didn’t win their division in the BCS era?

This is if there would have been a plus-one title game after the bowls. With UF losing to Nebraska and Northwestern losing to USC in the Rose Bowl, Tennessee, given their win over OSU in the Citrus, would have been the last team standing to face Nebraska in the title game.

 

[Lawrence Wright]

This is if there would have been a plus-one title game after the bowls. With UF losing to Nebraska and Northwestern losing to USC in the Rose Bowl, Tennessee, given their win over OSU in the Citrus, would have been the last team standing to face Nebraska in the title game.

After #1 soundly beats #2 in a bowl game, what sense would it make reward #3 in a plus-one scenario, after #2 blew out #3 in the regular season?

Asking for a friend.

 

[Lawrence Wright]

.

 

[Tin Man]

 

[hUTch2002]

The worst thing that happened was Ohio State winning the title. Baylor and TCU both had much better cases but OSU got in for Big Ten/TV reasons. Cardale goes on an absolute Nick Foles run, they win the title and the committee got a free pass.

Had the kid in front of Cardale not gotten hurt no way Ohio State wins the title. They got lucky there and then capitalized on it.

 

[hUTch2002]

Yeah it's entertaining that no one plays football the way the SEC plays football...until the post season and they all kick our butts around like rag dolls. Happens every year. SEC is lucky to even break .500 in post season games. Remove Bamas run under Saban, and the rest of the SEC could have been demoted to G5. Barring a few support appearances by UGA. Not talking all-time. Just recent years. All-time the SEC is only school predominantly over .500. No one else really is. But, all-time ain't been playing the last 10-20 years.

I'd be happy to be disputed with some stats. Just don't use last years post season in the numbers. And don't bring me all-time stats. I know the SEC is light years ahead there. I'd say from 2010 -2024. Let's see some recent compilations.

Edit: Bowl Performance last 4 post seasons

American	0.643​
Big Ten	0.601​
Sun Belt	0.542​
SEC	0.525​
MAC	0.522​
Big 12	0.484​
Independent	0.475​
Mountain West	0.473​
C–USA	0.394​
ACC	0.375​
Pac-12	0.246​

The real kicker is how bad the ACC performs in bowls with all the G5 conferences above them. Almost like Clemson is the only ACC team to ever win in post season.

Not always of course, but a lot of the time you have mismatches like the 7th best SEC team playing the 4th best Big Ten team. I don’t know how you account for things like that but there’s no doubt that teams 4-10 of the SEC is better than teams 4-10 in other conferences. Crap, Miss St (worst team in the SEC last year) played AZ State (Big 12 champ) close on the road last year. Bowl games are just a different animal for many reasons, especially these days. I don’t think the SEC is light years ahead of the Big 10 but it’s ahead and the Big 10 is ahead of the Big 12 and ACC.

 

[onevol74]

The force was with GT right up to the day they left the conference. Dodd led that race cause he was butt hurt over some things, and as many alumni predicted it did ruin GT athletics. Not just football.

There was also some serious ego involved. Dodd thought it was beneath the GT brand to have to travel to go play the Mississippi schools, who just happened to be the two votes to block the return of GT in '75 or '73. This is all well documented within the walls of Google.

That was the same attitude as the General who would not play at venues not on the rail lines.

 

[GVF]

Not always of course, but a lot of the time you have mismatches like the 7th best SEC team playing the 4th best Big Ten team. I don’t know how you account for things like that but there’s no doubt that teams 4-10 of the SEC is better than teams 4-10 in other conferences. Crap, Miss St (worst team in the SEC last year) played AZ State (Big 12 champ) close on the road last year. Bowl games are just a different animal for many reasons, especially these days. I don’t think the SEC is light years ahead of the Big 10 but it’s ahead and the Big 10 is ahead of the Big 12 and ACC.

Don’t disagree with any of that. And most schools don’t go into a bowl game yelling SEC to the opponents sideline. It may be more skewed now than in years past, but we don’t dominate bowl season like we used to. For whatever reasons may apply. End of day though that post season record over last decade is not up to snuff

 

[adam.vol]

2011 was the straw that broke the camel's back. I think 4 was perfect honestly. That way you had an answer if you had 3 perfect teams or had 3 1-loss teams vying for 2 spots. The problem was they didn't keep the BCS. They did the stupid committee.

Quoted because you are absolutely correct.

Nothing is quite so revealing as hearing someone quip “hindsight is 20/20.”

What I mean by that: Surely most of us saw how terrible of a decision “committee over computer” was from the beginning. How many illogical people can there possibly be?

The committee featured Condoleezza Rice, for crying out loud.. But more importantly, the computers can be programmed before the season and can be trusted to stick with said parameters. The committee on the other hand could be a fat POS Michigan AD and could change the parameters to get the results he wanted at any given time. There is no record of the thought process, nor a save point with a timestamp.

The decision to go with “committee over computer” could only have been made with the option of “manipulation” as the clear intent.

 

[General Jack]

They should have never let Texas in the SEC. They kill everyone conference they've ever been a part of and I expect the same will happen in the SEC.

Hopefully when (if) the world comes to its senses the SEC will go back to being regional and revert to the 1992 - 2011 iteration.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

Cannot agree with this enough. No one gets this but the pinnacle of college football was actually before the BCS. No computers, no god forsaken committees, no expanded playoffs, no replay. The game was rife with AMBIGUITY, which is what made it so interesting. Perhaps even poetic. Every single regular game was a playoff game, and every single game on new years day mattered . . . sometimes you went to bed that night and you knew who the champion was, sometimes you didn't, and then you'd open the newspaper the following day and there the final polls would be. It was absolutely freaking nuts but it was also oddly amazing. It was so dramatic. The thing that younger folks cannot imagine today is how consequential like a september regular season game was. Those fla/ tn games in the 90's felt like the center of the universe. Like the world was standing still for them. We had these INSANE teams back then, and their shot at the title was effectively dashed in September. It was so painful when you lost but also sort of beautiful as a piece in the larger story of a team's season. . . . The overall CFB product was just way better back then. It's still good, viewership at all time highs, and I'm always gonna watch. But no doubt, it was better back then, and I'd say really because it was sort of flawed. And I think less regular season games was part of it too. But everyone is right . . . ain't ever goin back to that model.

I don't think I could disagree with something more. It wasn't sort of flawed, it was idiotic. You like that a NC was determined by voting? And no every game wasn't a playoff game, ask Auburn 2004 if that is true.

 

[VolsSportsFan]

I know this is all subjective, but there's just no way in the world that the pre-BCS world was better. It was crazy (and not in a "this is so entertaining" way, but in a "this is silly" way) to have the most popular college sport determine its national champion by whoever the media thought the best team was after all the games were played. And until the 1970s, the final poll came out before the bowl games! And we think they are meaningless now...

Ambiguity does make things more interesting...to a point. People eventually got frustrated with that, and rightly so, over time. Even with the CFP, college football is still the sport (college or pro) that has by far the most meaningful regular season. It does make games played by a team(s) with a locked-up playoff spot less meaningful, but it makes games played by teams on or near the bubble more meaningful.

This a million times. Old people like it becaues they grew up with it and have biased because that's what they grew up with.

Every argument against a playoff has always been rather stupid and based in emotion that was basically "this is how we've always done it." People can b**** about the playoff all they want and yeah it will need constant tweaking probably but in no way is it inferior to how it "used to be".

I remember in 1985, as a small kid, watching us beat Miami in the Sugar Bowl, not realizing how college football worked. We win, everyone in the room is excited. I saw all the talk of Miami winning the NC if they won so when we won I asked my dad "So we can win the National Championship now?" I was told no, the season is over. And me thinking .....wow that's kind of a bummer. People acting like winning the bowl game meant more...only becuase it was the only thing offered. You made yourself think it was better. It never was.

 

[zjcvols]

They should have never let Texas in the SEC. They kill everyone conference they've ever been a part of and I expect the same will happen in the SEC.

Hopefully when (if) the world comes to its senses the SEC will go back to being regional and revert to the 1992 - 2011 iteration.

That was really the final death knell. I didn't like 14 but overall the Big 12 was going to add to get to 14 and it would have been great. Balanced, most of the conferences made regional sense. Maybe add Boise State and one more team to the Pac-12 to get 70 overall P5 teams+ Notre Dame. But no, we couldn't have it thanks to Texas

 

[05_never_again]

They should have never let Texas in the SEC. They kill everyone conference they've ever been a part of and I expect the same will happen in the SEC.

Hopefully when (if) the world comes to its senses the SEC will go back to being regional and revert to the 1992 - 2011 iteration.

They've also financially controlled every conference they've been in, until now.

 

[give_him 6]

 

[#1fulmerite]

Don’t disagree with any of that. And most schools don’t go into a bowl game yelling SEC to the opponents sideline. It may be more skewed now than in years past, but we don’t dominate bowl season like we used to. For whatever reasons may apply. End of day though that post season record over last decade is not up to snuff

I think it’s because (they) don’t care. Players looking ahead or dropping out to train for the league or not playing for a NC. Playing for pride isn’t worth it anymore.