Yes and no... reduced flexibility and increased discrimination... the virtual elimination of football independence and the destruction of (I'd guess) a third of all the great traditions in major college football..that's not much of a trade-off in reality. You can slap a new pair of tits on an unfaithful wife every 8 to 10 years.. but at the end of it all, you're still stuck with an unfaithful wife. This is an issue that you're either in, or you're out on. Everything in between is just half-assed and we've been settling for half-assed since the start of the Bowl Alliance. It's just a cash grab under the guise of 'progress toward a true national champion.' What a laugh.. Determine your champion on the field through a playoff, or through the media in a poll.. but you can't do both... We've been pretending to do both since the Bowl Alliance..Say what you want about the old system, but everyone accepted it as imperfect and it never pretended to give you a true consensus national champion..You could have multiple champions and that was all right.
The new system still does both......cause there has to be a pecking order....teams have to earn their way in to the 4 team playoff just like they did for the BCS Title game and believe it or not like they have to do for the NCAA BB playoffs. And you know Corey I always perceive your complete dissing of the BCS as a slight toward the SEC and maybe in particular Florida because of the recent BCS success of both. In defense I offer that the SEC has taken on some pretty damned good competition in the BCS Title game which is one hell of a lot better than playing in some preordained bowl like in the olden days of poll voting only and just hoping that #1 received a decent opponent in their preordained bowl game in those days. To wit...for Florida in particular: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3750970 Oklahoma was the all-time NCAA scoring champ in 2008 And in 2006 Ohio State was 12-0 and fresh off their "Game of the Century" victory over the equally undefeated Michigan Wolverines. Without the BCS neither team would have had to face the Gators to earn their NCAA National Championships.....and it turned out that Florida so deftly proved neither one deserved it either.
Dave, Who created the BCS, who benefited the most from it? How did the landscape of the game change once the BCS was in place? Who yielded the most? Who gained the most? It's got not a damn thing to do with Florida.. no one is questioning the size of your peninsula, tuck it away.
I personally do not think Mike Slive could manipulate who the BCS participants are as you must feel that he did. There was a hell of a lot more to the BCS formula than the whims and fancy of Mike Slive.