First Shot Across ND's Bow

lonestarjacket said:
Who watches the NBA Developmental league?

They get nationally televised games playing to empty arenas.

It might not get a lot of TV time, but people would watch it for the same reasons they watch minor league baseball. There are lots of remote areas hungry for professional sports of any kind. Even in citie with professional teams some prefer the accessibility of the minor league games. There is a lot of turnover from year to year, just like in college. So that helps raise the local interest in how the new team will perform.

Who knows? If top talent stopped going to college teams then THAT might be what fewer people watched.

Take all the players of the Bama team that are not inerested in getting a college education and start a local professional team. Do you think more people would still watch the Tide with its leftover players or the new professional team?
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There are a ton of small markets out there with nothing better to do. In Canada and USA there are like 30 cities with no NFL teams that have over a population of a million in metropolitan areas. You could always play these games on Friday night, too, who cares about high school football.:biggthumpup:
 
samsgt02 said:
No one watches minor league baseball or MLS but it still works, especially in smaller markets like a Portland or say a San Antonio. It doesn't have to have large salaries either. A $35,000 to $50,000 job to play football straight out of high school doesn't sound too bad to a 17 or 18 year old, either. Keep the league to a 22 year old max age, and if the NFL poaches anyone, have a payout clause. You could draft college athletes, too. My dream would be to take some of that undeveloped talent away from SEC schools. This would be the best thing to happen to Tech football.
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Is this really how we want to win championships? And if we did win it, who the heck would be that excited about it? Why don't we just drop to DII and get it over with then...

To win a championship because we had less players poached than the factories seems retarded to me
 
rduck said:
Is this really how we want to win championships? And if we did win it, who the heck would be that excited about it? Why don't we just drop to DII and get it over with then...
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Yes it is, for me at least. I'd rather win it with true student athletes than with dumbing our school down to get the best athletes. I love college football, but I really think there are a ton of athletes who have no business in college.
 
lonestarjacket said:
The reason conference affiliation is important is it is the only normalizing factor in comparing teams across conferences without enough inter-conference play. There is not even enough inter-division play to absolutely rank teams in a conference.

There will always be speculation that a one or two loss team from a powerful conference is better than an undefeated team from another. But you know the ranking within any conference based on the results and the championship game. Second place in a division may also be the second best team and better than the other division champion, or it may not be. But it has not earned the right to play for the championship and so cannot be the champion.

In similar fashion, no team that cannot win its conference should play for the national championship. They all had a fair chance to win the conference and failed. They may be the second best team in the nation or they may not, but we know they failed the first test.

The only reliable way to determine a champion between conferences that do not play common games is to play it out between champions, just as they play out the division winners for the conference championship.

Of course, I favor the abolishment of the old conferences anyway. Just divide all the teams into regional divisions and conferences and end the silliness of nationwide conferences. It would save everyone a lot of travel and rebuild natural rivalries. The tradition of the old conferences became a thing of the past when the expansion and poaching wars began. They are all now just competing leagues for television revenue. Take the commissioners out of the equation and just divide everybody regionally and we will actually come closer to the old conference origins.
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I probably should have been a little more specific. I'm not proposing doing away with any of the ranking systems, while not perfectly accurate they do a decent job. I'm also not proposing doing away with conference affiliation for teams, for every reason mentioned. I'm just proposing that we don't tie the playoff selection process to conference affiliation in any way. If the first teams to the table were the undefeateds, regardless of which conference they came from, the first teams to the table would also guaranteedly be conference champions (minus any independents who run the table). If there aren't enough seats at the table or, there are seats left after the undefeateds sit down, then we turn to the rankings, again without regard to conference affiliation. Any team that can't run the table shouldn't be disappointed when it has to face the polls to make the championship (likewise for any team who dumbs down their schedule with crap schools just to go undefeated).

This takes care of three things:

1) No teams remain undefeated at the end of the year except for the national champions, with the exception of scenarios in which five or more teams enter the playoff selection undefeated (there's no 4 team solution to this problem). Gives more legitimacy to the contest by not excluding anyone. Prevents another Boise "we weren't invited, but we are the best" thing.

2) Only teams that win their conferences are guaranteed a seat at the table, without necessarily excluding teams that don't win their conferences (this is just how the math works, not as a hard coded rule). If you can't win your conference, you shouldn't be surprised that you don't have priority in the playoff selection process, but I do beleive that in a 4 team playoff last year, Alabama should have played.

3) All teams are given a fair shot to get into the game, no matter what conference they play in, they just have to win 12 or 13 in a row.
 
I still have a hard time seeing a one or even a two loss Irish team being left out, regardless of how many undefeated teams are left. They have tons of pull with voters and ratings.
 
lonestarjacket said:
Who watches the NBA Developmental league?

They get nationally televised games playing to empty arenas.

It might not get a lot of TV time, but people would watch it for the same reasons they watch minor league baseball. There are lots of remote areas hungry for professional sports of any kind. Even in citie with professional teams some prefer the accessibility of the minor league games. There is a lot of turnover from year to year, just like in college. So that helps raise the local interest in how the new team will perform.

Who knows? If top talent stopped going to college teams then THAT might be what fewer people watched.

Take all the players of the Bama team that are not inerested in getting a college education and start a local professional team. Do you think more people would still watch the Tide with its leftover players or the new professional team?
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The NBA Development League is exactly how we know an NFL development league won't work, at least not in the way you're suggesting. No player has ever skipped college into order to play in that league.

They could certainly start an NFL developmental league, but its existence would have exactly 0 impact on college football. In fact, it might look a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe
 
olgoldandwhite said:
I still have a hard time seeing a one or even a two loss Irish team being left out, regardless of how many undefeated teams are left. They have tons of pull with voters and ratings.
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That's why we need to remove the voters from the selection process until we have something for them to vote on. If every undefeated got to sit down first no matter what they wanted to say about it, we'd have a fairer system instantly.
 
samsgt02 said:
Yes it is, for me at least. I'd rather win it with true student athletes than with dumbing our school down to get the best athletes. I love college football, but I really think there are a ton of athletes who have no business in college.
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I understand your point of view. I was thinking about how it would effect the college game and the interest in it. One of the best things going for college football over college basketball and baseball is the fact that the top players are mostly there for 3-4 years. You don't have the turnover in top players like you do in the other sports. And yes, the kids that went to college instead of the developmental league would be there longer, but the talent and the level of the game would suffer greatly IMO...
 
Adding ND would be good for the ACC, but they'd still load up OOC and get crushed. I think they'd continue to play USC, Navy, and Michigan or another team like Purdue/Michigan St, etc. They'd lose two of those games so that even if they go 9-0 in the ACC, they'd end up 10-2 and the ACC continues to get shut out. If ND wants to finally have success, they need to pussify their scheduling like the SEC and B1G teams do OOC if they join a conference.
 
rduck said:
I understand your point of view. I was thinking about how it would effect the college game and the interest in it. One of the best things going for college football over college basketball and baseball is the fact that the top players are mostly there for 3-4 years. You don't have the turnover in top players like you do in the other sports. And yes, the kids that went to college instead of the developmental league would be there longer, but the talent and the level of the game would suffer greatly IMO...
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I don't think college football appreciation would hurt at all. At least in the south. College baseball and basketball aren't as exciting because it's basketball and baseball.
 
andrew said:
The NBA Development League is exactly how we know an NFL development league won't work, at least not in the way you're suggesting. No player has ever skipped college into order to play in that league.

They could certainly start an NFL developmental league, but its existence would have exactly 0 impact on college football. In fact, it might look a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe
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samsgt02 said:
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so are you agreeing with Andrew? Because I thought you were saying that you thought the developmental league would bring down the talent of the SEC and other factories in favor of schools like GT. Based on his quote, he is saying it would not. Now if you are talking about the kids who do not belong in college going there, that is another thing. But even still, the factories have been finding ways to get these kids into school for years.

Just trying to understand the point of your last post...
 
Since this thread seems to live in a parallel universe, here's the way things ought to be. 8 12-team regional conferences; no divisions. 11-game round-robin seasons; no OOC games. Top 2 teams in each conference play championship game. 8 conference champs play 3-round playoff. Two teams will play 15 games. Two teams will play 14 games. Four teams will play 13 games. Rest of teams vie for a bowl game, similar to how bowls choose teams today.

Back to life. Back to reality.
 
andrew said:
The NBA Development League is exactly how we know an NFL development league won't work, at least not in the way you're suggesting. No player has ever skipped college into order to play in that league.

They could certainly start an NFL developmental league, but its existence would have exactly 0 impact on college football. In fact, it might look a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe
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It would work if it mirrored minor league baseball. And it would have a huge impact on college football. The 70-80% of players whose only goal is to get to the NFL would take the signing bonuses and start their NFL auditions and never attend college.
 
ramblinwise1 said:
It would work if it mirrored minor league baseball. And it would have a huge impact on college football. The 70-80% of players whose only goal is to get to the NFL would take the signing bonuses and start their NFL auditions and never attend college.
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That would require the NFL to reduce their age limit though, no? The only players who get huge signing bonuses to go to the minors aren't usually spending three years in the minors. I don't really see a reason for the NFL to do that.
 
andrew said:
That would require the NFL to reduce their age limit though, no? The only players who get huge signing bonuses to go to the minors aren't usually spending three years in the minors. I don't really see a reason for the NFL to do that.
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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...ded-if-the-league-wants-to-expand-to-34-teams

But they don't envision it as a college bypass. I do. The college game is becoming a joke today because of this rule. Let the guys who want go and make some money in the league and save the college game for student athletes. But I guess the SEC already pays better than the NFL minor league would.

The NFL doesn't need to keep expanding or it will hurt its product. The better way to expand and increase revenues without diluting the product is a good minor league. Think Birmingham, Memphis, Orlando, San Antonio, etc. Those towns would go nuts over a pro team affiliated with the NFL.
 
rduck said:
so are you agreeing with Andrew? Because I thought you were saying that you thought the developmental league would bring down the talent of the SEC and other factories in favor of schools like GT. Based on his quote, he is saying it would not. Now if you are talking about the kids who do not belong in college going there, that is another thing. But even still, the factories have been finding ways to get these kids into school for years.

Just trying to understand the point of your last post...
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No it double posted on me. I think a developmental league would hurt the SEC and favor Tech.
 
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andrew said:
The NBA Development League is exactly how we know an NFL development league won't work, at least not in the way you're suggesting. No player has ever skipped college into order to play in that league.

They could certainly start an NFL developmental league, but its existence would have exactly 0 impact on college football. In fact, it might look a little like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_Europe
Click to expand...

Who watches minor league baseball? But it works. The G Braves drew less than 6K per game their first season (2009), just over 5K in 2010, and just less than 5K in 2011. That's a bad trend. Minor league sports is at best a breakeven proposition.
 
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