That day was THE best day in all of sports back then. There was nothing quite like it in any other sport. What we have now is absolutely better at determining a true champion, but it ain't no fun at all. I'm and old fart, obviously, but if you never experienced those days live, you really don't know just how fun it was. All the bowl tie in stuff has cut down on the fun too. If you weren't the SEC, PAC 8/10, Big 10, SWC, or BIG 8 Champ you had no idea if or where you would go. If we aren't going to go to a 32 team playoff can we PLEASE go back to the old bowl system. It was terrible, but at least it was fun.
There is nothing like the old New Year's Day prior to the BCS/Playoff Crap......
- Thread starter Bill Shankly
- Start date
I am very grateful to have had the chance to enjoy the "good old days" of college football. IT WASN'T PERFECT but it was better than what we have now and much better than what appears to lie ahead.
I agree, it was a lot of fun. It was indefensible from a competition standpoint, but New Year's was about as fun as Christmas for a football fan.
Only bad part was the Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl over lapping. Its why Auburn fans think they should have been #1 in 1983; they weren't watching Nebraska-Miami in the Orange Bowl.
Only bad part was the Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl over lapping. Its why Auburn fans think they should have been #1 in 1983; they weren't watching Nebraska-Miami in the Orange Bowl.
Three or four rabbit-ear antenna tv’s going at the same time. It was so much fun.
I mean those days are where the so called blue bloods got established. We are still dealing with that trash establishment today. I’ll take the current times where we can watch our own team every week rather than having to watch teams I hate because there’s nothing else on TV.
Because everybody got a meaningless participation trophy and then all the writers (who couldn't watch all the games because it was impossible back then so they didn't have to even pretend they knew what they were talking about) could vote on which traditional power they wanted to be the "national champion" (AKA, Ohio State or Michigan if they could remotely justify it).
Want to watch a bunch of fun football games? Cool, you get that every Saturday in the regular season. I love it too. But the end of the season is for championships.
You usually had multiple teams with a chance to be #1 in the polls at the end of the day. You had 1 or 2 teams ranked #1 when the day began, but they probably weren't playing each other. Then you had all these scenarios where different teams could claim a title...if this team beats that team, and that team beats this team, then some other team could move up. Sometimes the #5 team on New Year's Day moved up to #1 when the polls came out.
Couple that with the lack of TV coverage back then, and you were often seeing teams play for the first time. Plus,, 4 or 5 big games on TV in one day was unheard of..
And we had little evidence to compare conferences until the SWC champ played the SEC #2 in the Cotton Bowl, or the Big 8 champ played the Big 10 #2 in the Orange.
And then there was the delay in releasing the final polls. If #1 lost, or simply looked bad in its bowl game, we had to wait a day or 2 to see what the polls delivered. Then we got to argue and argue about it at least until signing day.
Good synopsis. People who never got to experience it probably still won't understand but that's their problem....many of us know it was more fun.
This, and the lack of bowl tie ins meant that there was a lot of uncertainty about where your team would be going even if you knew you would be going. The teams that went a lot didn't wind up in the same place every other year either.
Ok I think I see, the rest of the year sucked so it made that one day great because you could actually watch some games. Then multiple teams could pretend to be the champs afterwards so that was fun for them.
Good ole days were never as good as they seemed. But you have a point. We need to go all-in on an expanded playoff or we need to go back to the old. By old, I mean the BCS. That was absolutely the golden age, as far as 'fun'. You had more parity, more (and equal) conferences, and better bowls that people cared about. Now it's all about the playoff, with people opting out of NY6 bowl games.
We can still have both. We can have the Final Four on NYD. I don't see why this is such a big issue. It was stupidity putting those games on last night, instead of today. Pure stupidity.
We can still have both. We can have the Final Four on NYD. I don't see why this is such a big issue. It was stupidity putting those games on last night, instead of today. Pure stupidity.
None of that is remotely fun. Give me a large playoff with a definite winner.
The only "scenario" that should lead to the national championship is "win your playoff games."
Well I think the comparison was what we have now vs what we had then. I'm pretty much watching these games right now out of habit more than actual interest. I wouldn't be dozing off right now under the old system
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