Playoff particulars meet Stoops' and Castiglione's criteria
Published: 6/27/2012 7:24 AM
Last Modified: 6/27/2012 7:24 AM
There are 100 winners for every loser now that the BCS is going bye-bye. Oklahoma is among them, for reasons up and down the four-team playoff model approved Tuesday by the presidential oversight committee...
* The playoff involves four teams
I spoke with Joe Castiglione last week after the commissioners agreed to a playoff model. "Whatever we decide needs to reflect the strength of great regular season," he told me. "That is a huge component."
If inviting 68 teams in the Big Dance cheapens basketball's regular season, limiting the football "tournament" to a Final Four should legitimize September, October and November. Plus, the 12-year agreement effectively caps the field at four.
Bob Stoops has always been a regular season proponent. As far back as the middle of the 2004, season, as his Sooners pushed toward a BCS championship date with USC amid clamoring for a playoff, he said: "Be careful what you wish for. Our regular season is so exciting. We're going to go into a five- or six-week playoff right now.
"That's why everybody from coast to coast is watching each league. That's why our regular season is looked at so positively. You de-value the regular season, to some point, if all of a sudden you have a playoff. People wait for just that to get excited. That's why these stadiums are packed every single week across the country. The TV is what it is.
"I'm not criticizing basketball because March Madness is sure great… but we've got September, October and November Madness right now."
They've still got it, even with the historic arrival of a playoff.
* The bowls are still very much involved
The championship is headed for the highest-bidding city. But the semifinal sites will rotate among six bowls, including the four BCS bowls.
This has to be the best part of the Final Four for Stoops, among the bowls' biggest fans.
"For people that don't understand, we get some kids who have never been out of the state of Oklahoma, maybe have had a disadvantaged background," he said during the Sooner Caravan stop in Tulsa earlier this month. "We get to take them to Miami, to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl or whatever it may be, for a five- or six-day window. Great restaurants. Great environment.
"We're broadening their horizons. You're teaching them and giving them opportunities to grow and (say) 'Look at what's out here in the world.' So the bowl experience matters. And it's special. And it can't go away."
It isn't, even with the onset of a playoff. The bowls are important as ever. It's the Bowl Championship Series that is two years from eradication.
* The Final Four will be selected by a committee
OK, this doesn't automatically favor the Sooners. This doesn't automatically favor anyone, as Stoops hinted back in Tulsa.
"Everybody has an agenda," he warned. "There's no getting around that. That's a tough one."
Well, Castiglione was on the basketball selection committee last March. If the football committee takes similar shape, it can't hurt to have your AD so familiar with the process.
For the time being, Castiglione could at least promise me that committee candidates would be vetted to the fullest.
I didn't have the guts to ask him, So who's vetting the vettors?
* Among the criteria committee members are expected to use: won-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether a team is conference champion
"We want respect for conference champions, but the best four teams have to be included," Castiglione said last week. "We favor the recognition of strength of schedule better than it is right now."
Done and done.
Conference champions will be rewarded, but the process won't lock out deserving teams that don't happen to win their own league. That's welcome news for the SEC, sure, but also a Big 12 whose future membership just might include the likes of Florida State and Clemson, if not Notre Dame.
The schedule strength component should also inherently help Big 12 teams. It should especially boost teams like OU, with Notre Dame, Tennessee, Ohio State and LSU on future schedules.
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
