Boise State conference expansion & playoff debate!

You look at this title and your probably thinking to yourself “hey maybe he will give us some great news if Boise state will join Big12/Pac12 in the future”. Well in all honesty, I am here to say why us joining the Big12/Pac12 is still a long shot away for Boise State University.

Let me start off by saying that I have been a die-hard Bronco fan since 1997. Each year I start to learn more and more about the BCS system and so on. I put a lot of thinking/learning why we should join a BCS conference that would allow us a favorable chance to be able to play in the National Championship game. I also been doing research for playoff systems and how that would benefit us.

Let’s start off with my reasoning of “Why Boise State will not get an invite to the Big12”. (I know I am going to take a lot of heat for this.) I don’t think we will get an invite. Yes, there have been rumors that Bob Kustra has been in “talks” with the Big 12 president on trying to get us a future invite. I don’t think the talks will last long and my reasoning’s are: 1.We do not have a good marketability in the city of Boise. What I mean by that is for instance football. We don’t have a big stadium at all. I know we have $100 million dollar grant/fund that we got last year to start stadium expansion, but the problem with that is we cannot even sell out our current stadium of just over 30,000 seats. I for one have been to at least 1 game over the past 8 years and maybe only 4 times in that span we actually had a sellout. We need to sellout seats before we get an expansion to Bronco Stadium. Lets take Nebraska for example, they have the record for consecutive football sellouts that dates back to the mid 1980’s I believe and that record is still increasing. If anyone needs an expansion, Nebraska should be at top of the list. We as fans have not proven that we deserve a stadium expansion.

2^nd reason for us not getting an invite, conferences cannot take us serious. They honestly do not care if we play on a blue field. What they care about is that we spend a lot of money on stuff that we do not need in the present, example, the stadium expansion. Conferences do not want to add schools if they do not know how to fund their money properly. We most definitely have the athletics to compete in lets say a Big12 and most definitely the Pac-12.

3rd reason for us not getting an invite. When we make decisions, we need to think them through and longer rather then jumping the gun right away. Perfect example would be the move from the WAC to the Mountain West. We made the move way too soon. We assumed that if we joined, TCU, BYU and Utah would stay in the conference with us and eventually could have a AQ conference. But that was a risk that we should not have taken cause now look at the predicament we put ourselves in. We lost the competitive edge in the conference when those teams left and in the 2012 sporting season, we add most of the WAC members to the newer Mountain West. People do not know this, but even University Of Idaho is trying to get into the Mountain West just so they can have a rivalry with Boise State. We should have waited to see what Utah, TCU and BYU was going to do before we made a move to the Mountain West. Realistically we should have stayed in the WAC for at least another year or so. No fans would not be happy, but it would have been the best thing for Boise State.

Playoffs. I for one really would like a playoff system for D-1A FBS schools. I think it is a great idea and it will give a lot of schools that are Non AQ chances at earning playoff spots if they have proven themselves within the regular season. Now on the downside, which really isn’t all that bad if you don’t mind scheduling fewer games in the regular season. I say have a 32 team playoff bracket. Obviously the top 25 at the end of the season would be able to have a guaranteed playoff spot. The leftover 7 spots would be at-large spots that voters can vote who can have one of those 7 spots and what order they would go in. There would be 4 regions. 8 teams in each of the regions. Here is a visual of what I am saying: Now it may look a little confusing but the top 4 teams in the AP poll would be essentially the #1 seed in each region. This eliminates automatic conferences. Simply win and be in the top 25 and you are guaranteed a playoff spot. Or hope that you get voted to get an At-large bid.