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That would be fine though. Would you want a coach on his way to another program(in the same recruiting grounds) out "recruiting" for you for 6 weeks? If a program didn't want that coach around, they could let him go ahead and go.

I don't know that you can say either with conviction and be accurate. You do see assistant coaches at programs oftentimes coaching in their bowl game even after accepting a job elsewhere. Charlie Strong, for example, will still coach Florida's defense despite being the head coach at Louisville now. It all depends on the coach and the school hiring the coach. Some are fine with the coach staying for the bowl game, but some want the coach to leave immediately. With a playoff, however, the likelihood - I think - is higher that more coaches stay for the duration of their team's stay in the playoff. The lure of a national title, I think, will cause more coaches to want to finish the job.

Fantasy teams and meatheads. Those too. I'm not a meathead, but I follow the entire NFL from Week 1 to the Super Bowl. I'd do the same (to a lesser extent) with college football and would likely do it moreso if the postseason format made more games more enticing.

The news here said he would not coach the Sugar Bowl, i'm not a fan of that but goes along with a hire in this time of the month. Yeah, I'd say ND was pretty insistent that whoever they hire come aboard immediately.

How much did you watch Washington/Cal last week? How about South Carolina/Clemson two weeks ago? Or LSU/Arkansas? Or Georgia/Georgia Tech? Those are all big matchups between major conference schools that were all but meaningless to anyone outside of the fanbase of each school. However, in a playoff system, every one of those games would have been huge in terms of remaining in or being eliminated from playoff contention. As someone said earlier, for every game that might lose a little meaning, there is at least one if not two games that would gain in meaning because of a playoff system.

If one of the biggest reasons to have a vastly sub-par postseason is to prop up massive regular season mismatches, then maybe something should be done about scheduling. Florida/Coastal Carolina or Tennessee/Western Kentucky are not going to be exciting games no matter the setup. Mismatches are not going to be exciting either way. I would bet that the reason there are so many extreme mismatches now, though, is because a team knows it can't lose more than (at most) one game to have a shot at a title. Thus, it schedules 1-AA and terrible 1-A teams so that it won't have the possibility of being knocked out of the title hunt by a non-conference game. If you put a playoff in and teams can lose a game or two and still be in contention for a playoff berth, you might see more competitive games as teams try to prepare for the playoffs. You don't want to play a bunch of patsies and then have to win four or so straight highly competitive games. For a team that enters the year with hopes of a national title, watching a team with 2 losses with the hopes of going to the Capital One Bowl or the Holiday Bowl just isn't that exciting. It's still fun to root on your team and hope for a good year, but it's not the same, nor is it even anywhere close. How much better would this season have been if LSU, TCU, Boise State, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida, Cincinnati, etc. still felt like they were playing for a title? The only regular season games that lose significant excitement in a playoff format are the very early season ones. Georgia Tech/Clemson or Oregon/Oregon State or BYU/Utah would have been so much more exciting, intense games if there was a realistic chance for some of those teams to make a playoff and compete for a title. Instead they were playing for a little bit better bowl. That'll never happen with the bowls because their only interest is to get fans into the seats and spending money in their city. They don't care about getting good team against good team unless it happens to fit within making their bowl more profitable. That's fine that they want to make money, but as a fan, my interest lies in getting the most entertaining and legitimate postseason format possible and that won't happen while we have bowls only considering the dollar amount their bowl will draw in. Also, it's not just the few weeks a playoff lasts that we'll have extremely exciting football. It's also all the weeks leading up to the playoffs and the big games in the middle and later parts of the season that can clinch spots or eliminate teams that will be exciting as well. Your looking at roughly the same time frame of exciting football, you're just adding some legitimacy to the postseason system that is the reason we're cheering for the teams in the first place.

That was a great win by ECU. I really thought Houston would have too much offense, but didn't expect the strong offense from the Pirates. Holtz is making it hard for a BCS conference school to keep overlooking him.

Here's one for those more astute than I: Derrick Mason v Detroit or DeSean Jackson v NYG Generally I'd go Jackson, but with his concussion and the fact that Mason is facing the Lions, I'm leaning toward Mason.

In a great shocker, Brian Kelly would not confirm to Chris Fowler during the ESPNU College Football Awards show that he was, in fact, going to ND. Just thought I'd pass that along.

Why do fans care about the NFL in weeks 1-12 or so? There are plenty of NFL fans who intensely watch games early in the year to see how their team's direct opponents are doing and to evaluate the landscape overall. That would be the case in college football as well. Also, as imb said, people watch the Duke-UNC game and follow the early season tournaments, etc. in college basketball. I watch those things and I'm not even that big of a basketball fan. A playoff would also keep more fans more excited about their own team far longer in the year. Throughout the 90s when Tennessee was a consistent title contender, a lot of my excitement for the season was gone when Tennessee lost to Florida. I'm sure it's the same way for the loser of the Red River Shootout or Miami/FSU or any of those title contending teams that have huge games early in the year. It's rather silly that a game in Week 1 of a 12-week season should play a huge role in whether or not a team has a chance to compete for a national title. If there had been a playoff in the 90s, I would have been far more excited watching UT football because even after losing to Florida in the third week of the season, there would still have been a chance that Tennessee could have made the national title game. As it was, the loser of that game was basically out of the national title hunt. And it's that way for quite a few teams. That's pretty sad. Keep in mind also, right now we've got 12 weeks of intense football and then a month of completely meaningless, almost exhibition football and then a couple days of sometimes fairly entertaining football. By far the best thing about college football right now is the regular season and the postseason is, generally, a letdown. That's very backwards.

Honestly it is probably the best ND could do. And it's probably quite a good hire.

Yep. Some games will lose significance, but others will increase in significance. More importantly, though, the postseason will become better. And that's preferable to me.

If it vastly increases the importance (and significance) of the postseason? I'm fine with that. The postseason and crowning a champion is more important to me than the regular season games. And the regular season remains quite important because teams will try very, very hard to avoid being matched up against the top 1-2 seeds.

It'd be a huge dropoff defensively. Last year, Fontenot had a 5.5 UZR/150 at second base. The last year Soriano played 2B (2005), he posted a -15.1 UZR/150. Considering that was four years ago, he probably won't be that good in 2010.

That outfield defense would be very good. Let Theriot and Fontenot share duties at 2nd and put Soriano at SS. That way you only have one weak defensive position on the field. :wink: I like your thinking. :D

That outfield defense would be very good.

The simple answer to that is to go to a 16-team format. I don't know if that's the right answer, but the format should be the question, not whether or not to go to a playoff system at all. Which leads to teams losing 1/4 of their games and getting in. Or consistently [expletive] teams like whoever wins the MAC, C-USA, or Sun Belt getting in every year. And those 3-4 three loss teams (if that many) will get knocked out in the first round. Or if they go further, then they'll have earned their way. Or you could go to 12 teams (if that'll work) and get no more than 1 3-loss team in each year.

There's no chance of that because need to dump some of Burrell salary now so they can go after Cameron or whoever in CF. They won't have all that money tied up to Burrell with him being a 4th outfielder. Plus I don't think Luis Castillo is a option anymore, since the Mets don't want Burrell. I'm basically for whatever saves the Cubs money so they can get Mike Cameron and some other pieces. Will we be able to dump much, if any, of Burrell's salary? I was under the assumption we wouldn't save much money in this whole arrangement.

The simple answer to that is to go to a 16-team format. I don't know if that's the right answer, but the format should be the question, not whether or not to go to a playoff system at all.

If we're doing the Burrell for Bradley swap, I'd honestly prefer to just keep Burrell as a bat on the bench. Instead of swapping him for Castillo, I'd rather keep him as a fourth outfielder and right-handed platoon partner for Kosuke. I realize he has basically no experience in right field, but his bat against lefties only might be enough to cover that. And we'll have Fuld as a defensive replacement for the times that we have a late-inning lead with Burrell out there. It's not ideal (or even all that good) but I think I'd prefer it to trading for Castillo.

Actually, since we're going with an often unused 12th pitcher anyway, I hope they don't give up on him at all this year. The positive about having a 12-man pitching staff is that you can use the Rule 5 draft to bring in a pitcher you don't plan to use much this year. It hinders the flexibility of the bench and pen some this year, but it has the potential to help in the future if Parisi/Patton develops into a quality reliever. If we were going with an 11-man staff, we wouldn't have the extra spot and would have to let him go if he didn't perform immediately.

Doesn't sound like he has the upside Patton does, but he sounds capable of potentially being a decent middle reliever at some point.

My only problem is they already have so many arms, and they are insisting on bringing in another veteran anyway. They overstock the pen and then end up paying guys to play somewhere else, and losing their own quality arms. Yeah, I wish Hendry did this and then didn't give out multi-year contracts to as many veteran relievers, but at least he's working to bring in cheap, potentially effective bullpen arms. Really, the Rule 5 draft is the perfect way to bring in middle relief arms. It only costs something like $25,000, we don't give out big money contracts and don't give up prospects. I just wish we'd quit coupling these with the Grabow/Gregg/etc type signings. Bringing in proven, consistent relievers with good peripherals (few and far between) is fine, but otherwise we should rely on some of these young arms we're developing.

I like these Rule 5 picks. The guys may not pitch effectively in year one, but they're cheap, young arms that can be plugged into the bullpen in the future. And since we're keeping 12 pitchers anyway, why not have that seldom-used bullpen spot on a potential arm? It's a very cost effective way to bring more cheap, talented arms into the organization.

Yeah, anytime Congress wants to show their power over NCAA/NFL/MLB/NBA, they dangle that anti-trust exemption over their head.