The Front Row

I can't quite figure out why everyone is so obsessed with having a home field advantage in a two game format. So you want "only" the lower seeded teams to travel, pay for hotel rooms, be allotted only 12,000 or so lousy seats, and play outside in potentially nasty weather? How is that fair? I don't even want OSU to play in nasty weather. This is not the NFL. Those guys are being paid very well for playing in adverse conditions and being able to overcome it. Here we have only two games to determine the national finalists and you guys want to stack the deck against two of the teams? You people are going to macho yourselves to death by insisting Southern teams come up North and take their medicine like a man.

There will probably be two predetermined (domed in the North) semi-final sites that have been bid on years in advance, and no site will be on a campus. The only hard and fast rule as to who plays who will be seeding. After that, where the opponents play will be decided by an (hopefully) impartial committee.

Not only that, but we could see both semi-finals being played at one venue in what will be referred to as a "Final Four" weekend. This would ensure both games would be a sellout and take a lot of home-field advantage out of the equation. A team being located near this Final four site would only be so due to luck in a particular year. Other than proximity, schools should look for no further advantage.