Interesting BCS Viewpoint

[Carmen Ohio]

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="99%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width="62%">From the Michigan chat forum "M Live"


92529. Playoffs...
by FlaBlueFan1, 10/27/05 17:58 ET I've posted before about them. I'm on a bowl committee so I have a vested interest. BUT...
A win or go home playoff only determines who wins the playoff, not who is the best team.
I haven't gone back to figure it exactly but I'll estimate that 80-90% of the last 40 NCAA hoops champs have not been the best team in the country that year. Last year's Ill v NC game was the first #1 v #2 final in 30 years. I think in an NBA style 7 game series that Ill would have won.
Yes March madness is exciting but it clearly detracts from the regular season. Last year with Ill is an exception, but other than last year name the last 10 regular season (not conf tournament) BigTen champs. It doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is getting into the playoffs.
As for the BCS, I think its worked pretty well. As well as any playoff anyway. Since 1998 when it started, I think the only year that the best team in the country didn't win the BCS championship game was in 2003 when the USC team that beat us was clearly better than either LSU or Ok who played in the BCS game. I think that's pretty good.

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• <LI value=1>Thank God!... by SBreaston15, 10/27/05
  
• agree by CMU89, 10/27/05
  

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[Lazlo]

march madness - ncaa football playoff
apples - oranges

not even the top 64 teams in basketball compared to say a group of an argueable top 8 in football is just one of many reasons why.

I hate that comparison.

 

[JXC]

According to him, then the NFL playoffs and Super Bowl shouldn't matter. They should just use a computer formula at the end of the regular season in the NFL to decide who the winner is. A playoff in football makes more sense than a playoff in basketball...because I feel that basketball is a game where any team can beat another team in 1 game...where football I think that's less of a possibility. I think major upsets happen less in football than they do in basketball. 1 game of football is enough to decide who the best team is. That's why the Super Bowl is the best championship game in the history of sport.

 

[Jaxbuck]

I ove the sage old expert who just "knows" that the "best team" usually doesn't win the NCAA tourney.

Just like all the football sportswriter experts who "know" who the best team really is every year.

I'm just not that smart I guess, I say just put the top 8 teams in the hopper and whoever is standing in the end is the recognized NCAA D1A football champ. I'll leave the experts to argue the semantics of best team vs champion.

As for diminishing the regular season, I say seed the 8 teams and give home field ala the NFL. It puts that argument to bed rather quickly.

 

[Lazlo]

because I feel that basketball is a game where any team can beat another team in 1 game...where football I think that's less of a possibility. I think major upsets happen less in football than they do in basketball.

Exactly, the only point I could even possibly agree with is that it could take away from some interesting regular season matchups, but for the most part every one is scared to play anyone good they don't have to already. Except for us and the people willing to play us of course

 

[buckiprof]

I've posted before about them. I'm on a bowl committee so I have a vested interest.

To me, everything posted after that first sentence isn't worth a damn. His argument, if that is what you want to call it, is in light of how to preseve the status quo. This sentence,

As for the BCS, I think its worked pretty well. As well as any playoff anyway.

is quite ludicrous. How can one say that it works well, as well as any playoff, when an undefeated SEC team last year was left out. How about the year before when there was a split championship?

 

[methomps]

Yes, many times the #1 bball team doesn't win the tournament. However, at least they have a chance. Which would a team rather have: A playoff where you have to win several games but at least your destiny is in your own hands or the BCS where you might win out and still have no shot at winning the NC?

A playoff can be overly inclusive in that it includes teams that don't deserve to be there. The BCS can be overly exclusive in that it excludes teams that do deserve to be there. Which is better?

I don't get this "detracts from the regular season" stuff. Doesn't it detract from the regular season that coaches of undefeated teams have to go out and sell themselves to voters? Somebody go to Tommy Tubberville and say, "Tough break about not getting a chance to make it in, but at least the BCS preserved the sanctity of your regular season."

With a playoff, the last weekend is often filled with "Playoff contender A has to win and hope that Playoff contender B loses". With the BCS, it becomes "BCS contender A has to dominate and hope that the 6-4 team it beat in week one doesn't lose to some team that neither BCS contender A nor BCS contender B has played." You have to hope that Notre Dame doesn't lose at Syracuse so that LSU doesn't jump USC in the computers.

As to "A win or go home playoff only determines who wins the playoff, not who is the best team", how is the BCS champ game any better? The BCS formula doesn't even try to get the best team in the game. It tries to get the two most accomplished teams. The computers certainly don't care about "best team". They are even prevented from attempting this by being barred from looking at MOV. The BCS at best determines "the best of the two most accomplished teams". Even then, 'best' is defined solely as who wins one game in January.

 

[BB73]

The BCS at best determines "the best of the two most accomplished teams". Even then, 'best' is defined solely as who wins one game in January.

Well, except for 2003, when the best team was excluded from the Sugar Bowl, right?

 

[methomps]

Well, except for 2003, when the best team was excluded from the Sugar Bowl, right?

Yeah, except that year

Technically, I meant "the better of the two most accomplished teams"

 

[Piney]

Here is a very similar article at si.com this week.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/writers/john_walters/10/24/campus.blitz/index.html

My favorite brunette

Why college football is perfect -- just the way it is

Posted: Monday October 24, 2005 8:28PM; Updated: Tuesday October 25, 2005 8:59AM

How popular is college football this minute? Very popular. Maybe as popular as it has ever been.

Last Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to the Tennessee-Alabama game. A week earlier Jim Caviezel (The Passion of the Christ) had a sideline pass for the USC-Notre Dame game, even though he attended neither university. Not that "Sideline Jesus" was any help to the Irish.

Nor was Regis Philbin, a Notre Dame alum who uses his wildly popular Live with Regis & Kelly talk show to fulminate each Monday on the fortunes of his beloved football team. Are you like me? Do you have 80-year-old great aunts asking you if you think Brady Quinn will skip his senior season?
Oh, college football is popular all right. Last week noted sports periodical Entertainment Weekly included the entry "College Football" on its Must List along with Breaking Bonaduce and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. On the Oct. 17 SportsCenter, during an NFL Countdown segment, host Dan Patrick had the audacity to ask analysts Michael Irvin and Mike Ditka what was to me a rhetorical question: "Is the NFL being overshadowed by college football this season?"

Of course Irvin and Ditka both said no, but what would you expect? And the fact that Patrick even introduced the notion is enough for me. Fact is, with the exception of those two, plus John Clayton, Ron Jaworski and Sal Paolantonio, most of us are far more intrigued by the college game this autumn than the NFL.

Which brings me to my first point: When you envision the loveliness that is Angelina Jolie, do you find yourself wondering, If only she were a blonde?
See, because Jolie is beautiful. Indisputable video evidence of that assertion exists. Last year, Esquire named her "Sexiest Woman Alive", which is like getting an ESPY for pulchritude. And gentlemen prefer blondes, or so I've heard. So you might be tempted to assume that were Ms. Jolie to don a blonde wig, she'd be even more comely.
I don't think so.

And I'm not just saying that because I sat through Life or Something Like It a few years back.
So my question is: How come everyone is forever trying to put a blonde wig on college football?

The pundits were breathless in the aftermath of the USC-Notre Dame contest. On the Monday following the game it was the lead topic on ESPN's Around the Horn (what I like to call "Pardon the Eruption"), Pardon the Interruption and SportsCenter -- this was two days later. This was after a Sunday of NFL and a weekend of baseball league championship series games had been played in the interim. And yet USC-Notre Dame led these programs. All that for a college football game in which one of the participants would not even have garnered a No. 4 seed if college football determined its champions the way college basketball does.
On "Pardon the Eruption", Los Angeles Times columnist J.A. Adande took to affixing the blonde wig to the sport. Adande noted that, yes, it was an unforgettable game, but then he reversed field almost as quickly as Reggie Bush. Adande lamented that, because there's no college football playoff, we're all going to be deprived of the golden opportunity of seeing these two teams meet again in the postseason. Host Tony Reali agreed with Adande and awarded him those oh-so-valuable points without even challenging the fallacies in his argument, such as:

1. So if there were a playoff, Notre Dame and USC would definitely meet?

2. So if there were a playoff, there's even the chance that the two best teams would meet (more on this below)?

3. So a sequel would be guaranteed to capture the irreproducible magic of this tilt? Do you recall Florida-Florida State in the 1996 Sugar Bowl? Or, better yet, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2?

4. What have you done with T.J. Simers? (Sorry, that's my own issue.)
We are more than halfway through the 2005 college football season. Thus far, what has transpired on the field has generated that deserved Must List mention. But take a look at the rankings; you'll see that six teams (USC, Texas, Virginia Tech, Alabama, Georgia and UCLA) are still undefeated. And, just as the leaves leave the trees and the days grow inevitably shorter, the clamor of excitement over satisfying games such as Texas-Ohio State, Tennessee-LSU and USC-Notre Dame (to name just a few) will begin to yield to a clamoring for a national playoff.

And here I suspect that I am one of the very few folks interested in college football (with the provision that I have nothing to gain financially from the incumbent system -- maddening as it sometimes can be) who opposes a playoff.
Now, before you fire off that irate e-mail, let me attempt to head off your arguments at the pass:

I want to see a playoff because I want to see the two best teams play each other for the national championship.

Since '92, when the Bowl Alliance that would later beget the Bowl Coalition that eventually begat the Bowl Championship Series began, a bowl game has featured a No. 1 versus No. 2 (these and all rankings that will follow are from the Associated Press poll) matchup seven of a possible 13 times. That's roughly 54 percent of the time.
Now, let's assess NCAA basketball, which unlike college football, attaches a cool, alliterative nickname (March Madness is so less buttoned-up than Bowl Championship Series) to its method of determining a champion. In those same 13 years, a No. 1 versus No. 2 in the final has happened ... once. That was last March, when No. 2 North Carolina beat No. 1 Illinois.
And that was just the first time in 30 years that March Madness delivered a 1-2 punch in its Monday night finale. Not that anyone complained.

You're throwing numbers at me. I just want to see the two best teams settle it on the field.

And who are the two best teams? Last year, for example, a lot of people thought that Auburn, which finished 12-0, got jobbed by not being invited to play in the BCS Championship Game (Oklahoma and USC, also both 12-0, had that honor).
So let's say Auburn would have played USC instead of Oklahoma, and let's say the Tigers won. Now, you and I have watched a ton of college football in our day. Are you going to tell me that there's no chance that if Oklahoma were to have played Auburn that the Sooners would have won?
College football is not the transitive property of addition. It is not Penn State beat Minnesota and Minnesota beat Michigan, therefore Penn State will defeat Michigan (just ask anyone in Happy Valley).
So when you say, I just want to see the two best teams settle it on the field, I'll be happy to go along with you as soon as there's a foolproof manner of determining that.

Say, for instance, we decided last year that Auburn and Oklahoma and USC were all too worthy not to be invited to the party. So, to keep it a couples' event, we invite Texas (whose only loss was to Oklahoma) as well. Now we got ourselves a Football Final Four.
Auburn plays Oklahoma.
USC plays Texas.
The winners meet for the national title.
The Sooners win. So do the Longhorns. And in the final Texas beats Oklahoma.
So Texas is the national champion, because the Longhorns won it on the field? But isn't that what the Sooners did against the Longhorns three months earlier?
It's like this: I'm going to have turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing with brown gravy and cranberry sauce for dinner this Thursday. I'll eat the same meal four Thursdays from now and they'll call it Thanksgiving. But it's still turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing ...

Every other sport determines its national champion with a playoff.

So do we. I know it sounds cliché, but it is true; the season is the playoff. When Ohio State beat Michigan State two Saturdays ago, the Buckeyes eliminated the Spartans from national championship contention as surely as North Carolina did its hoops schoolmates in the Final Four last March.
Did you ever stop to think that it's the very absence of an official playoff that makes these September and October games so thrilling? That every Saturday in autumn is March Madness? That Matt Leinart's fourth-down toss to Dwayne Jarrett, though it technically occurred in midseason, was no less imperative to USC's championship quest than Grant Hill's toss to Christian Laettner once was for Duke?
That Jolie is better as a brunette?

 

[Oh8ch]

The argument in the first post is similar to the one I have always made. The important question, though, is what is lost if we have a playoff (at least one of more than 4 teams).

The answer is that it takes away from the regular season. Virginia Tech is playing for the NC as I type. They play for it every week. OSU got to play Texas for the NC. Even had the home field advantage. We don't deserve a shot - we HAD a shot.

The argument for a playoff is being pushed by tv. They know that there are two types of fans for every sport. The smaller group - like us - will watch college football every week no matter what. The casual fan, however, doesn't pay that much attention til the World Series or NFL Playoffs roll around. Give those folks a playoff and ratings skyrocket.

So what did it prove in the NFL and MLB that teams have won the Super Bowl or World Series who could not win their division? What does it prove in NCAA BBall when teams win the title who couldn't win their conference?

There are NOT 8 teams in college football who deserve a shot at the title in any given season. There might be 3 some years, never more than 4. OSU deserves no such shot. To give them one and watch them win doesn't prove they are the best, it only proves that what you prove on the field proves nothing.

I don't want to see kids sitting out for the Michigan game getting healthy for a playoff. CFB is awesome. Leave it alone.

 

[jwinslow]

a better question is, would we be better to ditch the BCS and return to the old system? That would retain the tradition of CFB and value to each season game, but also try to avoid misranking teams. Basically people need to realize it has always been unfair, it just has been less obvious in past years. I think a 4 game playoff would be just fine. Anything more than that and unworthy teams creep in.

 

[Piney]

I think for the purpose of picking 2 teams to play in a national championship that the BCS actually works. But the main flaw in the BCS is that it can only pick 2 teams.

The one thing that made me laugh hilariously was the overreaction to Texas being #1. So what? Is that the final rankings? Does it change who would play? The only difference between #1 & #2 is being able to wear your home jerseys.

But Oh8ch is right, there is not 8 teams that are "National Champion" worthy by the end of the year. 4 teams is about as much as it can handle. But what about in 2002 when Miami & Ohio State were the only undefeateds? I think that year played out if it was a 4 team plus-one model we would have played USC? Do you really think a 2 loss team deserved even a chance at a title?

I have been a long proponent of a playoff of some sort. But really, sports is about debate and drama. And from the first kickoff to the last second ticking off during the BCS Title game we have that. And then the off-season a ton of debate about playoffs, who got screwed and what will happen next year. What more could you ask for? Really getting a playoff might be more anti-climatic than anything else.

 

[Onebuckfan]

I could live with the BCS system if strength of schedule was more important. It seems OSU and Texas could be penalized for playing each other. If UT loses a close game at tOSU they could be shut out of the NC game to Va Tech. I thinkthat would be unfair.

 

[Pheasant]

My favorite part of the BCS is that when it first started all the analysts said it was the best thing since pumpkin pie. "Now you don't have the SID's making the decision as to who is the best team..." blah blah blah. They said it was a joke that people who didn't watch each team play could rank those teams accurately at all. The BCS was the saving grace for college football.
Then teams started making it into the championship game despite not being ranked 1 or 2. When USC was kept out of the title game they decided there was no reason to keep the team the voters had chosen out of the title game. What a joke.
The BCS blows. Either go to an 8 team playoff, utilizing a BCS like system to figure out which 8 teams -and play the first round in the 4 major bowls, or go back to the old system.
Let us argue about who the best team is. It'll be a lot more fun than bitching about computer programs.