bc's bcs manifesto
If it's December, then it must be time for the annual gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, and general whining that is the debate about 1) who should be playing in the BCS college football championship game and 2) whether the BCS is good or bad. Well, to be honest, #2 is really a debate between whether the BCS is bad, or the worst thing ever to happen to the world of sports/the actual world.
This year tantrum central is Austin, TX, where University of Texas fans gripe about being ranked behind Oklahoma, despite the fact that both teams have one loss and that Texas beat Oklahoma in their lone meeting (on a neutral field, by 10 points). But other teams might gripe as well. USC, Texas Tech, and Penn State (1 loss apiece), for instance. Or even the undefeated teams from smaller conferences (Utah and Boise State). There are good reasons to ignore their gripes (a lack of schedule strength, mainly), but they are legitimate nonetheless.
The most powerful BCS basher is none other than President-elect Barack Obama himself, who used his "last interview before the election!!!!!" (as ESPN relentlessly hyped Chris Berman's half-time questioning during the Nov. 3rd Monday Night Football broadcast) to make the case that college football needs a playoff.
To be sure, if the goal is to crown an undisputed winner "on the field" then a playoff is the only way to go. The obstacles in its way are many, enough to make it unlikely in the near future. But if Division I-AA (recently christened, pointedly, the "Football Championship Subdivision") can have a playoff so can the big boys.
The problem is that even a playoff won't solve all of the fairness issues. The most common proposal is for an 8 team playoff. This year that would exclude Boise State and Texas Tech: teams given no chance to prove on the field their championship caliber or lack thereof.
But why do we need a single champion? Is it so bad to have to argue at the end of the year about who is really the best?
My problem with the BCS is not the “bowl” part, but the fact that it claims to crown a “champion.” I’d rather just let the voters do it after watching the bowl games, with the caveat, of course, that we get better voters. The current polls are a joke; coaches reward their friends and the teams that beat them, but don’t pay much attention to the teams that they won’t play. This leads to lazy and often incomprehensible rankings. I’d like to see some sort of screening process to ensure that the voters actually know what they’re doing; let’s make all the voting transparent while we’re at it. We can keep the computers as an outside reference for voters to consult.
After all the bowl games are over, let this new pool of voters determine a champion; if there are disagreements, fine, that’s more fodder for ESPN discussion boards.
In order for this system to really work, though, we need to have the best possible match-ups. This years’ BCS actually does a pretty good job of things. While I confess that I’d like to see USC take on either Texas/Oklahoma or Florida, USC-Penn State ain’t bad. And Utah-Alabama offers a small-conference unbeaten the chance to prove it belongs with the big boys (It annoyed me to no end in 2005 when undefeated Utah faced—and subsequently thrashed—a mediocre Pitt team. That didn’t tell us anything!) Also, the blasé suckiness that is Cincinnati and Virginia Tech is quarantined, as the two teams face off in the Orange bowl, rather than splitting the teams up to ruin two perfectly good games. In this respect the BCS is an improvement over the old system, in which, for instance, Oklahoma would never meet Florida.
In addition to providing good television, better match-ups make it easier for voters to determine who the best team really is. Imagine for a second that we disregarded the “tradition” of the bowl games, and matched up Florida-Oklahoma and USC-Texas. With the BCS, whoever wins the former game is crowned a champion. But suppose Florida wins by 3, while Texas throttles USC. Why not give the voters a chance to crown the Longhorns?
One more thing. As Brian Fremeau points out, one of the best ways to improve college football is to encourage, if not mandate, more inter-conference games between BCS conferences during the season. The Pac-10 has been a leader in this (the Big-10 as well). Much of the Pac-10’s terrible non-conference record this year is attributable to the fact that it actually scheduled decent non-conference opponents (Penn State, Ohio State, Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan—OK, maybe not Michigan, but in most years that would be a good game). By contrast, Florida played the Citadel—the Citadel!—in November (to be fair, Florida also played Miami and Florida State). And LSU hosted Troy (and nearly lost). Scheduling a patsy for a tune-up in September is acceptable, but after that the best teams ought to play the best teams out of conference. This will also help us determine who the truly great teams are before bowl season.
In summary, I just wasted a lot of time that I should have spent working on my dissertation. But I also got a great deal on my car insurance by switching to GEICO, and if I hadn’t watched so much college football this year (with accompanying commercials), would the Gecko have been able to use his reptilian charm so effectively? That’s a question for the voters to decide.
This year tantrum central is Austin, TX, where University of Texas fans gripe about being ranked behind Oklahoma, despite the fact that both teams have one loss and that Texas beat Oklahoma in their lone meeting (on a neutral field, by 10 points). But other teams might gripe as well. USC, Texas Tech, and Penn State (1 loss apiece), for instance. Or even the undefeated teams from smaller conferences (Utah and Boise State). There are good reasons to ignore their gripes (a lack of schedule strength, mainly), but they are legitimate nonetheless.
The most powerful BCS basher is none other than President-elect Barack Obama himself, who used his "last interview before the election!!!!!" (as ESPN relentlessly hyped Chris Berman's half-time questioning during the Nov. 3rd Monday Night Football broadcast) to make the case that college football needs a playoff.
To be sure, if the goal is to crown an undisputed winner "on the field" then a playoff is the only way to go. The obstacles in its way are many, enough to make it unlikely in the near future. But if Division I-AA (recently christened, pointedly, the "Football Championship Subdivision") can have a playoff so can the big boys.
The problem is that even a playoff won't solve all of the fairness issues. The most common proposal is for an 8 team playoff. This year that would exclude Boise State and Texas Tech: teams given no chance to prove on the field their championship caliber or lack thereof.
But why do we need a single champion? Is it so bad to have to argue at the end of the year about who is really the best?
My problem with the BCS is not the “bowl” part, but the fact that it claims to crown a “champion.” I’d rather just let the voters do it after watching the bowl games, with the caveat, of course, that we get better voters. The current polls are a joke; coaches reward their friends and the teams that beat them, but don’t pay much attention to the teams that they won’t play. This leads to lazy and often incomprehensible rankings. I’d like to see some sort of screening process to ensure that the voters actually know what they’re doing; let’s make all the voting transparent while we’re at it. We can keep the computers as an outside reference for voters to consult.
After all the bowl games are over, let this new pool of voters determine a champion; if there are disagreements, fine, that’s more fodder for ESPN discussion boards.
In order for this system to really work, though, we need to have the best possible match-ups. This years’ BCS actually does a pretty good job of things. While I confess that I’d like to see USC take on either Texas/Oklahoma or Florida, USC-Penn State ain’t bad. And Utah-Alabama offers a small-conference unbeaten the chance to prove it belongs with the big boys (It annoyed me to no end in 2005 when undefeated Utah faced—and subsequently thrashed—a mediocre Pitt team. That didn’t tell us anything!) Also, the blasé suckiness that is Cincinnati and Virginia Tech is quarantined, as the two teams face off in the Orange bowl, rather than splitting the teams up to ruin two perfectly good games. In this respect the BCS is an improvement over the old system, in which, for instance, Oklahoma would never meet Florida.
In addition to providing good television, better match-ups make it easier for voters to determine who the best team really is. Imagine for a second that we disregarded the “tradition” of the bowl games, and matched up Florida-Oklahoma and USC-Texas. With the BCS, whoever wins the former game is crowned a champion. But suppose Florida wins by 3, while Texas throttles USC. Why not give the voters a chance to crown the Longhorns?
One more thing. As Brian Fremeau points out, one of the best ways to improve college football is to encourage, if not mandate, more inter-conference games between BCS conferences during the season. The Pac-10 has been a leader in this (the Big-10 as well). Much of the Pac-10’s terrible non-conference record this year is attributable to the fact that it actually scheduled decent non-conference opponents (Penn State, Ohio State, Utah, Oklahoma, Michigan—OK, maybe not Michigan, but in most years that would be a good game). By contrast, Florida played the Citadel—the Citadel!—in November (to be fair, Florida also played Miami and Florida State). And LSU hosted Troy (and nearly lost). Scheduling a patsy for a tune-up in September is acceptable, but after that the best teams ought to play the best teams out of conference. This will also help us determine who the truly great teams are before bowl season.
In summary, I just wasted a lot of time that I should have spent working on my dissertation. But I also got a great deal on my car insurance by switching to GEICO, and if I hadn’t watched so much college football this year (with accompanying commercials), would the Gecko have been able to use his reptilian charm so effectively? That’s a question for the voters to decide.
posted by bc at 8:42 PM
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