The common thinking approach is to have a playoff with the top 8 teams. You think choosing the top 2 is difficult? Things get a lot messier and you move further down in the rankings. The final BCS standings this year are as follows:
- USC 12-0
- Texas 12-0
- Penn State 10-1
- Ohio State 9-2
- Oregon 10-1
- Notre Dame 9-2
- Georgia 10-2
- Miami 9-2
- Auburn 9-2
- Va. Tech 10-2
- West Virginia 10-1
- LSU 10-2
As you can see USC and Texas are the clear cut #'s 1 and 2, but things get pretty ugly fighting for that #8 spot. Go with the BCS standings and the Big East has no representatives and the SEC, whom many (but not me) consider the toughest college football division, gets only 1 representative in Georgia. Put simply, the super conferences - Big 10, Pac-10, SEC, ACC, Big 12, and Big East - would never agree to a playoff system in college football without guaranteed representation, i.e. money.
The current system of deriving these rankings is also ridiculous in light of the coaches poll voting results being released today. Listen, I know I'm a little biased towards Notre Dame, but you'd have to be a fool to not have them ranked in your top 6 or 7. Steve Spurrier had Notre Dame ranked 14th! Ty Willingham and Mike Bellotti both had them ranked 9th (not that they had hidden agendas or anything). In last week's coaches poll Notre Dame was ranked higher than Oregon by 26 points. Neither team played this past weekend, but somehow Oregon leap-frogged Notre Dame in this week's coaches poll by 15 points! Huh? So let me get this straight - last week you thought Notre Dame was better, neither team played this weekend, and now, after you've had a chance to sleep on it, you think Oregon is better? Have I got that correct? People will never allow a completely unbiased, all-computer ranking system because they feel, with justification I think, that the computers can't properly account for a team's ability. And they'll never dump the computers because you have yahoos like Steve Spurrier ranking Notre Dame 14th because Charlie Weis ripped on him before the season started.
So until you can create a reliable ranking system that determines which teams are included in the playoff and until you can get the conferences to accept the fact that they may miss out on guaranteed money every year you'll never have a playoff. Personally, I'm fine with the current system. It gives us the game we want to see 8 out of 10 times. And if a team gets gypped? That's why the AP broke free - they'll automatically anoint the left-out team the co-national champion out of spite. Short of that, the best option would be to dump the BCS "series" and just have the title game which would rotate every year like it currently does. All the other bowls can go back to their previous affiliations and there's no crying about being left out of the so-called "big money" bowls. Oh, but then the actual Bowl Committees will get mad... You just can't win.
3 comments:
You're right there would always be whining and complaining about who gets into a playoff. But, with a playoff, the debate would end when the playoffs start and everybody would be pumped to watch a playoff. As opposed to having to debate and listen to ESPN's analysis for a month leading up to the BCS. A playoff would get us over that debate and cut it off much sooner.
Not only that but every game would mean something. What do we get out of the non-championship bowls? Just a chance to watch two teams play that's all. Nothing's really at stake.
The benefit of an 8-team playoff isn't that we'd get the best eight teams in the country; it's that we'd definitely get the best two teams in the country. You yourself cite the example of the NCAA tournament, and of course you're right--there are always bubble tournaments who whine. But the debate is over who gets the opportunity to lose in the first round, or possibly pull an upset and lose in the second round instead. Nobody, even the teams who get excluded, is claiming that either these teams or the teams who get included ahead of them are anything close to being genuine championship contenders. Sure no. 9 and no. 10 would be saying that they're the "real" no. 8 ... but we'd have a legitimate national champion, something we simply can't have when we're trying to fit three undefeated teams or three one-loss teams into a two-team national championship format.
I love the bowls. But even more, I would've loved to see Auburn, Oklahoma and USC decide it on the field.
I wouldn't go so far as to say we'd "definitely get the best two teams in the country." You mean to tell me 3 years ago Indiana and Maryland were the two best college basketball teams in the country? Or Utah was one of the two best in 1998? In a playoff structure upsets happen. Bucknell wasn't better than Kansas last year, but they won and that makes it easier for other teams down the road because they get to play Bucknell and not Kansas. That sometimes allows unworthy teams to get on a hot streak or catch a break. Much like this year's Florida St. team winning the ACC. Were they better than Va. Tech? No. Va. Tech proved it on the field for the entire season. Florida St. got lucky in the championship. Right place, right time, that's all. The current system won't prevent this "right place, right time" possibility, but it's as good, if not better, a measuring stick than any playoff.
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