BCS - C = ?
So today I remembered that I have a blog that I never post in/on/at. Kind of stumbled onto it on accident. So, why not throw down with an overdue update? Well, with all the BCS BS going on this weekend, why not put in my two cents?
As of right now, it appears that LSU will be taking on Ohio St. for the National Championship, essentially screwing 10 or so teams out of their chance to prove they are worthy. LSU wins the popularity contest that is the Coaches and Harris polls, and Ohio St. gets in simply because they attach the word "The" to their names when referring to their University. Sure, OSU has a good case for why they deserve a place in the BCS Title game, but no more than Kansas does.
What? Kansas doesn't deserve a shot? They are, after all, the only other 1-loss team in Division 1 this year. That one loss coming to a Missouri team that was ranked #4 at the time, and following the game bolted to #1 in the BCS. A Missouri team that, by the way, beat Illinois. Now Missouri loses to Oklahoma, and suddenly Kansas gets forgotten? I'm not buying it.
Now who was it that Illinois beat just a few weeks ago? Before you call Kansas' schedule in to question, remember who Ohio St. scheduled for non-conference games this year. Kent St., Washington, Akron, and the 1-AA monster Youngstown St. That's quality scheduling right there. As far as conference toughness goes, the Big 10 is just as weak as the Big XII this year. Any conference who's #2 lost to any 1-AA school can't possibly consider themselves tough. Sorry.
Now let's say we take a team like Florida St. or Miami, give them KU's schedule, with the same results. Is there any argument over which 2-loss team gets the other spot in the Title game? Hell no. In fact, Ohio St. probably enters the game as the #2 team in the nation. The fact that Kansas is not traditionally known as a National Championship contender is all that is excluding them from a shot to play for the crystal.
This season is the latest and greatest argument for why college football needs a playoff system. The BCS simply does not work for anyone except the pocketbooks of the NCAA. The sad thing is, a playoff system is ridiculously easy to put into place. Here's how I envision it working:
There are 11 conferences in Division 1-A football, both major (BCS) and otherwise. By taking these 11 conference champions, along with 5 at-large teams (which could be put in place by using the BCS ranking system), we have created a 16-team playoff.
1st Round - Dec. 15: The top 8 teams are given home games, with the seeding set up the same way as one of the regions of the NCAA basketball tournament (1 vs. 16, 8 vs. 9, etc). Again, the top seeds are determined by the BCS rankings (since they work so well).
2nd Round - Dec 22: The 8 teams that advance play in 4 bowl games, two of which are BCS bowls (Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Rose), and the other two are two of four second-tier bowls (Cotton, Outback, Gator, and Citrus--I absolutely refuse to call it the Capital One Bowl. The excessive corporate sponsorship of college football is just ridiculous. Call the damn bowls the Something-Or-Other Bowl, presented by X Corporation, fine. Naming it the Corporation Bowl, and now we know, it's all about the money...but that's another issue, for another time. Judging by my frequent updates, you can look forward to hearing my full opinion on the matter in say, 10 months to a year. But I digress). These bowls would be on a rotating schedule, much the same as the 4 BCS bowls rotated which one hosted the National Title game before the BCS decided it needed its own game.
3rd Round (Final 4) - Jan 1: The Final 4 square off in the remaining two BCS bowl games. Keep the January 1 tradition alive with these two big games. Simple enough, not much to explain. Moving on...
National Championship - Jan. 7: The last two teams standing square off in the BCS National Title game. More than likely this would stay on the same 4-game rotation schedule that's currently used.
Now granted, your Sun Belt conference champion would get demolished in the first round, but how is it any different from SW Directional St. Poly Tech A&M getting pummeled by Duke in the first round of the basketball tournament? They earned a shot, they deserve to be there. Settle it on the field. Let them play. And yes, there will still be debates about who is the last team in, and who got screwed out of the last at-large bid. That's life. However, under this system, a team like Hawaii would have only themselves to blame if they failed to make the National Championship game. They won their conference, they made the tournament. Now get out there and prove you can hang with the big boys. Take down USC in the Cotton Bowl. Maybe UCF pulls off a huge upset, dumping Oklahoma in Norman in week 1? Maybe Ohio St. proves they deserve a shot at the title by rolling over Virginia Tech in the Rose Bowl?
Sadly, this won't ever happen as long as the BCS is around. There's simply way too much money involved, although no one at the NCAA Headquarters, or whatever they call themselves, will ever admit it. The have some pretty lame reasons they keep feeding us though.
#1 It would extend the season too long.
The BCS title game is on Jan. 7 this year. That's just over 5 weeks from the end of the regular season. In my system, after a week off, start the tournament Dec. 15, and it's all over on Jan 7. Wow, that's the exact same time frame. So much for prolonging the season.
#2 Fans wouldn't travel to all the games.
You're telling me that the farther your team gets in a playoff, the less likely you would be to pay to see them? Or are there really only 50,000 LSU fans nationwide that can afford to buy tickets? If fans miss out on 1st round games, they can (and will) still buy tickets to 2nd and 3rd round games just as easily. The stadiums will fill up. Guaranteed. Saying otherwise is simply a gross underestimation of the passion of college football fans.
#3 It would make the regular season less exciting.
If you ask me, it would make the in-conference portion of the season actually interesting for a change. I could care less when Ole Miss plays Vanderbilt as it is. Give them something to play for, maybe that changes. Maybe when the ticker scrolls across the bottom of my TV screen during another Stuart Scott "boo-yah" session, I might pay attention past the Top 25.
#4 It would take away from the Bowl tradition.
Not if you keep the other bowl games around, like in my scenario. The games are still there, people will still watch them. In fact, you are only tying up 7 bowl games (including the BCS National Title game) with 16 teams, which means two more schools can make the post season. If the NCAA cared about the bowl "tradition" we wouldn't have nearly 30 of them every year. Teams that struggle to finish .500 for the season wouldn't be rewarded with a post-season bid. We wouldn't have to put up with games being named the PapaJohns.com Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl (again, another topic for another time, but come on man!).
This isn't something that just popped into my head today, either. I've felt this way for years--probably since 2001 when Nebraska played Miami in the National Championship. So many people whined that NU didn't deserve a shot, and whether or not they did, the system said "yes." Put in a playoff, and we would have known for sure. Who knows, Oregon might have rolled past the Huskers in the Final 4 and met up with Miami after all.
If only we would have had a playoff.
As of right now, it appears that LSU will be taking on Ohio St. for the National Championship, essentially screwing 10 or so teams out of their chance to prove they are worthy. LSU wins the popularity contest that is the Coaches and Harris polls, and Ohio St. gets in simply because they attach the word "The" to their names when referring to their University. Sure, OSU has a good case for why they deserve a place in the BCS Title game, but no more than Kansas does.
What? Kansas doesn't deserve a shot? They are, after all, the only other 1-loss team in Division 1 this year. That one loss coming to a Missouri team that was ranked #4 at the time, and following the game bolted to #1 in the BCS. A Missouri team that, by the way, beat Illinois. Now Missouri loses to Oklahoma, and suddenly Kansas gets forgotten? I'm not buying it.
Now who was it that Illinois beat just a few weeks ago? Before you call Kansas' schedule in to question, remember who Ohio St. scheduled for non-conference games this year. Kent St., Washington, Akron, and the 1-AA monster Youngstown St. That's quality scheduling right there. As far as conference toughness goes, the Big 10 is just as weak as the Big XII this year. Any conference who's #2 lost to any 1-AA school can't possibly consider themselves tough. Sorry.
Now let's say we take a team like Florida St. or Miami, give them KU's schedule, with the same results. Is there any argument over which 2-loss team gets the other spot in the Title game? Hell no. In fact, Ohio St. probably enters the game as the #2 team in the nation. The fact that Kansas is not traditionally known as a National Championship contender is all that is excluding them from a shot to play for the crystal.
This season is the latest and greatest argument for why college football needs a playoff system. The BCS simply does not work for anyone except the pocketbooks of the NCAA. The sad thing is, a playoff system is ridiculously easy to put into place. Here's how I envision it working:
There are 11 conferences in Division 1-A football, both major (BCS) and otherwise. By taking these 11 conference champions, along with 5 at-large teams (which could be put in place by using the BCS ranking system), we have created a 16-team playoff.
1st Round - Dec. 15: The top 8 teams are given home games, with the seeding set up the same way as one of the regions of the NCAA basketball tournament (1 vs. 16, 8 vs. 9, etc). Again, the top seeds are determined by the BCS rankings (since they work so well).
2nd Round - Dec 22: The 8 teams that advance play in 4 bowl games, two of which are BCS bowls (Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, and Rose), and the other two are two of four second-tier bowls (Cotton, Outback, Gator, and Citrus--I absolutely refuse to call it the Capital One Bowl. The excessive corporate sponsorship of college football is just ridiculous. Call the damn bowls the Something-Or-Other Bowl, presented by X Corporation, fine. Naming it the Corporation Bowl, and now we know, it's all about the money...but that's another issue, for another time. Judging by my frequent updates, you can look forward to hearing my full opinion on the matter in say, 10 months to a year. But I digress). These bowls would be on a rotating schedule, much the same as the 4 BCS bowls rotated which one hosted the National Title game before the BCS decided it needed its own game.
3rd Round (Final 4) - Jan 1: The Final 4 square off in the remaining two BCS bowl games. Keep the January 1 tradition alive with these two big games. Simple enough, not much to explain. Moving on...
National Championship - Jan. 7: The last two teams standing square off in the BCS National Title game. More than likely this would stay on the same 4-game rotation schedule that's currently used.
Now granted, your Sun Belt conference champion would get demolished in the first round, but how is it any different from SW Directional St. Poly Tech A&M getting pummeled by Duke in the first round of the basketball tournament? They earned a shot, they deserve to be there. Settle it on the field. Let them play. And yes, there will still be debates about who is the last team in, and who got screwed out of the last at-large bid. That's life. However, under this system, a team like Hawaii would have only themselves to blame if they failed to make the National Championship game. They won their conference, they made the tournament. Now get out there and prove you can hang with the big boys. Take down USC in the Cotton Bowl. Maybe UCF pulls off a huge upset, dumping Oklahoma in Norman in week 1? Maybe Ohio St. proves they deserve a shot at the title by rolling over Virginia Tech in the Rose Bowl?
Sadly, this won't ever happen as long as the BCS is around. There's simply way too much money involved, although no one at the NCAA Headquarters, or whatever they call themselves, will ever admit it. The have some pretty lame reasons they keep feeding us though.
#1 It would extend the season too long.
The BCS title game is on Jan. 7 this year. That's just over 5 weeks from the end of the regular season. In my system, after a week off, start the tournament Dec. 15, and it's all over on Jan 7. Wow, that's the exact same time frame. So much for prolonging the season.
#2 Fans wouldn't travel to all the games.
You're telling me that the farther your team gets in a playoff, the less likely you would be to pay to see them? Or are there really only 50,000 LSU fans nationwide that can afford to buy tickets? If fans miss out on 1st round games, they can (and will) still buy tickets to 2nd and 3rd round games just as easily. The stadiums will fill up. Guaranteed. Saying otherwise is simply a gross underestimation of the passion of college football fans.
#3 It would make the regular season less exciting.
If you ask me, it would make the in-conference portion of the season actually interesting for a change. I could care less when Ole Miss plays Vanderbilt as it is. Give them something to play for, maybe that changes. Maybe when the ticker scrolls across the bottom of my TV screen during another Stuart Scott "boo-yah" session, I might pay attention past the Top 25.
#4 It would take away from the Bowl tradition.
Not if you keep the other bowl games around, like in my scenario. The games are still there, people will still watch them. In fact, you are only tying up 7 bowl games (including the BCS National Title game) with 16 teams, which means two more schools can make the post season. If the NCAA cared about the bowl "tradition" we wouldn't have nearly 30 of them every year. Teams that struggle to finish .500 for the season wouldn't be rewarded with a post-season bid. We wouldn't have to put up with games being named the PapaJohns.com Bowl and the Meineke Car Care Bowl (again, another topic for another time, but come on man!).
This isn't something that just popped into my head today, either. I've felt this way for years--probably since 2001 when Nebraska played Miami in the National Championship. So many people whined that NU didn't deserve a shot, and whether or not they did, the system said "yes." Put in a playoff, and we would have known for sure. Who knows, Oregon might have rolled past the Huskers in the Final 4 and met up with Miami after all.
If only we would have had a playoff.
posted by rsmbox at 5:09 PM
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