Playoff In the News

There's been a good bit of chatter lately about the long-range possibility of college football getting a more traditional playoff system in place. It won't happen any time soon, but it could happen eventually.

It has finally occurred to me. Even though I am only a small blogger with a few dozen readers, I am probably the most prominent college football commentator who does not support going to a playoff format. I think going to a playoff format might be good for college football, but it would be a disaster for the individual conferences, especially the SEC. And honestly, I care more about the SEC than about the sport as a whole. Mike Slive should be leading the charge against a playoff system, not advocating for it.

I don't want to see the quest for the national championship beat the conference races into submission. If there had been a 4-team playoff last year, Georgia would have been in it under most scenarios, relegating the conference championship Georgia failed to win to a simple consolation prize for the winner, just like it is in basketball.

Quick, who won the Big East Conference in basketball in 2008? See, you don't know, and it just happened two months ago. In football, it was West Virginia.* Oklahoma won the Big 12; USC won the Pac-10; Ohio State won the Big 10, LSU won the SEC; and Virginia Tech won the ACC. That's right off the top of my head.** Why don't you know who won the Big East in basketball? Because it isn't important. No one cares who wins the conferences in basketball. All that matters is the tournament. I don't want to see college football become like that.

With a playoff, the SEC becomes about as important as the NFC South, the winner of which is important only in that it gets an automatic bid to the playoffs. Do we want our conferences to become just geographically convenient divisions of a much more important whole? Do we want the conferences to be mainly about ease of scheduling? Or do we want our conference to continue to maintain a strong identity? Do we want the SEC to continue to mean something.

I like the bowl system, by which I mean I like all the different bowls that criss-cross the country in a two-or-so week time-period. I like that some teams go to a bowl and are very disappointed about which one, but have to face a team that is excited to be going to any bowl at all.

I like that there is a one game winner-take-all for the national championship, with endless debate about who should be in it. I like that it is flawed as all get-out, and only marginally authoritative.

I think the reason for me liking things more or less the way they are is because, for me, the national championship is secondary to the conference championship. In the conference, you're going against your biggest rivals, and you know exactly what you have to do to win. Beat the other teams in your conference. It's precise. It's mathematical. It's satisfying.

Why does college football need to be just like every other sport? Every sport has a tournament at the end to declare a champion. College football is unique in having a post-season that is entirely unlike a tournament, and darn-it, I like it that way. Making college football like every other sport would, well, make it just like every other sport. It would take away the specialness of college football. Do we want college football to become just another tournament-based sport?

This is not to say everything is perfect in the bowl system. Clearly, the bowls are struggling. The non-BCS bowls are too weak, and "January 1" is losing its luster thanks to a ton of games starting before noon when people aren't yet in the mood for football. Recently adding two new bowls to the mix does not really help, unless the other bowls are strengthened.

The birth of the BCS has relegated the other bowls to side shows, but I think that's simply a matter of how the NCAA has chosen to market its bowls. Change that, and I think the current system is fine. Go to a playoff system, and college football as we know it has ended, and it won't just affect December and January.

* Actually, UConn tied for the conference title, but it was awarded to WVU based on tie-breakers.

** I admit, I confirmed my recollections by looking up the conference champions I wasn't lock-sure about, but my recollections were right every time. I can even remember most of the conference champions from 2006. Ohio State, Florida, USC, Oklahoma, Wake Forest, and I think Louisville. Those I did not look up. The point is, going to a playoff format devalues the conference championships, making them less meaningful. If being able to remember them equates to them being meaningful, I think I've made my point.

This is What the BCS Is For

Like it or hate it (and I am ambivalent), the BCS is designed to do exactly this. It is designed to decide who gets to the BCS National Championship Game between multiple teams with legitimate claims to it. It has done that, and we have benefited.

I won't pretend that we have a perfect claim to a shot at the national championship. We're the first two-loss team ever in it, and we lost to an unranked team late in the year. There's no question that we are not the 2005 USC team. But no one is this year. Not even Ohio State's claim to it is perfect (quick, name three good teams Ohio State beat). No one in history has backed into a title game more egregiously than Ohio State just did, by not playing for two consecutive weekends while moving up due to other teams' losses.

Heck, if we had stopped playing football the week before Thanksgiving, no one would be complaining about us getting in the game either.

I'm not saying Ohio State doesn't deserve to be in it, but if we're not the 2005 USC team, they're not the 2005 Texas team either. The computers ranked you a distant 3rd behind LSU and Virginia Tech, and the voters saved you, mainly because you failed to lose more than once.

And Georgia, you aren't the 2004 Auburn Tigers. You are not being screwed here. You're being passed over, but you're not being screwed. If you want to be crowned the best team in the country, you first have to be crowned the best team in the conference. It may not be a definitive rule, but the voters were pretty clear on this matter. Heck, even the computers didn't exactly love you, ranking you 4th overall.

I'm not saying Georgia is no good. I would not do that. I think Georgia is very good, and they aren't exactly wrong when they say that they finished the season as the strongest team in the conference. They didn't start that way though, and they weren't that way in mid-season when they got blown out by Tennessee. Tennessee beat them by 21, but I watched that game and they could have beaten them by more but they shut it down early because they knew it was in the bag.

Virginia Tech? They have a legitimate claim, as does Oklahoma and USC. But, this is what the BCS does. It decides between teams with legitimate claims according to a known set of rules. It chose us. USC would be sitting pretty if they hadn't lost to Stanford, and Oklahoma would be in if they hadn't lost to Colorado. Virginia Tech would be in it if they had even kept it close against us in September (I think).

I certainly think that whatever happens in this game, the legitimacy of this championship will be discussed for years to come. I don't have a problem with that. They don't call it the Mythical National Championship for nothing. And if it weren't for disputed national championships, what would Bama fans have to talk about?

I kid. I kid.

OK, bottom line. We won our conference. The voters made us a very strong 2nd place. The computers made us a very strong 2nd place. We're in. To the extent the whole thing is objective (computers), we passed. To the extent it's subjective (voters), we passed. No one beat more good teams. No one else won a conference as tough as ours. No one near the top played a schedule as strong as ours. We may not have dominated that schedule, and in other years we probably would not have made the championship game with our losses, but this is this year. It's not other years. We're in, and we deserve it. We have nothing to apologize for.

Editor's Note on BCS

As it happens, I pretty much agree with my guest blogger when it comes to the BCS. I agree the whole thing is an illegitimate system that only pretends to add objectivity quality-control to the decision-making process of choosing the national champion. It is, in short, the Kansas of ranking systems: a pretender no one takes seriously when they really think about it.

I actually liked the formulation they used in 2003 and before, where they de-valued human polling and put great emphasis on quality wins. That system was changed because it didn't give results the humans liked.

The current formulation defeats the entire purpose of having a BCS formula, which was to have an mostly objective formula for choosing who would be the teams playing for the title at the end. It emphasized computers, strength of schedule, and quality wins, but it kept USC out of the championship game in 2003 despite the fact that the humans rated them #1. It did, therefore, do exactly what it was designed to do. It used dispassionate formula to trump human biases. The humans protested being overruled, and that system is dead.

They've backtracked just a little on that, by assigning BCS value to the total points teams get in the polls, rather than just the absolute rankings. Therefore, teams that are closely separated in the polls will be closely separated in the poll-portion of the BCS, and therefore easier to jump with solid computer rankings.

Here are some things I believe I will never change my mind about, vis a vis the BCS:

• Only conference champions should be considered. Any system in which teams that failed to win their conference are allowed a chance to win the national championship invites chaos and sacrifices legitimacy in the proceedings. Will this penalize teams that play in conferences with tough championship games (i.e., everyone other than the Pac-10 and the Big 10)? Yes, but those conference aren't required to have a championship game, and can get rid of it if they choose. Those teams also get the benefit of a late-season win against a team most likely to be rather good. This pleases voters and computers, and I think on balance conference championship games normally help a team get to the BCSCG more than they hurt it. But if you think about it, who are the most ridiculed teams to make it to the BCSCG? Nebraska in 2001 and Oklahoma in 2003, one of whom lost its conference championship game, and the other of whom failed to even get to its conference championship game. Both were subsequently beaten in the BCSCG. Last year, a lot of talking heads wanted a rematch of a game that had been played late in the season between Ohio State and Michigan. Both of those teams got exposed as pretenders in their respective bowl games.
• The teams have to be chosen based on accomplishments on the field. I don't want to hear about who has the most talent. I want to hear about who wins the games against the best teams. Your team can be as talented as the Patriots, but if they don't get it done on the field it doesn't even matter. And how would you even know if they're as talented as the Patriots? If you're stating a case for your team, your argument should begin and end with what it has done on the field, and should eschew all talk of things like recruiting, potential NFL talent, All-Americans, personality, and coaches. Now, if there are circumstances that serve to put on-field accomplishments in context, it's fine to bring them up, contextually. For example, if LSU had beaten Georgia in 2005, we very much should have talked about how much we accomplished in the face of Katrina and a shifting schedule. As it happened, we didn't have a legitimate claim to a spot in the BCSCG (see above), but those circumstances definitely serve to highlight and emphasize the accomplishments of the season.
  
• I agree with Poseur about how those accomplishments should be organized within your arguments. Start with your wins. In particular, start with your best wins. Talk about how you won. Did you win tough games? Did you blow out good teams? Did you win close ones? Then discuss your loss(es), if any. Defend your loss. Feel free to use context, such as the temporary loss of a key player, or something of that nature.
• I have no faith in human polling. I think it's getting a little better than it's been in the past, as voters are getting more apt to move teams around a little. In the past, the polls were a ladder in which teams moved down when they lost, and teams moved up to replace the teams that lost. That was the only movement in the polls, at least at the top. This season, we've seen the voters be a lot more willing to move a team around based on quality of performance. It's an improvement, but you still hear absolute garbage being spewed like, "They're #1 until someone proves they aren't by beating them." This attitude is nothing more than an excuse not to think. Personally, I believe any voter who ever utters this phrase should immediately have voting privileges taken away. When you think about it, this ladder method is nothing more than a modified computer ranking, with the simplest and least legitimate formula ever devised. Win your game, whether it's by 30 to a power or by 1 to a 1-AA team, and you move up to replace those above you who lost. Lose your game, and you move down. Whenever I hear a talking-head say this, I want to jump through the screen to throttle him. I've seen way too much of this in the past to have any faith in the polls to get things right.
• No team should EVER base their season on the BCS. It's too arbitrary, too subject to having to decide between legitimate teams, too apt to choose illegitimate teams. I think teams should judge their season based on conference championships. Every team controls its destiny in its conference, and the conference champions are decided objectively, on the field, without ambiguity.
  
• Despite all these complaints, I oppose a playoff. It just doesn't solve anything. A 4-team playoff just shifts the argument from "who's #2" to "who's #4". An 8-team playoff shifts it to "who's #8". And what happens when the #8 team that no one thought should be in it wins? Will that be considered legitimate? I'm doubtful.
• What's the solution? Use the BCS for fun, but get judge the season based on conference championships. The BCS makes for great arguments if you're into that sort of thing, but it is not and should not be the end-all, be-all of season accomplishments.
  

BCS Number Crunching

We’re #1 in the BCS. There’s a cottage industry of breaking down the BCS, and I don’t want to disparage their work, particularly TigerDropping’s LSUMatt, who really should draw a paycheck for his LSU-centric BCS analysis. So don’t think I’m trying to disparage his terrific work when I say this:

It’s all a load of crap.

There’s going to be no shortage of people telling us who to root for and what we need to have happen, but here’s the long and the short of it: the human polls are two-thirds of the formula. So the BCS analysis is really just breaking down the one-third of the BCS which is predictable: the computers. The other two-thirds is just guesswork. In short, it is the illusion of a mathematical objective criteria to selecting the BCS teams when it really is this: the top two teams in the polls with a brake in case they do something remarkably stupid.

This is what you need to know: LSU is #1 in the Coaches and the Harris Poll. And teams which are #1 don’t drop if they don’t lose. Ever. So, if LSU wins out, they are in the BCS title game. If they lose, they are not. Don’t kill yourself working out the Strength of Schedule consequences of Kentucky losing their last two games. It doesn’t really matter.

If we win out, who do we play? Well, probably the #2 team in the polls unless the computers fall in love with a team. I’m not smart enough to run those numbers, but I’d consider it pretty unlikely for Oregon to drop from #2 in the human polls without a loss, so their computer ranking would have to crater for them to miss out on the BCS if they win out. Which I’m sure could happen. The Big 12 is essentially a four-team conference (OU, Kansas, Mizzou, and Texas) and their lack of depth allows the big boys to just pad their record against the Iowa States and Baylors of the world. But if whoever comes out of the Big 12 Elimination Tournament will be hard to keep out of the title game, and Oregon has already proven to be rather easy to screw over (see 2001).

Let’s just pretend I’ve now gone on the standard futile rant about how the BCS is a total farce. The fact that the NCAA changes the formula every single year pretty much sums up why the system is broken. It has absolutely no legitimacy. Let’s put it like this, the RPI is a flawed measure in basketball, but it has a certain level of respect due to its consistent application, and the check of the human committee. The BCS has no such consistency and no such human oversight, despite 2/3 of the formula being human polls. It’s the illusion of objectivity.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. We win, we’re in. We lose, we’re not. You don’t need tea leaves to figure that out. What is right or what a team deserves is completely irrelevant in the BCS and always has been. But beware anyone who makes an argument based on the weakest part of a team’s resume (their loss) then the strongest part of their resume (their quality wins). At the end of the day, the question of quality is answered by answering this question: what has this team accomplished? No one in the nation has accomplished more than LSU. Apologize for nothing. No team has LSU’s resume of quality wins. If they win out, maybe Oklahoma will be on the same level (Texas, Mizzou, and Kansas or Mizzou a second time). Oregon has some great wins, but they have done nothing on the road, which hurts them. And their wins don’t look as impressive, though why has everyone forgotten about Arizona State already?

But based purely on watching teams, as an LSU fan I ask myself this question: what team scares me? Oklahoma has talent but seems even flakier than LSU and doesn’t look as impressive as their gaudy record. Oregon’s offense is terrific but their D is beyond porous. Kansas is crushing teams but the best team they have beaten is Texas A&M so I’m not sold. West Virginia turns the ball over at a disturbing rate though White and Slaton are incredibly explosive. Honestly, the team that matches up best against LSU and I don’t want to face surprises even me: Mizzou. Daniels is quietly having a great year and is the type of QB who eats our defense alive. And they have a pretty stout defense to go with their offense. The one team I find myself a little afraid of is the other Tigers. I never thought I’d find myself thinking that. Then again, they lost to OU.

And we lost to Kentucky. Beware of morons who compare losses.

The Madness Begins

Well, with an introduction like that, I’m sure I’m going to fail to live up to anyone’s expectations. But that’s okay. Richard’s invited my here not just for March Madness, but for all whatever topic springs to my mind, but I am going to stick to basketball for the short term.

I firmly believe that March Madness is the greatest annual sporting event. And not just the NCAA tournament, which is great, but Championship Week as well. Sometimes, ESPN has a habit of creating marketing gimmicks out of nothing (such as Rivalry Week), but Championship Week is simply one of the greatest things the network has ever done. It gives a chance for schools which would never have a chance to play before a national TV audience get some exposure. The teams win out, the network wins out, and the fans win out by getting to see even more basketball.

The greatest thing about March Madness is the fact there are 336 teams in Division I basketball, and every single one of them has a chance to win the title. The winners of the conference tournaments earn automatic bids to the NCAA tournament which means that 331 teams went into the season knowing their fate would be decided by what happens on the court (the five independents are pretty much screwed). This is in stark contrast to the inequitable BCS system used in football.

The BCS is riddled with problems, which I won’t detail right now, but chief among them is that almost half of Division I teams go into the season with absolutely no chance of winning the title. The have nots can not win the title even if they win all of their games, and are left to content themselves on moral victories like Boise St. Since the BCS formula punishes losses more than poor scheduling, there is no incentive for the teams into the big conferences to ever schedule the teams from the weaker conferences. And we are left with a system in which the rich get rich and the poor get poorer.

Not so in basketball. Sure, there is a huge gap in quality between the ACC (ranked #1 in conference RPI) and the SWAC (ranked last), but no team in the SWAC can complain that things weren’t decided on the court. Their champion will earn a bid to the tournament just like anyone else. Sure, there’s no at-large opportunity available, but there is still opportunity. The system is weighted in favor of the big schools, but not to the exclusion of the small schools. NCAA basketball is a true meritocracy.

There will be no debate about the polls or if this team could have beaten that team. Sure, the 35th at-large team will complain that they were better than the 34th at-large team which gobbled up the very last bid to the field, but the committee usually does a top notch job of selecting teams. And it’s hard for the 35th team to complain they have been denied a title shot. If your team gets left out of the field, there is a simple answer to your complaints they got jobbed out of an at-large bid: the team should have won their conference.

Championship Week is all about that. This is their one shot at the field, as it is highly unlikely the loser of the tournament will get an at-large bid. The whole season comes down to one game. And, unlike the big schools, at the little schools the players really are student-athletes. They aren’t going to the NBA. Winning the conference tournament and going to the Big Dance really is the highlight of their entire athletic careers. They just want to make it to the field. The winners of these games will get in the hard way, they will earn it.

That’s why you should watch these championship games of conferences you’ve never heard of. Because this really is what the NCAA aspires to be. This is amateur sports at its very best.