We're headed for another disaster with the BCS. Penn State appears to be headed for an undefeated season, which should allow them to get into the national title game without being one of the two best teams in the country. And, we might have a scenario where the other team in the national title game is taken from a one-loss crew including USC, Texas, OU/Texas Tech/OK State, Alabama, Florida. And, we could have multiple undefeateds from the non-BCS conferences: Boise State, Utah and Ball State that would be left out.
I've seen a clip of Barack Obama on ESPN multiple times today (the same clip, multiple times) calling for an 8-team playoff. My question is: which 8 teams get to play?
For kicks, I'm going to play out the rest of the season in a reasonable manner.
SEC: Alabama and Florida win out the rest of the regular season, but UF takes down the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. Alabama and Florida each have 1 loss on the season.
Big 10: Penn State continues on undefeated.
Pac 10: USC rolls the remainder of the season, winning the conference with just the loss to Oregon State.
Big 12: Texas wins out. Texas Tech beats OK State and loses at OU. But, OU loses to OK State in Stillwater. So, Texas and Texas Tech have one loss each, with Tech having the tie-breaker of head to head. OU and OSU each have two losses. I set it up this way because I didn't want the worst-case scenario. It's entirely possible that we could have three teams from the Big 12 South with just one loss at the end of the year, but let's not go there for now.
ACC and Big East: Someone wins each of those conferences with just 2 losses on the season, let's call it WVU and Florida State.
Other conferences: TCU takes out Utah, but Utah beats BYU. TCU and Utah each finish the season with one loss (TCU's only loss is at OU early in the season). Boise State and Ball State run the table.
If you want an 8-team playoff with all undefeateds and the winners of the 6 "BCS" Conferences, you'd get the following field:
Ball State
Boise State
Florida
Florida State
Penn State
Texas Tech (via tie-breaker over Texas, presuming a win over the Big 12 North champ)
USC
WVU
If you leave out Ball State and Boise State, you could insert Texas and Alabama. But, is it fair to leave out undefeated teams?
We don't need a playoff added on to the current format, we need a better system for figuring out who the best teams are!
Who was the best team in the NFL last year? It was the Patriots. They didn't win the Super Bowl, but they were the best team. Does the best team in college basketball usually win the national title? That's debatable, but the 64-team single elimination tourney isn't the best way to have the best team win. The larger the single-elimination tournament, the more likely that the best team will lose to a team they shouldn't lose to. Maybe you hit a bad match-up ... maybe your team has a bad game ... maybe you get shafted by the refs ... who knows? The solution is a systematic way to determine who the best two teams are ... then having them play in the national title game, winner take all. How do you determine the two best teams? Well, you get intelligent people to write code that analyzes results from the entire season to rank teams.
The current system doesn't work because there aren't enough meaningful results. And, it's going to take a governing body controlling scheduling to fix the problem. Here's how you do it.
1. Have teams play two pre-season games to get ready for the season schedule.
2. The season schedule starts with conference play, with 8 games for most teams over 9 weeks (teams in conferences with 10 (or 11) teams would play all 9 weeks).
3. Conference championships would be the next week, plus a meeting between the winners of the Big 10 and Pac 10 (site rotating between the Rose Bowl and some Big 10 country site).
4. Also, during conference championship week, the non-conference schedule would start for teams that aren't in conference title games. Then, for the rest of the season (3 or 4 more games), teams would continue to be matched up.
5. At the end of the season, the rankings would list teams from 1-nt, where nt is the number of teams, whatever it happens to be that year. The top x will go to bowls (x is equal to 2 times the number of bowls that year). There are two options for the championship: i) the top 2 teams play for the national title or ii) the top 4 play a single elimination tourney with the national title game being played the week between the NFL Conference Finals and the Super Bowl.
How does the scheduling work? Has everyone out there taken the GRE? If the first math question is 1+1= ? ... and you answer 2, then you'll get a tougher question. If you get it wrong, well ... uh oh. Perhaps the next question is: 2+x=8 ... you say x=6 and get a more difficult question. The third question is x^2=4. If you say that x=2, you get it wrong (x can be either 2 or -2) and you get an easier question for the next one. In this way, the system can more accurately gauge your actual aptitude than with a set bank of questions that everyone answers. It would take some flexibility by fans, but I'm sure people would make accommodations on short notice for these games. Perhaps, you could even lock in certain weeks that were guaranteed home games, although the opponent would be up in the air. I would start by suggesting that match-ups are scheduled between 2-3 weeks in advance, based on the rankings at that point. The previous year's rankings could be used to help create the early season rankings, because non-conference results will be non-existent.
We think the Big 12 is the best conference, but we don't really know. Maybe it's the SEC. Wouldn't it be nice is we could line up the following set of games one weekend to help us figure things out (kind of like the ACC-Big 10 challenge in BB):
Texas v. Florida
TTech v. Alabama
OU v. Georgia
OK State v. LSU
Missouri v. Mississippi
Kansas v. Vandy
Nebraska v. South Carolina
A&M v. Auburn
K-State v. Kentucky
CU v. Arkansas
Baylor v. Miss. State
Iowa State. v. Tennessee
Based on the results of the games, the rankings would be reshuffled. And, by having lots of meaningful results, we could sift through the teams and actually figure out who the best teams are.
Or, we can continue to watch Alabama play Arkansas State and OU host Chattanooga. And, we'd be able to work in Boise State, TCU, Utah, BYU, and Ball State against strong teams from "BCS" conferences to see if they are legit or not. Tulsa was undefeated until they lost (barely) to Arkansas last week. Who else did Tulsa beat in non-conference games: North Texas, New Mexico and Central Arkansas. If Tulsa had beat Arkansas and finished undefeated, would we really know if they were any good?
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I just listened to Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson (I think those are the guys on the Heat v. Spurs broadcast) say that college football needs a playoff. The current system is not ideal, but neither is a system that adds an 8 team playoff to the end of a season. If you replace the BCS with an 8 team playoff without improving the out-of-conference competition, you aren't taking the biggest step forward. If you're going to make a major adjustment, you might as well go all the way. If someone offers to buy you any new car you want to replace your old beater, are you going to settle for a Ford Focus (no offense to Ford or the Focus) over a loaded 7-Series BMW?
I'll take my Sooners as an example. They have 4 non-conference games and 8 conference games during the regular season. It's not uncommon (though it doesn't look real promising this year) for the Sooners to play in the Big 12 Championship game. Then, there is the bowl game. So, you can have up to 14 games in a season.
If you go with the 8 team playoff, you add 2 games, potentially, to those 14, giving you 16. Maybe the presidents don't want 16 games. Plus, you still don't have a good barometer about which teams to include in the 8 (how do Boise State, Ball State and Utah stack up against teams in the Big 12 and SEC?).
However, you can use any number of games under my scenario. Obviously, the more games you play, the more information you have to determine how teams stack up. Perhaps, my brother can shed some light on the statistical aspects of such a problem? Roy? How many non-conference games would typically be needed to separate out the top teams? I'm guessing the current system would be similar to having one week after the conference schedule in my scenario, because you have some reasonable non-conference match-ups in a given year (Ohio State v. USC, TCU v. OU, Utah v. Michigan, Oregon State v. Penn State, etc.) Plus, Notre Dame provides information by matching up against teams from a variety of conferences. But, systematic non-conference match-ups will certainly be more meaningful (and more fun to watch) than the ones we're subjected to now.
Overall, this is not a bad system (it certainly is much better than the current system) but I do have a couple problems with it. One, the difficulty of a non-BCS conference team to get to the top of your rankings. Call it my Gonzaga bias from college basketball, but I like to root for the mid-major non-BCS schools like a Utah, Boise State, Hawaii, etc. Over the past few years the big bowl games they have been involved in have been a mixed bag. A hugely lucky win for Boise State against Oklahoma (sorry for bringing it up) and a blowout loss for Hawaii against Georgia. Perhaps a better solution for this would be to dissolve the conferences altogether (I know this will never happen, but it would help your system) thus allowing for teams to play more out of conference games. Although creating a headache for the schedule makers, this situation would allow for possibly the first five games of a teams schedule to be pre-determined and after the first four games the second half schedule would be created that would then match up the power teams regardless of conference, thus creating a defacto playoff system built into the season. If you win your first four games and are ranked, it doesn't matter if you are Florida, Oklahoma, or some directional Michigan school you get to play some real meaningful games. Then after another four games you would have some real clarity as to who the strongest teams are and you can schedule each teams remaining one or two games. I think this would then create a system that would allow for both issues to be addressed; a more systematic way to determine the best teams and a way for the mid-majors to join in on the party. Although your plan is certainly implementable, as mine is not due to conference business contracts etc., I feel as though it would be fairer and clearer.
The second issue that I have with your scheduling is only heightened with my above amendment. Should weight be given to a team that improves as the season goes along? Your schedule (and the current BCS) look for teams that are strong all season long. But what about the team that improves over the course of the season and may very well be the best team come December and January. I think if Texas Tech loses to Oklahoma and Penn State loses to, say Michigan State, and Florida beats Alabama in the SEC championship game we may be looking at the following situation- a big mess of one loss teams: Florida, Alabama (although with Florida's win over Alabama they get the tie breaker), USC, Penn State, the trio of OU, Texas, TTech (a championship game which would knock one of them to two losses but still leave two of them with one loss, albeit it one as conference champ). Out of those teams I would say three teams deserve a shot at the Championship: USC, Florida, and whoever comes out of the Big XII. How do you choose between those three? I would say that Florida and USC are the better of those teams because both have been destroying people since their losses to lesser teams. Those two teams improvement over the past month+ since their losses should be accounted for someway. The current BCS allows this in factoring in the human polls into its formula, thus allowing human opinion of a teams improvement to influence the BCS. I don't think your system would allow for this, but my question is simply this, should it?
This is a response to Michael's comments.
Michael, I don't believe it will be difficult for a non-BCS conference team to get to the top of the rankings. If a team performs really well in their conference schedule (like Boise State, Utah, TCU - conference loss was close and on the road at Utah, Ball State, etc.), you would be lumped in the upper echelon of teams with the big boys from the SEC, Big 12, Pac-10, etc. If a team performs well in the first round of non-conference games, it will get another difficult match-ups in the future. If a team doesn't do so well, it will be downgraded to some degree. It would be optimal to be able to schedule games and announce them on Sunday for the next week, but this might cause logistical problems. Obviously, the more results you have before you schedule the games, the better the match-ups will be.
With regard to dissolving the conferences, I don't think that's a good idea. I think one of the strengths of college football is the rivalries, and I think you want to preserve those if you can. A lot of the best rivalries (Michigan v. Ohio State, Florida v. Georgia, Auburn v. Alabama, OU v. Oklahoma State, OU v. Texas, Texas v. Texas A&M, etc.) will be preserved by continuing to play conference games. I'd also give preference to other rivalry games as long as they fit within the context of determining the desired information (Arkansas v. Texas, USC v. ND, ND v. BC, FSU v. Florida, etc.) If ND isn't good enough to warrant a game with USC, then they need to get better ... maybe next year, boys.
As for improving as the season goes along, I think my system does favor the teams that are playing the best at the end of the season. Why? Well, that's when you're playing the non-conference games. As long as you're in the mix after conference play (if you lose 3 times in conference play, it might be difficult to climb the ladder), you have a run of tough games at the end of the season to prove you deserve to be in consideration.
If Florida beats Alabama and OU beats Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, we could have Florida, Alabama, OU, Texas, Texas Tech, USC and Penn State all with one loss. Plus, Boise State, Ball State and Utah undefeated! Are you kidding me?
Florida lost at home to Mississippi. USC lost on the road to Oregon State. OU, Texas and Texas Tech will each have one loss in the round-robin. Penn State lost to Iowa and Alabama would have lost to Florida. I'd say USC, Florida and Penn State are the teams with the worst losses. But, it's only one loss. Teams have bad games. Weird things happen. I'm trying to get away from a system where freak things determine your fate. But, I disagree that USC has been "destroying" people since their loss. USC looked pretty shaky on offense at Arizona, and escaped with a 17-10 win. Today, they were up on Cal at home 10-3 in the 4th quarter, before winning 17-3. Yeah, they whipped Washington State and UW, but those two teams have a combined 1 win this season, and Washington really misses Jake Locker. I don't think the Pac-10 (or the Virginia, Ohio State, ND non-conference schedule) is really showcasing USC. I'd love to see USC play Florida, but not at the expense of the Big 12. I don't see how you justify that ... I don't know how you make a determination either way. USC seems to have a terrific defense, but a spotty offense. The Big 12 teams, generally, have terrific offenses and spotty defenses. We need more games. But, USC isn't rolling everyone 55-0. In fact, they only beat Arizona State 28-0 ... ASU lost at home to UNLV!
Florida, on the other hand, has been rolling people. In fact, the home loss to Mississippi is their only close contest. The closest win (by margin) is a 26-3 beatdown of the Miami Hurricanes. They've scored 30+ in every other game and have put up 40+ 5 times, including against LSU and Georgia. And, they pass the eye test when you watch them play, too. If I had to pick the "best" team right now, I'd pick the Gators. But, I'd like to see them matched up against the best teams from the other conferences.
And, how do you really gauge improvement? Certainly, some players get better during the season. OU RB DeMarco Murray is coming back from a dislocated kneecap (he missed the end of last year and spring drills) and looks better every week. Other players get injured. But, some teams match up better against others ... and some times, you just have things spiral out of control (the first half of the Georgia-Alabama game). Florida was smashing people before the loss to Mississippi. They have been smashing people ever since, too. USC was good before the Oregon State game, didn't play well, lost, and has been pretty good since.
Generally, I dislike the polls. I don't understand how teams get put where they get put. It seems like a loss is an automatic downgrade. But, I think polls could be a piece of the puzzle, although I would instruct the pollsters to rank teams based on who they think is the best team at that point, not who has had the best season or based on records solely. But, they could have a limited roll.
Hopefully, that's clarified any issues.
Yeah, that clarifies a lot of it. I think a better example of a team getting better isn't OU's running back, but rather a team like Ohio State who goes with a freshmen quarterback who will have a steep learning curve who can also be a game changer. Terrell Pryor is that. But I don't want to put Ohio State in any major bowl with two losses (albeit it to two fairly good teams- random question; do two losses to good teams equal one loss to a bad team; ie OSU loses to USC and Penn State, Florida loses to Miss.?) With all this said, I lean much more towards your argument than I did a few hours ago, and I am also really looking forward to watching Tech-OU. With my two teams tanking this year (5-4 is still better than I thought ND would be; but three losses for LSU, including giving up 50+ points? Twice?!) I almost feel as though it frees me to watch the remaining meaningful games with more objectivity, although that isn't nearly as fun. It's always much more enjoyable to have a team to root for or against. Which leads me to another question that has nothing to do with this subject but I would be interested in your thoughts on- for something like the World Series or Super Bowl when you really don't have a natural affinity for either team (ie, this year's WS for me) do you have a rule for which team to root for? I find that being a Twins fan and kind of a Red Sox fan (two years of living in Mass still has its effects) leads me to root for the AL team, but come this year I felt myself rooting for Jamie Moyer. What rules do you use to determine who you root for? Use this as a test: Super Bowl this year- Titans vs. Redskins (possible and teams that I would think you wouldn't either like or hate). Who would you root for and why? WS 2009- Angels vs. Mets? Same question.
Right, Pryor is another good example. But, you always expect a freshman to struggle early and get better as the year goes on. You'd think a redshirt sophomore RB would have things figured out, but residual injuries play a factor. I think both are valid points. Also, people going down in games with concussions, knee sprains, etc. can have a big impact. This is where an informed voter can have more perspective than a computer just focused on outcomes, as long as the voters knows what he's taking into account. And, my system would be better for Ohio State (and any team relying on freshman) because the toughest part of the schedule is at the end. Personally, I think Pryor would be eaten alive (kind of like he was against Penn State) if the Buckeyes played good SEC competition, and I don't think he'd put up enough points to hang with the Big 12 South teams.
I'd be interested to see Mississippi and Penn State play. If we knew exactly how good Mississippi is, we have a better idea about just how "bad" a loss that is. But, yeah, if one team loses two games to the two best teams in the country, that shouldn't be an automatic that they are downgraded below a team that loses to directional state university. This is one of my big beefs with the polls. If #4 beats #10 in a close game, #10 inevitably falls. But, why? Shouldn't #4 beat #10. If #10 keeps it close, isn't it possible that they still belong there?
I find that I dislike teams to a larger degree than I like teams, in most sports. For instance, in all the professional sports, there isn't really one team I could nail down as being the team that I root for. However, there are teams that definitely head my list the other way: the Yankees, Patriots, Steelers, Spurs, etc.
Generally, I find that, regardless of who I think I want to win, as soon as the game gets going, I figure out who I'm pulling for. Sometimes, before a game starts, I decide to root for a team based on some criterion/criteria. But, I find that once the game starts, that goes out the window.
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