Hmm
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 08:44PM ESPN takes a hypothetical look at the NFL if it were played under the dictates of the BCS.
The truth of the matter is that the NFL is better suited for a BCS-type method of determining a champion than college football. There are significantly fewer teams, so there are more common opponents to use as a basis of comparison between two teams. The NFL regular season (16 games) is 33 percent longer than the college regular season (12 games), so there's a larger sample of games by which to evaluate teams. And with the league's TV package, it would be much easier for voters -- if the NFL actually had them -- to watch every game played each week.
I do my best not to inject myself into arguments about the NFL's way of doing things. It's not my game, and its fans know better than myself what's good for the NFL. Just the same I cringe when passive observers inject themselves into serious arguments about the future of D-IA football. That said, this story is interesting. I'll let true NFL fans debate the merits or lack thereof, as I have no dog in the fight other than to link the argument to college football's ongoing playoff vs. non-playoff fight.
I disagree with the conclusions above, in that although I agree a polling/BCS method could work for the NFL, its playoffs are barely suitable to determining a clearly deserving champion. So imagine grafting an NFL styled one-and-done playoff system onto another sport with fewer games, fewer common opponents and far more teams. It's just not pretty.
Best of all, the writer acknowledges the NFL hasn't done a great job of getting it right despite a supposedly superior postseason.
If the NFL had made the move to a two-team playoff model along with college football in 1998, the Steelers would not have played in last season's Super Bowl. The Seahawks might not have either (it would have been tight between Seattle and Denver for the right to play Indianapolis). The Eagles would not have played in Super Bowl XXXIX. The Panthers would not have played in Super Bowl XXXVIII. The Patriots definitely would not have won Super Bowl XXXVI. And those are just the ones that are certain. It's possible that more than half of the Super Bowl teams over the previous eight seasons would not have ended up there in a system like this.
All the playoff upsets, all the great finishes, all the excitement ... it never would have happened. Sound like a good plan to you?
Exciting? Yes.
A fair and accurate championship?
So we're back at square one, arguing about two unfair systems, only one of which is rooted deeply in the way THIS great game of college football has done ITS business forever. And there's only one that provides a truly meaningful regular season among all the major sports. I wonder why that is? You already know why if you've been reading here for any length of time.
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Reader Comments (22)
Do you think the excitement of regular season games will be less if theirs a playoff? Seriously that is the dumbest argument ever.
You honestly think 2/3 Human Biased Voting, and 1/3 Equations honestly find that team thats the best?
Do you think the BCS really tricks people into talking about NCAA Football and having an interest in it? Thats crazy. I guess all these people calling into radio shows and all these huge viewing audiences for NFL are just not interested.
Playoffs decide who's better on the field. After a team plays another team theres no debate about who was better. No Michigan/Florida hoopla. It's absolute in a playoff.
Also a playoff would pit historically traditional teams against each other almost every year. Damn, thats not exciting. I guess if we have a playoff teams will just you know not play the regular season. The fans won't watch the regular season games.
Why do you constantly defend a system that is so obviously flawed? I don't get it. At least with a playoff it's decided where it needs to be, ont he field, instead of the pens of voters and the hard drives of machines that can't wacth a game.
One only has to look as far as men's college basketball over the past 35 or so years for an answer to that.
Of course it will be reduced.
2) (to keep CFR from having to repeat himself) There is heavy disagreement around this blog on this subject, but lets all please be clear that a vote against playoffs DOES NOT = a vote for the BCS, at least in its current incarnation.
Also, is the title supposed to choose the best team or is it supposed to crown a champion. Almost any playoff format in any sport is generally not going to select the "best" team. And frankly I have no problem with that. Were the Cardinals the best team in baseball last year? Probably not, but they are the champions.
I support CFR in his stance here.
Instead of sitting here and admiting flaws that you see in both systems, which to be honest we all see them. Come up with a new system.
Please, Please, Please tell me why the Playoff format is in any way unfair, and also tell me how it makes regular season games void?
I think the NCAA should do this:
1. All BCS confrences should expand to 12 teams.
2. All confrences have a conference championship
3. The conferences that aren't in the BCS conferences screw em, put em away call them D1-B or something.
4. 11 game season, 8 conference games, 3 non conference, not allowed to play any team except those in the BCS conferences. (Ex: Michigan can't play Ball State, etc, etc.)
5. Keep the human polls. Absolutley throw the computers out the damn window.
6. You play the season
7. 14 team playoff, #1 and #2 get byes.
8. conference champs get automatic bid, and the top 8 teams in the polls (excluding conf. champs) also get into the playoff.
9. Decide the games on the field like its meant to be done. No more politicking, and whiney ass fans and media in college football.
Whats your alls plan?
I can certainly listen to all the other arguments out there, put things on the table as suggested in these comments etc.
I'm definitely not wedded to the BCS, either.
But at the end of the day I simply cannot call anyone a champion who wins a series of one and done's. That's just as mythical of a championship as the current BCS format. Two sides of the same worthless coin.
But the difference with college football is that for several generations we've been completely fine with knowing that we cannot truly award a legitimate championship. That is our tradition and college football is the sport most wedded to tradition.
Not only that, we have the most amazing regular season of all major sports and a fantastic bowl season.
Are there ways to make the game better? Absolutely, and I've been hells bells about that on here as well.
You say 12-team conferences? I say 10 (or less) team conferences so that everyone can play a full round-robin conference slate.
Ditch the conference championship games.
Encourage big time OOC scheduling.
Poll reform.
I'm all for it.
Finally, to repeat from Ltrain:
"lets all please be clear that a vote against playoffs DOES NOT = a vote for the BCS, at least in its current incarnation."
Look, I feel bad for Michigan fans and Boise State fans and anyone else who feels left out of the BCS title game.
But as talked about in several other posts on here, I feel just as bad for those who had a bad day or were merely upset and were in all likelihood a superior team. Yankee fans and Tiger fans and fans of several other teams know they had a better team than the St. Louis Cardinals, but somehow that team gets to be World Series champ.
Not good.
For all the brilliance of the World Cup, nobody can convince me that the Italian team was superior to the French team (and I can't stand the French team!). But guess who won? One and done's are a complete crapshoot.
Nothing is truly settled by them, they're simply part of a tournament apparatus that is fun and exciting but very often unrepresentative of the true abilities of the teams competing in said tournament.
Also, I think this type of discussion is healthy, we can agree to disagree and try to account for other points of view - I don't think sweeping the issue off the table does any good, and that's what the media has been doing lately in regard to any point of view other than "playoffplayoffplayoff"
"my general attitude is that we need to be very careful what we ask for... we may end up with a very exciting playoff system, and lose much of what makes college football great in the process"
Exactly.
Don't you agree that what makes college football (and sports in general) so great is that you don't know what's going to happen, that games are not decided on paper, and we can all be surprised when the underdog rises up to beat the favorite?
What I want from a playoff is a champion, which is not always synonymous with the best team. But I don't really care about who is the best team because that is a matter of opinion.
I don't understand this irrational fear that the "best" team will not win a playoff, and that this will render the whole thing invalid. How is that any different from the rest of the football season? There are no guarantees that the best team will win any game, regular season or playoff.
2002 Ohio State, or 2006 Florida: discuss.
I'm more than happy to see differences of opinion on here.
I realize that stuff is part of life, but you don't see nearly level of vitriol written after the NCAA basketball tournament is over - 99.9% of the people accept the team that won as the champion and move on to other things. There is some bitterness and complaining about the teams on the bubble that are left out of the tournament, but that dies down after a couple of days.
Michigan fans will be complaining about this for years (and rightfully so).