The BCS goes back to the alliance days which was a power grab and a money grab by certain conferences and it hasn't changed in its intent," Jackson said. "To add another game, will it resolve controversy over who's who and what's what? I really truly doubt it."

The Pac-10 and the Big Ten didn't start the fire.

They were plenty happy before the Bowl Alliance (or whatever it was called back then) came along.  They were less happy after it.  And they're a little less happy now with the BCS.  Here's guessing they'd be content with things going back to the way they were before the other conferences changed the composition of the game.  It was a bad move then and heading towards a playoff is an even worse move now.

Does anyone really think 12-team conferences are good for college football?  How about conference title games?  Schedules are finite.  College football simply cannot play a 16-week season like the NFL.  Flying in the face of logic, most of the same conferences that pushed us into this Alliance/BCS reality are also the conferences carrying twelve members.

It's obvious that round-robin play (or something close to it) is superior to split divisions (see SEC, Big 12, ACC) and possible repeat matchups in conference title games.  Can a team truly be its league champion if it hasn't faced all its league opponents?  Do you follow?

The major conferences most associated with sensible conference play (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big East) are the same ones treated as the villains in all of this, Big East excluded.  Amazing.  We had it right, once ...

Mission creep:

"We've never seen a four-team playoff stay as a four team playoff. So if you are concerned, and we are, about an eight-team, 12-team or 16-team playoff and what it would do to college football, we don't believe that you allow the camel's nose under the tent with a four-team playoff."

[Big Ten Commissioner Jim] Delaney said ABC executives presented a "plus-one" plan to the Big Ten, SEC, Big East, Big 12 and Pac-10 conferences two years ago, and all six rejected it.

We will not be snookered by a "Plus One" 

One question: do you think they'll reject the Associated Press trophy as illegitimate?

Regardless, congrats to the Tigers.

"The one thing [all] of us are in agreement on is there isn't going to be a playoff"

- Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese

Found a cool anti-playoff blog recently.  I'll give you just a taste of the author's point-by-point rebuttal of a Gene Wojciechowski column:

Wojo: "USC, playing as well as anyone these days, finished 10-2, but still gets no soup."

Author: A typical playoff guy. The hot team at the end of the season takes it all. The BCS is unique in sports. It attempts to assess a team's entire body of work over the course of a season, not just give the crown to the hot hand who gets the breaks at the end. True, nobody wants to play USC right now either, and they won't have to because USC lost to a 41 point underdog at home! Nothing is more appropriate than these guys not getting the second chance they would have gotten in a playoff system. We have the BCS to thank for that.

Truedat. 

I've sat quiet for a lot of the recent anti-BCS carping.  Time to mix it up a little.

Bob Keisser, Long Beach Press-Telegram:

My hatred for the BCS exists in perpetuity, but there's no doubting that the college football season has it all over the NFL when it comes to sustained excitement.

All eight division leaders in the league have at least a two-game lead. New England is six games up and has clinched, Green Bay has a four-game edge, Tampa Bay and Dallas three, and the others have two-game leads.

The New York Giants and Jacksonville seemingly have a wild card berth in hand, too. Really, the only things left to ponder are New England's drive to perfection, Miami's stumble to ignominy and how injuries could impact the playoffs.

It's like he doesn't get it.

Maybe --- just maybe --- it's possible there's a link between a postseason tournament in a sport and its regular season being treated as nothing more than seeding?  Maybe that's why college football's the only sport with a truly compelling regular season, hmmmm ???

I'm telling you that fun regular season we have is going the way of the dodo bird if a postseason tournament is created.  It happened to college basketball and we've already seen the drudgery that is the NBA, NFL and MLB regular season.  The link is obvious and it's just bizarre that so many people can complain about the BCS and the bowls, yet still not understand that this great regular season is a product of not having a tournament.

If you want the great postseason, you lose out on the regular season, that's the trade-off, them's the breaks.  I want the regular season and frankly college football is the only game around with any semblance of one, it's an island unto its beautiful self.  Just stick with what we got people, it's not so bad.  Just know that a switch from BCS/bowls to a playoff means a move to being just like all those other sports, there's just no way to have our cake and eat it too.

Regular season's over, best and only meaningful regular season in all of major American sport.

Chime away on all the BCS weirdness etc. I'll stick my nose in from time to time, actually on the road right now so it's difficult to get more than a few moments in front of the computer to put something up. 

What would you think of a BCS Title game between Missouri and West Virginia?

Personally, given the way this season has gone, I say "fine by me".  However, my opinion isn't universal so I'm curious what you CFR readers think?  This Chris Dufresne column is about where I am in terms of dealing with an unusual BCS title game matchup.

It's frustrating to see two teams with questionable non-conference loads slowly grind their way to the top, but it's not like both aren't highly respectable football clubs.  I think maybe we've been a little spoiled by the USC/Texas type matchups where there's some clearly qualified teams playing all season like they're the best then showing it once more in the title game.  Not every season is like that though.

Last year Ohio State and Florida were two very good football teams.  I wouldn't say either was anywhere near an all-time club, a sure-fire runaway blockbuster.  But that's football.  Great teams don't come along every year.  The same goes for this year.  Certainly USC and LSU had that runaway potential, but neither ever got its act together.  In the absence of a truly great team or even a reasonable approximation like what happened in 2006, we just have to wait this out and see who makes the best case at the end of the year.

I really don't know the alternative to this year if we don't want some combination of Missouri or West Virginia.  USC and LSU have flubbed it up over and over.  Ohio State is still marked with last year's Scarlet Letter after the Florida loss.  Those two are about as good as anyone.  Get mad not at the system but the handful of teams good enough to give us a more appealing title game that didn't get it done.

Speaking of teams that didn't get it done: USC coach Pete Carroll is on top of the world after his team's victory over Arizona State and is talking playoffs.

For six years, USC coach Pete Carroll said he never understood how the Bowl Championship Series worked . . . until now.

"It’s about who’s had the most attractive season rather than who had the best team," Carroll said. "It just dawned on me that’s how it works."

Carroll’s opinion might be influenced by the fact USC dismantled Arizona State, 44-24, on Thanksgiving and the Trojans appear to be hitting their stride, albeit 11 games into the season. He might have felt different after the Stanford game.

Carroll said he did not want his comments to be construed as sour grapes because USC is not going to play in the BCS title game. But he believes the Trojans would hold their own if college football held a playoff.

"I would love to be involved with a discussion of who is the best team in the country at the end of the season," Carroll said.

This isn't the NFL, coach.  Narrowly sneaking by the majority of your easier games and building a fat win-loss record doesn't put you in the title game in college football.  Ok, it did once recently (Ohio State 2002), but that team was a severe anomaly.  USC may very well have the best football team in all the land right now, but you gotta prove it weeks one through thirteen, not just weeks twelve and thirteen.

Carroll may have had a gripe in 2002 when his team was in my mind the best in college football, but even then USC won its last eight games by healthy margins and looked completely unstoppable on both sides of the ball.  Last weekend was the first time all year aside from the games against lowly Nebraska and Washington State that USC has even looked above average.  That won't cut it.

The Los Angeles Times' Chris Dufresne beat me to the punch.

It appears USC, Louisiana State and Oklahoma are the best teams out there right now and that could ultimately lead to a contentious three-way battle for two spots in the Bowl Championship Series championship game.

These three power franchises have outscored five opponents by the total of 261-40.

The BCS title game this year is in the Louisiana Superdome.

Nick Saban is a coach in the Southeastern Conference.

Oh . . . my . . . God.

Is it 2003 all over again?

Kind of looks like it.  The difference I see is that at present, USC is not as good as its 2003 squad.  LSU and Oklahoma could be better than their 2003 groups.  And, yes, that means I think the 2003 USC squad was by far the class of college football at that point in the season.  This year's USC team will be lucky if it comes close to being as good as that team.

(Hat Tip: The Wiz)

He may not be adept at getting his conference into quality bowl matchups, but Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen suddenly is showing some serious backbone when it comes to playoff talk:

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen, who supports bowl games and opposes a playoff system, told Sporting News Thursday his league will walk away from the BCS if the plus-one playoff model becomes a reality. [snip]

"Our presidents have no interest whatsoever in a plus-one model -- none," Hansen says. "It's a little annoying that my colleagues continue to float this idea as though it has merit. If they continue to push it, and try to push us into a corner ... "

Will the Pac-10 walk away from the BCS?

"Yes, no question."

Them's fighting words.

A little over a month left until the season, here's the early lines for BCS National Champion from VegasInsider.

Notable: With the pundits, LSU is generally viewed as a preseason No. 2 team, but they are a bit less favored with the oddsmakers.  I wonder if this has anything to do with it?  Wisconsin is quietly one of the favorites.  They've been down for a few years now but it's still strange to see Florida State not near the top of lists like these.  That can't last.

Why not?

First item up: coaches' tenure and BCS appearances.

Ok, so this is a little late, but Georgia Sports Blog went to the trouble of determining the BCS conference coaches with the most tenure who have yet to make a BCS bowl game appearance.  Take a look.

Arkansas' Houston Nutt is atop the list, having coached since 1998.  Last year was his best chance but that kind of fell by the wayside.  Nipping at his heels is Clemson's Tommy Bowden whose team had a late collapse of its own.  A particular burr in this saddle is Cal's Jeff Tedford, tied for 7th longest wait.  He's been coaching since 2002 and would have gone to a BCS game in 2004, but Mack Brown happened.

GSB's Paul Westerdawg also lists BCS appearances by conference teams.  The Pac-10 leads the list, of course, with seven teams appearing in a BCS game.  As noted above it should be eight but Texas two-stepped Cal out of the way in 2004.  The Big 10 is tied with the Pac-10 but also has one more institution.

The ACC is particularly woeful with just four of its 12 institutions collecting BCS cash.  The snag, of course, is that Miami is counted with the Big East, having last entered a BCS game before the whole ugly ACC seduction of several Big East powers.

***
Now, for a moment of Heisman talk.  Heisman Pundit's released his "Winter Top 20", a list of the 20 players who will "at least get a whiff of legitimate consideration".

It's good to see West Virginia's Pat White crack the top ten at No. 6.  He doesn't get enough credit for his contribution to the West Virginia offensive machine.  HP's taken some flack for placing John David Booty at No. 1 but it's hard to argue with a winning, good-stat USC quarterback at the moment.  It's a little like center field for the Yankees, what can you do about it?

***
And now, some entertainment from the FanHouse.

---Top 10 cheerleader videos (???).  The Kelly Ripa one's comical.

---Domestic violence charges won't be filed against Cal's Marshawn Lynch.

---Auburn Tigers: 2004 National Champions? Yeh. Freakin'. Right.  Patrick, this is why it's so easy to take jabs at Auburn on here.

---Hippies get in the way of Cal's new stadium.  The bums lost, Lebowski!  Except, this time they won.  Dammit.

---Troy Smith exacts his revenge on Chris Leak.  Not really.

The great Deadspin was unhappy with the BCS earlier this week.  Understandable, really.  But its closing commentary about the BCS whiffed badly and their first commenter quickly put them in a headlock.

Deadspin:

This [BCS] is why college football isn't as much fun as college basketball, and until they realize that, it never will be.

The very first comment/response from Monday Morning Punter:

Yes! I can't wait until the start of college basketball in February.

Swift and efficient kill, I like it.

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?

God no.

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.

A while back a reader named Ed Gunther asked me to help him compile data about all kinds of BCS data such as the polls from certain years, the week-by-week computer results, etc.  I didn't have much available but some of you were able to help him out.

Well, he took the available data and turned it into an interesting website/project:

The National Championship Issue

As of today, there are two major sections within this website.

The first is the Versions of the BCS, basically looking at the five versions of the formulas that the BCS has used and comparing the results each one would have produced during the last 8 seasons.

The second major section is the the Modified Season, my (wholly reasonable, if I do say so myself) proposal for modifying the college football season in the hopes of crowning a true National Champion.

With Michigan and Ohio State running 1-2 right now it appears the Rose Bowl will fail to match up the champion of the Pac-10 and the Big Ten once again.

One of these years they'll get it right.  It was accidentally brilliant in 2003 when USC and Michigan met in a National Championship game that was also a traditional Rose Bowl battle.  Hopefully it'll work out next year, because there's something wrong with Rose Bowl games featuring Washington State and Oklahoma or Miami and Nebraska.

That said, we may end up having the loser of Ohio State/Michigan playing Cal or USC just the same.  Correct me if I'm wrong on that because I'm unfamiliar with this year's bowl allocation terms, so that matchup might not even be possible depending on what order the bowl committees choose available teams.  It would certainly bring back some of the tradition but in all likelihood the true Big Ten champion will be playing in the Fiesta Bowl, robbing an otherwise great matchup of some of its prestige.

Those problematic computers strike again.

Actually, the standings aren't all that problematic, but... USC's No. 2 and that's just not cool.

I'll release my rankings later today, but it will be difficult, to put it mildly, to put USC at that No. 2 spot.  USC's the biggest name of the undefeateds, has played the most difficult schedule and has shown over the last few years to be an incredibly successful football program.

And yet, that's not really what should be considered when humans (through the AP, Harris and Coaches polls) rank a team.

Who is best?  Put them No. 1.  Who is next best?  Put them No. 2.  Continue until you're at No. 25.  Repeat the next week.

The computers have USC No. 1, and may disrupt a favorable championship game if this holds.

Luckily for upset Michigan, West Virginia, Florida, Louisville, Auburn, Texas and other fans, the season's not over.  I do not anticipate USC staying at that No. 2 spot.  They finish their season with Oregon, California, Notre Dame and UCLA.  With the way they're playing that's a murderous stretch that the Trojans simply won't survive.

The best thing going for the BCS right now is that the season has several more weeks to play itself out.  LOTS will happen between now and that fateful Sunday when the final BCS rankings are released.

What's interesting is this plays into my arguments about not ranking teams strictly by wins and losses.  A good case can be made for Michigan or West Virginia or Auburn or Florida (and perhaps Louisville, Texas, California, Tennessee) being better teams than USC.  For way too long we've been burdened by this notion that teams must be "deserving" of a certain spot, which is code for "hasn't lost X amount of games and hasn't embarrassed itself any worse than the competition".  All that should ever matter is "how good is this team?"

Such an evaluation obviously makes many people uncomfortable, because there is no perfect way to determine this.  It is left up to each of us, each of the pollsters, to use our experience, our intelligence, our biases and observation skills, to develop rankings that are as accurate and fair as possible.

It's an imperfect system, but so are the computers.  What makes many of us comfortable with the computers is that they are unwavering and do not break from their internal logic.  There is a logic to how they arrive at their rankings, but it will continue to provide unreliable results when the inputs are all taken from an imperfect regular season of play.  Teams do not all play the same schedules.  Teams do not all play the same number of home and road games.  Conferences are not equal year to year.  All of this takes the computers further away from accuracy, but it's something PEOPLE have the power to compensate for and recognize.

To date we've done just a so-so job of factoring in for these things, but we can always do better.  That's the challenge.  I've advocated poll reform before and I continue to be an advocate.  Choose better and more informed voters, give them the tools and time necessary to make informed votes.  Things can be better than they are now.

That and get rid of the coaches polls and computers, outright.

***
From the CFR Forums: Anger at the BCS

***

MGoBlog gives a plug and also has a link to this: Las Vegas Sports Consultants Top 25 via the D.C. Sports Bog.  Those guys know what they're doing... but their top 25 from last week was a bit funky for my taste.  At least they had Georgia outside of the top 25, I can respect that.

*Mythical* national champion, of course.

Earlier today I predicted the BCS conference champions, now it's time for the national champion.  To be consistent, it makes sense to narrow the field to any of the conference titleists assuming some non-BCS team doesn't insert itself into the title picture.

Those expected conference finalists are:

ACC-Miami
Big East-Louisville
Big Ten-Ohio State
Big 12-Texas
Pac 10-California
SEC-Auburn

It's a bit innane to single out specific games where all these teams will trip up and anticipate voter behavior, so I won't do that to you.  I can look at that list, however, and tell you that Louisville and California are not strong contenders given the various biases inherent in college football that make it difficult for teams like those to play in a title game.  That said, I don't anticipate them being that good so as to make a legitimate case, anyhow.

Texas has history working against it with the frosh quarterback(s), so they're not a strong possibility, all things considered, particularly in having to win a title game.

That leaves Notre Dame, Miami, Auburn and Ohio State.

I believe USC will trip Notre Dame up in November, if the Irish haven't already recorded a loss before then.

Miami should be very strong but with a questionable run game and Kyle Wright not (yet) as good as he should be, they're bound to look a little weak in voters' eyes and might not be able to put together a strong title game performance.

Which leaves us with two teams, Auburn and Ohio State.  Sounds like a great championship battle, doesn't it?

Ohio State is my preseason No. 1 team this year so you know where I stand with them.  If they can survive a rough Big Ten slate it'll mean they've capably patched up their new faces in all the places defense.  They're 1-0 in championship games, and nobody plays close games better than them.  In what could be an epic game, I'm predicting a Buckeyes national championship at the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, scene of their last championship in January of 2003.

***
Please take this with a grain or two of salt, the only definitive answers will come once the season is played.

Today is the first day in that championship quest.  Welcome to college football 2006!

This should be fun...

Origin: Stewart Mandel (bread + crumbs)

This list is not comprehensive but we have to start somewhere so here goes.

If college football had a commissioner, and I were in fact that person (head for the hills!), here are various policies I'd chase/enact:

---Comprehensive Schedule Reform: First legislation item signed would be that D-IA teams may only play other D-IA teams.  The day of the cupcake is over.  I would also strongly encourage every BCS conference team to play other BCS foes or quality non-BCS teams in out-of-conference play.  Games between powerhouse schools (USC/Notre Dame, Ohio State/Texas) would be incentivized with cash from NCAA coffers.

---Comprehensive Poll Reform: I'd work with the Associated Press to assemble a more engaged, talented group of voters for its poll.  I'd use NCAA money to send necessary information to all voters and pollsters such as full DVDs of all available games, or at least significant portions of the games, plus copious statistical information, quotes and stories of all games played each week.  Pollsters would be given several days to digest the material and not be allowed to send their ballots until Wednesday morning at the earliest.  Poll release would tentatively be scheduled for Thursday at noon Eastern time.

---Clarification on Postseason Play: No playoffs.  Ever.  The Rose Bowl would entertain only the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions.  If that were to disrupt a BCS championship game, tough.  Also there would be a reduction of bowl games.  There are simply too many bowl games right now and I'd work to phase out a few a year until the number settled at around 15-20 games.

---Football Saturday: I saw this somewhere else and I like the idea; like the NFL, college football games would start at similar times.  For example, all morning games would begin at say, 11 a.m. Eastern, and then the next round of games wouldn't kick off until 3 p.m., followed by more games at 7 p.m. and then a late flurry of 11 p.m. games.  One could channel-click at home with ease knowing each game watched would be at a similar junction as all other televised games.

---Preseason: I would allow every team one local exhibition scrimmage (minimal contact) against a nearby foe that wouldn't count on the schedule.  No fans or media would be allowed, but it would help teams smooth out a few rough patches before their first official game.  I would also bring back the various preseason classic games, which would count on the schedule.  It would be a great opportunity to schedule quality OOC games on opening weekend and help promote the sport.

---Eligibility: Players will have five years of eligibility, period.  There will be no redshirts, but players can apply for a 6th year of eligibility if faced with unusual injury, personal or family circumstances.  Transfers would no longer lose eligibility but must continue to sit one year before being allowed to play in games.

---NCAA Reform: The rule book would be burned.  A committee would be formed to greatly simplify the NCAA's mission to a few basic principles (think the U.S. Constitution---brilliant and concise, with delegation).  The majority of rules should be created to maintain 1)academic integrity and 2)fairness throughout the game.  Nearly everything else would be superfluous.  The NCAA would make many more rulings on the issues that come before it, making its mistakes but also setting precedents that will help clarify what is right and what is wrong.  Most people understand how our courts make their decisions and can reasonably anticipate how a judge or jury will react to a case.  In college football, it's almost the exact opposite.  The NCAA is simply too inconsistent and dark and distant.  Time to bring it into the light and create consistency in its rulings.

---Other Concerns: I would encourage a reduction in the number of D-IA teams.  We're at either 117 or 119 teams right now, which is ridiculous.  Ideally D-IA football should have anywhere from 80-100 teams.  Dropping a few D-IA teams would strengthen the quality of lower division football, making it more watchable and popular while also scraping away a handful of persistent losers from the D-IA ranks.  I would encourage the various conferences to find a way to reduce their numbers into something more like 10 teams.  Thus, round-robin play could be institutionalized and we wouldn't have to fret about certain teams playing conference title games and others not doing so.  Finally, I'd make it so that teams participating in 6-3 type games would both be credited with a loss.  That's not fun for the players, and it's not fun for the fans.

Here's a fine effort from CBS's Dennis Dodd-college football 2000-2006 boiled down to its most essential ingredients:

BCS, offensive revolution, Oklahoma, Miami, USC

Where do we go from here?

Good question.

I see a lot more of USC, certainly more offense, perhaps a touch more Florida if they fix the offensive personnel, more Miami if they find a more aggressive head coach, and a sprinkling of Ohio State and Notre Dame.  We shall see...