I'm not sure if he'll ever agree with me about the "means" of my anti-playoff argument, but after the occasional protestation, EDSBS' Orson Swindle has come to the same conclusion about the ends: to hell with a playoff for college football.

Glad to have you aboard. 

In its entirety (emphasis mine):

The net result for us in experiencing the NCAA tourney from the vantage point of deep inside the smoky anus of Vegas is this: college football must never, ever have a playoff. Nevah. That’s our gut instinct right now after having watched the weird dénouement of the tourney’s first weekend in Vegas and realizing that the NCAA cannot effectively coordinate the mating of two donkeys, much less a major football tournament.

Because we’re typing this off our phone while waiting in line to be told that we’re not making our connecting flight in Phoenix, we’ll be succinct: the season remains everything in college football, and a playoff would tangibly devalue the regular season’s value. Man on moon, yes; but seeing the dispassion of turning the game into a neatly compressed lump of productmeat suitable for easy heat ‘n bake consumption made us irrationally sad.

As it stands, every team with a decent body of work gets their one moment in the sun, unless they get the Motor City Bowl, in which case they at least get a moment of glory in the rain of fiery ashes and locusts that has been pelting Detroit for 40 years or so. A playoff kills that dead.

Onto the plane. It’s strictly working on the lizard brain level right now, but the image of a season easily ended in tidy fashion on four screens in Vegas makes us want to split the rails of a playoff train’s tracks and watch the wreck ensue.

It’s just this weekend’s Colbert gut instinct, but it’s there.

I wonder if this is playoff proponents' Cronkite moment.  If they've lost Swindle, they've lost middle America ... or something.

Anyway, welcome to The Coalition, Every Day Should Be Saturday.

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For more of my thoughts on this issue, see my "Playoffs = Bad Idea" category here, and read my entry Le Playoffs.  If you're of like mind, send an email my way with your name or the name of your blog/website to be added to The Coalition (you're not alone!) of people against a playoff in college football on the menu at left.

Good, good, good...

Heisman Pundit added a good post today about the ever-present scheduling arguments taking place on here and elsewhere in the college football world.

In it, he argues that face value judgments on a conference based on ranked teams and bowl berths is beyond flawed and not to be introduced as legitimate justification in these conference squabbles fans, pundits and bloggers have engaged in.

[I]t seems to back up the point that I have been making all along about how some conferences use scheduling to pad their records.

When a conference is filled with teams playing easy schedules, it produces more wins, higher rankings and better bowls.

Therefore, when people justify a conference being the best based on how many ranked teams and bowl teams it has, they are using a flawed methodology.

That there is not a level playing field when it comes to schedules can no longer be denied or ignored. Estimation of the conferences should be adjusted accordingly.

Maybe the SEC and the Big 12 ARE the best conferences. That conclusion should not be reached, however, because of the number of highly-ranked teams or bowl berths from those leagues.

We now know one of the main contributors to that--it's the scheduling.

Inevitably, the main argument is betrayed as everyone wants to engage in a Pac-10 vs. SEC argument.  That's fine, and it's stimulating and fun, but the real issue is correcting years of habitual reliance upon that flawed method.

Where HP and I split is his call to parity.  He argues that tougher scheduling practices in leagues like the Pac-10 and Big Ten have led to greater parity within their ranks.

I think that parity is good for college football. For some reason, there seems to be a link between tougher scheduling and parity within a conference.

I think reforming how teams schedule would go a long way toward making parity a reality in every league.

I enjoy the uneven quality of teams within college football.  Parity isn't of great concern, but I understand its merits given college football's uneven scheduling practices.  The NFL has become a bad product in my eyes because the league is so terribly even.  When that occurs, the game boils down to its most base elements and we as fans lose a lot of the creativity and styles of play on both sides of the ball that make college football so great.

However, scheduling parity is of great interest here.  So long as people use these old crutches like HP mentioned (number of bowl appearances and inflated records) to evaluate conferences and their members, there is going to be an unfair advantage for some teams and conferences when it comes to bowl appearances, high rankings, recruiting, television exposure etc.

It isn't right and is particularly egregious given college football's regional and provincial ways.

My greatest concern is in finding a better way to evaluate and rank teams.  What that best way is, I don't know.  There could certainly be more discussion on that.

Don't fall victim to its suasions.

Better yet, don't break your own sarcastic little rules (ahem, #11 don't be a dick).

The piece in question was a far-from-dogmatic, pass the time type ranking of the conferences.  HP included as factors coaching, diversity of offensive scheme, schedule strength, competitiveness and talent level.  It's not the most realistic representation and HP acknowledges as much, but the methodology was explained and merits left up to the readers.

As usual, people misinterpreted or ignored the analysis and HP's responses to criticism.

I am not trying to determine which conference has the better teams per se. I think that is a tough endeavor because of the unequal data in play. I am trying to figure out which conference is best based on measures that are a little less skewed

And what does HP mean by skewed?  I don't know, maybe that whole two-division/don't play everyone in your conference combined witha few OOC cupcakes easiest way to 9 wins if your team has a pulse strategy in play in the SEC.

With that removed from the equation, different criteria were used.  They're imperfect, but the old way of simply giving conference-wide deference and a ridiculous #7 ranking to a team (2003 Tennessee, first example that came to mind) because of their name and 10 wins before falling to Clemson 27-14 in a bowl game isn't really a good idea.

The Pac-10's not immune from criticism, but at least we know their body of work is a little more complete.  In 2004 California lost to Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl, but we also knew that during the course of their season they pitched two shutouts in offense-happy Pac-10 play and were within a play of toppling eventual national champs USC.  As it was they held a great offense to 23 points at the Coliseum.  There was reason to believe they merited a high ranking and being in a big name bowl game.

***
In politics, people are sometimes accused of having a "Pre 9/11 mindset".  Their world views and opinions and policy actions are stuck in a time period untouched by more recent events.  EDSBS' critical post is very much in a summer 2005 mindset.  The old arguments on all sides have since been scrutinized, amended, and improved, but that doesn't stop some people from disingenuously acting like the actions from that point onward never happened.

Orson's inclusion of a 3-zoned map of the "United States according to HP" is right out of the dumb playbook.  It's satire, but still dumb.  It conveniently ignores HP's general appreciation for teams whatever the region.  I guess we've now somehow ignored all the kind words about Louisville, West Virginia, Florida, Ohio State, Notre Dame and several others all in the so-called "barrens" of zone 3.

It also ignores HP's response to SMQB where he expresses surprise that the Pac-10 was in fact on top of the rankings.

I was shocked, frankly, that the Pac-10 finished where it did. I went in expecting the Big Ten to be No. 1

That and much more, conveniently ignored---in other words, "cherry-picking facts delivered with blather and ostensible objectivity."

Just don't let that get in the way of a good time.

EDSBS does great work, but this attack missed badly.  In their haste to score points against HP standard ethics of argument were ignored and their own catty rules broken.

Mencken was a pundit, too