Tuesday Afternoon Linebacker

Any long-time TALB reader can attest that I’ve been of two minds about the way the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Mythical National Championship is determined. Lately, I’ve had the mind-set of “keep it or scrap it”.

The BCS Problem
The BCS was created to, and don’t get it twisted, generate additional interest (and money) in Division I-A college football. The bait-and-switch, or by-product if you prefer, was to crown a (Mythical) National Champion. I will tell you this, for as much as I’d prefer a playoff to determine the best team; I think that I-A college football has outgrown that possibility. And that happened long before the Bowl Coalition was even first considered.

Before there were 28 bowl games it might have been possible to move to a playoff. But back then, the sport was regionalized. People in Alabama didn’t much care who won the Big 10, just as folks in Des Moines weren’t the least bit interested in the SEC champ. Now, we’re kind of stuck. Because the bowls, the conferences, and the teams aren’t going to give up those pay-days in order to crown a champion. So the only option from that perspective is to try and crown a champion within the bowl system. And in that respect, the BCS does a decent job.

The Playoff Problem
TALB has long yearned for a playoff. But as time has passed and practicality has reared its ugly head my mind has changed. Let’s say you were setting up an “n-team” playoff starting with the champions of D-IA conferences. And let’s say those champs finished thusly:
SEC: 12-1
Pac-10: 10-2
Big 10: 11-2
Big XII: 10-3
Big East: 13-0
ACC: 11-2
MWC: 8-4
WAC: 13-0
MAC: 8-4
C-USA: 7-5
Sun Belt:7-5
Notre Dame: 10-2

How do you seed this tournament? College teams do not play enough common games to really compare. In the NFL at least you can figure that if Tampa Bay finishes 12-4 and Philadelphia finishes 11-5 that Tampa is one game better (more or less) than Philly. But in college is the SEC champ at 12-1 really one game better than the Big 10 champ at 11-2? Do you seed the Big East and WAC champs 1 and 2? Which one is which? Or do you determine that 13-0 in the WAC isn’t as good as 10-2 in the Pac 10? What about the 11-2 runner up in the SEC? Aren’t they better than the 7-5 champ of C-USA? So, you’ll need some way to seed these teams. Using some kind of ranking system. Maybe a poll. Back to square one.

But what about those brave teams that eschew an early tune-up against Podunk State in favor of an LSU or USC or Oklahoma? Great, but does one big-time inter-sectional game really say anything about either team? Does anyone think that SEC West Champion Arkansas was the same team in December that it was when it was drubbed by USC in September?

It is the opinion of all of us here at TALB HQ that without completely blowing-up the college football structure a playoff is not likely. The academic arguments are ridiculous. But the reality of how D-IA football is constructed will almost certainly preclude any real playoff system.

The TALB Solution(s)
Option 1: Keep the BCS, warts and all. As I said above, the BCS has done an okay job of putting two of the better teams in the game together for a “championship”. I say better, not best, because (also mentioned above) it’s hard to really determine who’s the best in this sport. I do think that relying more on the human polls has skewed the BCS toward more bias rather than away from it. The tweak that put twice as much emphasis on human balloting was the worst one yet, in my opinion. And if you ask me, each time they made a change it was to try and fix a supposed wrong from the previous season. Which is to say, the outcome of the formula did not match expectations, so change the formula. Just because sixty-odd sports writers thought USC was better than Oklahoma doesn’t mean you should change the BCS. But I do believe that if you don’t win your own conference you have no business playing for the “National Championship”. Other than that, TALB has no further issues with the BCS.

Option 2: Scrap it. Just go back to the good old days. The only thing I would change is that bowl invitations can not be made before December. That way we avoid that whole Penn State fiasco that led to all of this in the first place.

The BCS already generates controversy and debate. Can you imagine the hue and cry that would come from college football fandom now that we’re fully into the Internet age? Not to mention the column inches as well.