Monday, February 14, 2011

A Geography-based, NFL style playoff is wrong

College Football Cafeteria continues to stoke the fire and promote an inferior NFL-type playoff system where teams make the playoffs based on the city in which they play and where regular season results mean very little. Geography is a key factor in determining who makes the playoffs in the NFL, and on field performance is secondary. How else do you explain situations like this year where a 7-9 team makes the playoffs while two 10-6 teams don't (nor does an 8-8 team) or 2008 where an 8-8 team gets in and an 11-5 team stays home. The reason is geography, and in the current system that college football uses, geography is not a factor. Results are, and those results, by the way, happened on the field. There is no question that the BCS is demanding system, but because of that, it is just. Because the BCS is strict with invites to its championship game, I can say without a doubt that the 2 team playoff currently employed by the BCS gives a more accurate reflection of the season's best team than the NFL's playoff system and Super Bowl Champion.


Now, I understand the frustration that some undefeated teams go through when they go undefeated and are not invited to the championship game. However, every playoff system has to have a cutoff point, and since college football only includes 2 teams in their playoff, any team other than those 2 are going to complain. What the BCS does is use a formula (and I realize that these formulas can be improved upon) to determine those 2 teams because, with 120 teams and only 12 games, it is difficult to determine which 2 are the best. While imperfect (but what system is perfect?), the BCS system selects 2 teams independent of divisions or geography and dependent upon results of the games they've played.

The point of a playoff is not to admit the best teams. The purpose of a playoff is to give every team a fair shake at playing for the championship.

This is simply heartbreaking that this idea keeps getting repeated. Why even play a regular season? Why not start the season off with a 32-team playoff since that would give everyone a fair shake? Wouldn't that be the most fair way to do it? No, because that is a dumb idea. Playing the regular season shows you who the best teams are. Sometimes difficult decisions need to be made, and with every playoff you leave teams out who think they deserve to be in, but I would prefer a system that errs on the side of letting good teams in compared to a system that doesn't care about on the field performance.

Voters and computers have absolutely no problem ranking a 1-loss BCS team ahead of undefeated non-BCS teams. It would have happened this year too. It will happen every year.

1984 BYU Cougars. Crowned national champions by the AP and Coaches' poll. Granted, this obviously happened before the BCS existed, but it proves that teams in the WAC can be ranked #1. 1984 was also a time in which less games were televised and people simply didn't know as much about every team as they do today, yet they knew enough to realize a great team in the WAC when they saw one. Nowadays, if a team from a lesser conference makes a run, its on ESPN and everyone is talking about, so the exposure is much greater than it was then and their chances of going up in the rankings is much higher. Sorry TCU, you had a great season, but you didn't have a better season than Oregon or Auburn. Sorry 2008 Utah, you were not better than Oklahoma or Florida that year. 2009 Boise State, TCU and Cincinnati did not have stronger schedules than Alabama or Texas. Again, I understand that the teams may be close and choosing 2 teams out of 3-4 undefeated teams can be difficult, but it is a better way to reward excellence than allowing an 8-4 team out of the Sun Belt conference in to the playoff discussion when they have already proven (through their 8-4 record in a bad conference) that they are not worthy.

The criteria for playing in the playoffs is to win your division. Those who fail to do so have another route in by just being better than the other teams who didn’t win their divisions. This is fair, because this gives everyone access to the playoffs.

Since playing in a playoff has “clear and measurable criteria,” what exactly is it? Win your division? Ok, that is a goal, but at the beginning of the season, you don't know exactly what you have to do in order to do that. Sometimes you will have to win 12 of your games, sometimes 9. You make it sound like making it to the BCS Championship is completely out of a team's control, but don't pretend like your fate in winning a conference is completely within a team's control because it simply isn't. If a team wins 7 out of 8 conference games every year, some years they will win the conference, some years they won't, depending on how the other teams do. As Peter King wrote, in this year's NFL season, Green Bay got into the playoffs because of how a game between Detroit and Tampa Bay ended. In the MAC conference in 2008, Buffalo was the champion with a 5-3 conference record instead of Ball State with a 8-0 conference record. In the SEC in 2001, LSU was the champion with a 5-3 conference record instead of Tennessee with a 7-1 conference record. That doesn't seem very clear to me, and it clearly indicates that having the best record in your division does not even guarantee you winning the division!

Also, with this criteria, non-conference games are basically irrelevant because non-conference games don't factor into how the winner of a conference is determined. I think that annual games like Florida vs FSU and Notre Dame vs USC, not to mention the random exciting non-conference games like Boise State vs Virginia Tech or LSU vs UNC, should be valued and important to how a team is considered. With the BCS, those games factor into the regular season title chase. With a playoff, they are essentially exhibition games, which would be a shame.

Our main difference of opinion is how many teams are allowed into the playoff and the criteria by which they are invited to the playoff. I prefer a system in which a team must expect to win each week, is independent of geography or conference affiliation, and takes only the teams that have proven their merit all season, accepting the fact that there may be instances of tough-decision making when a good team is left out. Your preference factors in geography for some reason, includes teams that have clearly demonstrated that they are not the best in the country, making it ok for teams to lose games. If the goal is to determine the best team in the country during a season, I simply don't understand why mediocre teams should be included?

You repeatedly cite the seasons of 2008 when Utah was the only undefeated team, 2009 when there were 5 undefeated teams at the end of the regular season and 2010 when TCU was undefeated but ranked third as for reasons the BCS is bad. Again, a difficult decision is made, and with a 2 team playoff, some teams may get left out. But what about the 2002 season, when Ohio State and Miami were the only undefeated teams? Was there any reason to include additional teams in that playoff? What about the 2005 season, when Texas and USC were the only undefeated teams? Was there any question that they were the 2 best teams? Let's look at 1999, when FSU and Virginia Tech were the only 2 undefeated teams. No questions there. The whole picture needs to be considered, not just a few seasons here and there. Overall, the system works well to determine the season's best team.

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