We finally get to the main argument that proponents of the BCS cite the most often and that is the integrity of the regular season. Quite frankly, I expected more out of this chapter. The authors know that the sanctity of the regular season is the main point that the BCS folks turn to and they do a poor job of rebutting this argument. Probably because there is no sound argument for a playoff system that actually increases the importance and value of a regular season, but the authors try anyway. We are left with a comparison to the NFL that misses the point and we are presented with outdated problems that have already been corrected by the BCS.
First, let us be sure to recognize what makes the college football regular season great and exciting. Put simply, if teams want to be considered for the championship, they must approach each game as a must-win, and if they lose, their national title hopes are probably over. Now, there are obviously examples of teams that have lost a game or two making it to the national championship game. However, no team or fan goes into a game thinking it is ok to lose. That is why every game matters, because week to week, you must expect to win. No other sport has regular season games that mean as much as college football's. In the NFL, we have seen teams with .500 records have the same chance at winning the Super Bowl as those that go undefeated. In college basketball, UConn just proved that you can finish 9th in your own conference yet still win a championship. In college football, those scenarios could never happen because their regular season demands excellence all season long.
The authors bring up the specific example of when the Colts were undefeated in the 2009 NFL Season, but this type of scenario occurs nearly every year in the NFL when teams have secured their place and seed in the playoffs. When this happens, many NFL teams rest their starters, and the authors make the claim that BCS supporters are using this act of resting your starters would permeate college football and hurt the game. While I would agree that teams playing backups would indeed hurt the game, they are missing the argument. The problem with their scenario is that winning the conference is the main goal, and so non-conference games' importance is dramatically decreased, and for conferences with divisions, as soon as division titles are secure, that team's games are much less important. While this probably wouldn't lead to teams resting their starters, especially in rivalry games, it would mean the outcome of many November games simply wouldn't matter. Let's look at an example from the 2009 season for clarity. Florida and Alabama both clinched their division with 3 games left before the conference championship game. Thus, they could've lost their final 3 games of the season and yet one of them would be guaranteed a spot in the authors playoff scenario. With the BCS, they are forced to win these remaining games if they would like a chance at the national title. How they can make the claim that the BCS increases the chance for “sandbagging” the final games of the regular season is simply insanity. Florida and Alabama were forced to win their remaining games in order to earn a berth in the BCS, whereas with the authors' proposed playoff system, losing the remaining games would be acceptable. Their claim doesn't make any sense.
The authors take the popular tag line purported by ESPN that every week is a playoff a little too literally. They want it to mean that every week is a part of a single elimination tournament and those final two teams left at the end should be the only ones undefeated, otherwise the season is a failure. With this definition, the promotional line fits into their argument and they cite a few examples when more than 1 team was left undefeated (conveniently ignoring the other seasons that ended up with 2 undefeated teams and the BCS got it exactly right). However, the true meaning behind it is that each team must treat each game as a must-win game, and it is the closest thing that any regular season has to being a playoff across all sports. Once the season is complete, the BCS selects the teams who had the 2 best regular seasons and those teams go to the national championship game. When more than 2 teams go undefeated, a tough decision has to be made. TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati did not have better regular seasons than Texas ans Alabama in 2009. They bring up 2 examples of teams not winning their conference yet still making the national championship game. While this is unfortunate, and everyone viewed it as a crime at the time, the BCS then corrected itself, and no team since 2003 has made the championship game without first winning their conference. If they want to point out flaws in the BCS, and there certainly are some, why would you pick the ones that aren't relevant anymore?
There is a simple, but crucial, relationships that need to be considered, and the authors ignore it. The relationship is an inverse one between the number of teams invited to a season's playoff and the importance/significance of that regular season. If you increase the number of teams invited to the playoff, you decrease the importance of each individual regular season game. Look at college basketball. 68 teams are invited to the playoff, and the regular season means very little. In the NFL, 6 of 16 (38%) teams in each conference are invited to the playoffs, and because of this inflated number of admissions, each individual game means very little. However, if you look at college football, with only 2 teams in its playoff, each individual game is very important. Ask Texas about their game in Texas Tech in 2008. Ask USC about their game against Stanford in 2007 when the Cardinal were 41 point underdogs yet upset the streaking Trojans. In the NFL or the college basketball season, that individual game has no impact on those teams making the playoffs. In the authors' playoff proposal, those games have no impact on whether or not those teams make the playoffs. Take away the magnitude of each individual game, of knowing you have to bring your best every single Saturday, and you take away so much that makes college football special. You would truly hurt the game. It is difficult for me to understand how the authors cannot grasp this point.
Important games happen all season in college football. With other sports, most fans don't start paying attention until the end of the season or when the playoffs start. In college football, week 1 is important, so is week 6, as well as week 11 and everything in between. No other sport can make that claim. College basketball is a bore until March Madness starts. No one pays attention to baseball until October. And while NFL is certainly this country's most popular sport, the meaningful games don't begin to take form until December. College football's meaningful games begin in August and happen each and every week. Weekly, meaningful games are what college football fans treasure most about the sport, and a 16 team playoff hurts that. The authors cannot come up with a good argument against it because there is no way to refute that a 16 team playoff hurts the regular season. If they want a meaningless regular season and want to watch 3 weeks of playoffs, go watch college basketball. Don't ruin what makes college football special.
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