Death to a Playoff: Chapters 15 and 16

The attempt to indicate that the blue bloods of college football are actively trying to keep smaller programs out, or that there is going to be a collapse from within by the BCS, is not quite as dramatic as the authors imply. As everyone knows, the BCS has modified the number of games it holds and the qualifications for the sole reason of making sure quality teams from outside the 6 AQ conferences are included. And just because the conference commissioners have different ideas about the college football postseason doesn't mean that they are about to have a knock-down drag-out fight in the middle of the BCS meetings. Changes have been made, and will continue to be made, in order to improve the system that is in place. Creating a 16 team playoff does not improve the overall system in place, and thinking that a few teams with small stadiums or BCS internal strife will change the overall system is useless and completely misguided.

Death to a Playoff: Chapters 13 and 14

Perhaps no American sport has benefited from the internet and cable television more than college football. The internet provides never before seen access to teams, coaches, players, recruits and fans and cable television gives viewers the ability to watch games from all across the country. Especially now with DVR technology, you could probably spend an entire week watching nothing except college football games. These are probably the 2 biggest factors in the sport's growth over the past 20 years, neither of which involve the BCS. Yet, in chapter 13 and 14, the authors try and claim that the BCS is either solely claiming credit for the sport's growth (which it hasn't) or is an extreme hindrance in the continued growth (which it isn't because much of this growth has happened with the BCS present). The chapters do provide nice histories to both phenomena, but that is the extent of the value.

Death to a Playoff: Chapter 12

The authors do a good job of exposing the poorly run polling system in Chapter 12. While I don't think polls are a bad idea, I definitely agree that the current system could be vastly improved and probably needs to be completely reformed. If the BCS is going to include human polls in their system, they must do a better job of making the guidelines clear to each pollster and making sure the pollsters are actually closely following the season. Anything less is an insult to the sport, the universities and the fans.

Death to a Playoff: Chapter 11

The BCS uses computer rankings as a way to objectively rank teams according to their performance, without factoring in bias that is inherent in human rankings. This chapter focuses on the computer rankings that the BCS uses, and the authors do a fair job of describing the roots of the computer system, but do miss some key points. The chapter also unfortunately harps on the fact that the BCS has changed its formula 3 times, which should be viewed positively because it shows that they aren't blindly sticking with a formula if it is making mistakes.

Death to a Playoff: Chapter 10

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.