The current BCS attempt at crowning a champion uses a convoluted formula where human polls and computer rankings present the supposedly two best teams in America to play one game for all the marbles. While it seems like a pretty good idea, it has one pretty big flaw - it's based on what pollsters and computer programmers think matters and not on what actually happens on the field. It's time to rewrite the current formula so we can establish a champion rather than a beauty pageant winner.
Polls have existed for generations and supposed experts (sportswriters and coaches) have ranked teams based on how good they are that specific moment. Theoretically that should mean that number 1 should be able to constantly beat every other team while number 2 should be able to beat every team but 1 and so on. The problem with sports (or any human competition for that matter) is that individuals and teams do not perform the same on any given day. Every writer in the world will admit to periods of writers block and there are moments when the best tenor in the world just isn't "feeling it" when he prepares to perform. Consistency is desired, but human fallibility isn't leaving us any time soon. What, then, should we rank teams on? The current system doesn't say - it leaves it up to the individual voter.
Pollsters rank teams for any a number of reasons, but none of them actually reflect the true ability of a team on any given day. Ranking teams based on how they should perform on paper doesn't actually show anything about how players gel as a team, how players deal with pressure or what injuries are going to hit in the first quarter of the next game. Ranking teams based on past performance assumes that teams will perform day in and day out as they always have - who, for example, would have predicted 9 straight Notre Dame bowl losses on January 2, 1995 or a Stanford victory over USC (at USC) on October 6, 2007? Ranking teams based on coaching, recruiting, strength of schedule or by a "gut feeling" all have similar problems - these rankings are all based on prior expectations of fallible pollsters rather than actual results. Ranking teams after they have played a year still bases too much on perceptions and no pollster would actually pretend to know that a number 17 team would lose to all 16 teams ranked ahead and all 102 teams ranked behind because on any given day, unexpected things happen.
The current system is not functioning because it depends on the assumption that teams will perform day in and day out how they are expected to, but that is not part of what makes college football a sport. If we wanted a beauty contest, we could simply rank teams based how they look on paper and never play the games, but thousands of games show that this idea is ridiculous. Instead, what we need to do is to create a system whereby we crown a champion that actually is based on how teams perform.
Now, don't think that this means that I'm discounting the usefulness of polls - I think they're a great way for people to get one person's (or even a group of people's) best guess as to how teams compare. But, I in no way think that people's opinions should factor any way into who is declared the national champion. Nearly everyone admits that it's impossible to really compare teams from different seasons (1995 Nebraska or 2001 Miami anyone?) - everyone has an opinion but it's just that - an opinion. If the AP or the current coaches announced the College Football National Champion of the 1990s, who would actually buy it? Why, then, are we expected to accept these same voters' opinion as to which of the 2004 Sooners, Trojans, Tigers or Utes (or even Broncos) really deserved a chance to play for the national title after the regular season when none of these teams had previously played against each other? The simple answer is that we shouldn't - the title should be determined on the field and be based on how a team performs, not how good a pollster thinks they should be. The polls should be reserved for weekly debates (similar to the NFL or NBA power rankings) but the results on the field are all that matter in head to head matches. Sportswriters can still make their money by arguing about how theoretical match ups look on paper but what actually matters will be results.
There's no harm in arguing that 2005 USC was the best regular season team but what actually matters is that they lost to an equally undefeated Texas team. The obvious problem comes when there are more or less than two undefeated teams at the end of the season - why should any person be trusted with the power to decide which team is most deserving to play for a championship? Why was Florida more deserving to play in the national championship than an undefeated Boise State? I guess it's because in the eyes of the voters a loss to Auburn is better than a victory over San Jose State. I bet if you ask any competitor in the sport if he'd rather beat any team than lose to a team that finished 11-2 he wouldn't choose the loss. Does this mean that I think Boise State was a better team than Florida? Not necessarily, but I also think that 2007 USC was better on paper than 2007 Stanford - it doesn't mean that USC should have been awarded the victory without stepping onto the field. In 2006 Florida was given the benefit of the doubt over Boise State which simply doesn't make sense. In my book, there was no National Champion last year, Florida was just the BCS Championship game winner - and don't even pretend that those are the same thing.
Debates about ability shouldn't matter. Debates about strength of schedule shouldn't matter. Debates about intensity of conference play shouldn't matter. What should matter is letting everyone play out a season and those who did the best (based on record) should have a chance to play for the national championship in some sort of a playoff. I could come up with a dozen different potential playoff methods, but which is best is an argument for another day. The only requirement is that every team has a chance to play for the national championship based on their wins (with every team having the same requirements whether it be best record, conference championship or whatever) and not based on any fallible poll (computer or human). We can then simply define the national champion as the winner of the college football tournament rather than the winner of one game between two teams that pollsters think might be the best two teams in the country at the end of the regular season.
With a playoff, the championship will be determined by how a team performs, not on how it might possibly perform if it played is theoretical absolute best against another team's theoretical absolute best. The teams that didn't qualify for the playoff already lost their chance (the regular season still matters) and the teams that don't "deserve" to be in the playoff will give the better teams an easy game. The team that wins this tournament will then, without question, be the winner of the winners, which seems to be a great way to determine a national champion.
Remember, USC was "better" than Stanford in 2007, Goliath was "better" than David in ancient Israel and England was "better" than America in 1780, but all the pollsters in the world were wrong - why should we ever trust them to choose who the champion is when there's another option? After everything is said and done, the sportswriters can still get together and crown their beauty pageant "national champion", but I, for one, will honor the team that performs on the field and not the team that performs on paper.
2 comments:
I agree.
Just how would the time logistics work for such a playoff? Wouldn't it require far more time than the current system?
And isn't money driving the existing system to a significant degree as well?
While we are in the time of endless debate on this subject, I think that there is a general consensus (among all but BCS university presidents) that the present system does not necessarily result in a true "national champion". I also am an advocate of a playoff system, though I recognize that any proposed system is neither logistically easy nor certain to maintain the dominance of the present college football hierarchy. As such, I think that hope for change is still somewhat faint for the present. I personally advocate a 12 team playoff system with the top 4 teams receiving first round bye's. But while I am pondering a perfect system, I would also make referee's employees of the NCAA and have them assigned all over the country to officiate. They would have a team created at the beginning of the year with officials from all over, and they would be disbanded and reformed into new teams each year. Also, I like regional match-ups, but the present conferences are too big and no longer really give us just the regional games we want (how is San Diego State in the MWC). As such, conferences would be shrunk to around 6 teams, meaning that the majority of the schedule would be out of conference. Scheduling could be done by the NCAA, or just have regulations requiring a certain number of games be played from each region of the country. As for the "bowl tradition", not very many of the stadiums that host "bowl" games hold the same representation that such facilities as the Rose Bowl do to the eating dish so the designation of a "bowl" game seems somewhat archaic. I'm all for a post season that involves the teams that won at least half of their games, but that could be done in many ways with leaning on archaisms for traditional support.
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