We're still a long way from getting a system in college football that makes sense, but for now we can at least join the discussion about playoffs and whatnot.
The Chief Justice wanted to pose this question to the group: "What teams, if you were the college football czar, would you chose to make up a field of 8 play-off teams? Your choices are: Florida, Oklahoma, Ball State, Texas, Utah, Alabama, Texas Tech, Boise State, Penn State, Southern Cal, Brigham Young, Texas Christian, Cincinnati, Ohio State & Tulsa. In other words, teams with either 10 wins or 2 or fewer losses."
After some careful deliberation and consideration, I divided the above teams into two categories: "IN" and "OUT."
2008-09 Playoff Scenario
IN:
#1 Oklahoma (Big 12 champ)
#2 Florida (SEC champ)
#5 Southern Cal (Pac 10 champ)
#8 Penn State (Big 10 champ – tiebreaker over OSU)
#12 Cincinnati (Big East)
#19 Virginia Tech (Technically 9-4, but still the ACC champ)
#3 Texas (at-large bid)
#4 Alabama (at-large bid)
OUT:
#6 Utah – Not in a BCS conference and Texas and Alabama played much tougher schedules. The Utes, on the other hand, nearly lost to Michigan. Get Weber St. out of your schedule, line up another BCS school and try again next year.
#7 Texas Tech - I’d rather go Guns Up than throw in Cinci or VT, but I have to give precedence to BCS conference winners. As the college football czar, you need to maintain some kind of order. That’s the problem when you have three great teams in the same conference and division.
#9 Boise St. – Same as Utah, when you’re in a non-BCS conference you need to schedule better opponents for your non-conference games. You’re already beating up on Idaho, Utah St. and New Mexico St.; there’s no need to play Idaho St. (FCS). And scheduling other non-BCS teams doesn’t help either.
#10 Ohio St. – Didn’t win their conference outright and Texas and Alabama clearly had better seasons.
#11 TCU – Didn’t even win their non-BCS conference. Again, if you want to be considered for national contention, stop playing FCS schools and the worst team in C-USA.
#16 BYU – First, win your conference. Second, get a tougher non-conference schedule. It’s too bad their victories over Washington and UCLA were unimpressive this year, so get N. Iowa out of there and go after someone else to make sure you can get a noticeable win over a BCS opponent.
#22 Ball St. – Even if they did win their conference, they’ve got to do better than Northeastern (2-10 AND an FCS school) in their non-conference schedule. Navy’s ok for an independent, but drop W. Kentucky and schedule better BCS schools than Indiana.
NR Tulsa – This one’s easy. Didn’t win their conference, three losses, didn’t play a ranked team all year and scheduled an FCS school and other shaky non-BCS schools. Oh yeah, and they’re not even ranked.
Now, what about the rest of you? Who are your eight playoff teams for this year's post-season?
6 comments:
If it were me, I wouldn't have 8 teams, I would have 68, in a little system I like to call "bowls".
This is why a playoff is ridiculous. Does anyone really think Va Tech or Cincy should play for a national title? If you toss them out, then you're giving an OSU and Utah a chance. Utah is fine, but OSU has no business being in a playoff. So then you put Texas Tech in, and now I ask why we just wasted three months. We all knew in August that USC, Texas, OU, Florida, likely Penn State, would be the best teams. We'd have had Georgia instead of Utah, maybe OSU instead of Texas Tech. Why not just have a playoff the first two weeks in September and call it a season. We all know that if we have a playoff, there are really only four teams that have a chance...Texas, OU, USC, and Florida (you really see PSU or TTU winning three against that group...really?) Now we're down to a 4-team playoff, which is just the plus-one model, which would be nice this year, lousy in 2005. Or 2002. Or 1999. Or 1997. Or 1996. Or 1995. Or 1994. Or 1993.
With a playoff, a team like USC (who everyone seems to think is the best team...at least Vegas does) does not get punished for losing at Oregon State (Oregon hung 65 on the Beavs in Corvalis, so let's not make it out to be some monumental task to win there) USC would essentially get two mulligans each year, because a two-loss USC team is making the playoffs every year, ahead of one-loss Texas Tech or undefeated Utah, and then the crying will continue, just like it does now. The question everybody should be asking is not "how can we get a playoff" but "how can we become such a fine football team that we show up every half of every game?" Texas, USC, Florida, and OU all had lousy halves and lost because of it. The season is a playoff, not in that if you beat a team, you advance ahead of them, but in that you cannot afford to lose.
Your witness.
Does anyone really think Illinois or Hawaii should have played in BCS bowls last year? That's just as ridiculous. At least VT and Cincy won their BCS conferences. And if the Big East and ACC don't have national contenders this year, then they'll lose in the first round. That's not the end of the world. But at least it will be decided on the field, not by the whims of corrupt BCS officials.
And it's not like the regular season would have been meaningless. If we would have started the playoffs based on the pre-season rankings, Georgia would have gone in the #1 ranked team and Alabama would be out. As it stands now, that certainly wouldn't be the case.
And you make the mistake of assuming that if the plus-one model had been in effect in previous years that the #1 and #2 would play each other in the initial bowls and that doesn't have to be the case. You also don't recognize that a playoff is more likely to give you a better match-up in the finals than the stupid BCS. You can't assume that you'll always get the perfect USC vs. Texas championship game in the current system. With a playoff, you end up with two teams who won their conferences (or at least had a great season) and have won multiple big games to get to the championship. You're bound to get more quality games that way.
And finally, you still see college football like it's the 1990's and teams like Nebraska could dominate a once weak Big 12 conference. Yes, they were a great team for many years, but they wouldn't have had the same kind of seasons if the Big 12 was as competitive as it is now. The lesser colleges are getting better and it's only going to get more and more difficult to decide the #1 and #2 teams in the country simply using academic means. Even as it is, Oklahoma could "afford" to lose to Texas and Florida could "afford" to lose to Ole Miss this season and one of them is going to become the national champion. So why does Florida get a "mulligan" but USC doesn't? It's too arbitrary! And just because there's a playoff, doesn't mean teams can afford to lose. If you lose a game, you may not win your conference. If you lose a game, you may not make the playoffs.
If you think you're going to get a team every year so dominant that they play two stellar halves every single game of the season, then you don't know college football (or even college athletics) very well. And even if such an idealistic fantasy does come to life, a playoff won't hurt such a team. They'll still become national champs.
The regular season is still part of the playoff. Your conference is your bracket. Make it out of your bracket, you're in the elite 8. Two at-large bids gets two more exceptional teams in there from those conferences with two teams that are particularly acceptable.
The post-season for college football is currently a joke. You don't see any other leagues saying, "Gosh, the college football set-up makes the season so meaningful, we ought to think about switching to that format." But you do see people in college football saying there should be some kind of playoff.
I apparently know college football quite well, judging by the latest picks competition standings. There is a difference between going to the BCS and going to a playoff. A BCS is a reward for a good season, for winning your league. Even if your league is weak like the ACC or Big East, conquering it should win a prize. (And if you are Utah or Hawaii or Boise, winning your weak conference and going undefeated should earn you a crack at the big boys, provided you aren't playing Weber State and The Ogden School for the Blind out of conference.) But that doesn't mean you should have a shot at a national title.
With a plus-one, 1 and 2 wouldn't always play each other first, but if 1 and 2 have gone undefeated and 3 and 4 haven't, why should 1 and 2 have to mess around with 3 and 4 before playing each other. It just adds another opportunity for the best team to lose. And while we're at it, let's address the fallacy that a playoff always produces the best team as champion. I give you the 2007 NFL season. I give you every legit #1 seed who lost in the first round in March Madness. To that point, I think we have a much better chance of getting a good matchup in the finals with the BCS. Take this year. What would a better matchup be than OU-Florida? Texas-Florida, okay? But it is very likely both of those teams don't survive quarters and semis. It is just too tough to do, and you get to the point where the NFL is that you have so many good teams that you can't tell the difference anymore. You say the BCS is black and white and you want more color. Well, if you keep adding colors, eventually you get all black. (No, not the rugby All-blacks or the soccer All-blacks or whomever. And no, this is not a racial slur!)
I also argue that Nebraska wouldn't have been dominant if the Big 12 was like it is now. In 1995, the Big 8 was better than the Big 12 now, or at least just as good. 4 teams won 10 games (back when they only played 11 and a bowl), won their bowl (convincingly) and finished ranked in the Top 10. Oh, and Nebraska CLOCKED them all, and then CLOCKED Florida, who had CLOCKED the rest of the SEC and a good FSU team. So it can happen.
Also, no team that has any legimate chance of winning the title is going to miss an 8-team playoff with one loss. Not ever.
And to the point of being perfect, I remind you of that very poignant scene in Remember the Titans, where they were playing that team with really bad uniforms (yes, I realize it was 1971 and I need to be more specific) and Julius gave that inspiration talk about perfection. That's what it is. The pursuit of perfection. That special team that CAN play every half perfect. Or that special team that even when they don't play perfect, somehow finds a way to win. Like OSU in 2002, for example.
That is all for now.
I think 8 teams (at least initially) is too many. As I indicated on a previous post, 4 teams separates the quality vs. the wanna-bees.
Shoot, the tweaking of the BCS from it's inception is an improvement for rankings (except that the sportswriters pulled out), but there won't be 5 legitimate teams. Yes, there will be 5 one-loss teams, and it may be hard to cut the knife between #4 and #5, but it's better to let in a so-so #4 to a two game playoff (using the bowl set up if you please) than exclude a team that is #1 or #2 in the eyes of many, but #3 to others, and shamefully excluded.
Again, the issue is which is the worst error: letting in a less deserving team, or excluding the truly deserving team.
Using only two teams seriously risks excluding a team that gets excluded on something similar to a coin flip. (If the Big 12 used the SEC tie-breaker, Oklahoma wouldn't be there. using the Big 12 system Texas gets excluded) I've stated before which of those two systems I prefer, but you don't know how it will play out until real teams are effected. That's pretty close to a coin flip as to which system could be used.
Let's get the camel's nose under the tent and try a plus one type system. If some #5 ranked team sneeks ahead of a #4 ranked team because of human bias or computer glitches, they still have to beat #1 and the winner of #2 v. #3. If they can do that, they can legitimately claim the national championship.
I think that 8 teams weakens the field. Some funky turnovers on a wet field may hand the national championship to a team that really didn't deserve to even be there when you consider their whole body of work.
If #8 or #7 gets a fluky win, and someone else does that team's dirty work via upsets in the other bracket, the playoff advocates might get some egg on their faces.
Doctor L
Getting back to Clyde's question about who should be included, I can't do 8 teams (read previous entry).
So, who, this year, deserves to be in the 4 team playoff (the plus one system).
Oklahoma and Florida get the top two seeds (OU #1, FL #2). Texas is #3 and would play Florida, even if you put Florida #1. Include some fine print about repeat games, or teams from the same conference to avoid redoing games already played until the championship game.
Okay, who gets #4.
Alabama? No. They lost to Florida. Too bad. That was your chance. The wrong game to lose.
Texas Tech? Excuse me? They got rolled.
Penn State? Possibly. We'll know after the game in Pasadena. But since this has to be decided beforehand, that option is not available. Here's the caveat. If Oregon St. beats Oregon and wins the conference. I say Penn State should go on the strength of winning their conference. USC would be on the outside looking in.
Southern Cal? Yeah. I think so. Backed in to their conference title, and would edge out Joe PA for the fourth spot. Then they would have to prove it on the field.
What about Utah? Ball State? Boise St., etc. Send them to a prestigious and lucrative bowl. Job well done. National Championship bracket? Dream on. Not until they demonstrate that they are more than a good team, or even an undefeated team. They need to be a dominant team regardless of their conference or non-conference teams.
Kick some butt, be impressive, and you won't be ignored. But right now, one can't consider you of the same caliber as the other teams. The 4th spot has got to be more than a warm-up game for the top seed. That would be a joke.
Dr. L
Post a Comment