The BCS Bowl system for Division I-A football sucks

As Brendan has posted repeatedly over the last 48 hours, the whole BCS process sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls. (Kudos to you who get the reference...)  But I thought I'd take my power as a guestblogger to make this a post.  Not that I'm actually expecting the NCAA to take notice of this post, or actually care what college football fans want or anything, but I feel it needs to be said quite explicitly.

The BCS Bowl system for Division I-A football sucks.

Who makes the decisions regarding what schools get to go to what bowls?  A bunch of guys sitting around a table and a computer.  We have 9 teams going to BCS Bowl games this year with at least 1 loss (and one team playing for the championship with 2!)  I know that this has been a kooky year for college football, and we've had a lot of good teams fall from grace (Mizzou, Michigan, Oregon, West Virginia to name a few).  However, let's look at something else: we actually have an undefeated teams in Division I-A football this year.  True, Hawaii is going to a BCS Bowl -- but just barely.  And they've got no shot at the BCS national title, while a two-loss team gets that honor.

As Brendan said: "Also in New Orleans, it'll be Georgia-Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. If the undefeated Warriors beat the #5-ranked Bulldogs (which I seriously doubt they will, but if they do), they should win the AP championship. ("Should" as in "it would be just," not as in "I predict it would happen." No, definitely not the latter.)"  I would love for Hawaii to beat Georgia (though I do have a soft spot in my heart for the SEC); it would be great if the Warriors can finish undefeated this year.  To have an undefeated team not even play for the championship just proves my point: the system needs to be overhauled.

Let's get something clear: I have no problem with a 1-loss or a 2-loss (or, heck, even a 3- or 4-loss) team winning the national championship.  But in order to do this, let's set up a playoff system. Take the Top 25, add in any I-A schools that win their conference but don't crack the Top 25 (Troy, for example) up to 32 teams (or heck, go a step further and play a round of 64 first).  You don't like that idea?  Why not give the top 16 teams a bye and have the remaining 32 teams have a play-in round (48 teams).

Does this mean we might have a few "Cinderella" stories in college football?  Hell, yes.  Who remembers the huge name that George Mason made for itself a few years ago just because the basketball team improbably made it to the Final Four?  Imagine a team like Boise State, who has had a few spectacular seasons the last few years. Might they have been national champions a few years back?  We'll never know, because they weren't given the chance.

And if a Hawaii or a Boise State happens to win the national championship, that's great.  If they lose to a better team, like Hawaii will probably lose to Georgia this year, then fine.  Then they're no longer undefeated--and it makes folks like me who hate seeing an undefeated team not get a national title shot shut up.

But what about all of the bowls and the billions of dollars they bring in?  No one has said that we can't call each of the games "Bowl Games" with similar monetary implications.  Have the Four BCS bowl games be the final few games or something--we can call every game in the playoffs, played at neutral locations--bowl games.

I'll say it again: we need a playoff system for Division I-A football.  Anything else is not enough.  Do you hear me, Tom Hansen? What about the rest of your NCAA Football Board of Directors?  We're fans, we pay money to see these games, and we would like a slightly more fair way of deciding a national championship.

Comments

[Sam]

I completely agree with the BCS needing renovations. However, there's one problem with a playoff that I just can't get around. If we instituted a playoff this year, USC would, assuming it's at least 8 teams, make the playoff. This would render their loss to Stanford completely irrelevant. Under the current system, that loss is the only reason the Trojans aren't in the title game. I find it hard to endorse a system that devalues regular season games (and, in particular, upsets) so much.

[Brendan Loy]

Josh, a few things:

1) Nothing personal in my moving most of your post "after the jump." I just wanted my "perfect storm" post, which I like, to be near the top for a bit longer. Pure vanity on my part. :)

2. I changed the number of one- or two-loss teams in the BCS from 7 to 9, because the two teams in the title game count as BCS teams too, so 9 out of 10 total teams are once- or twice-beaten.

3. I disagree with a 32- or 64-team playoff; it's impractical for a sport like football, which is difficult to play in rapid-fire fashion like basketball (whose tournament does six games in three weekends), and more importantly, such a massive playoff truly would devalue the regular season to an intolerable extent. Moreover, it's unnecessary. No offense to the #25-ranked UConn Huskies, but do we really need them in the playoff? A playoff with substantially smaller group would achieve the same goals. Specifically...

4. As I've posted here before (I'm too lazy to go searching the archives right now, but at some point I'll probably do an updated "BCS sucks" post of my own, and link to them), I believe the ideal solution is a 16-team playoff, with 11 automatic bids for the conference champions plus 5 at-large bids. That would make the conference regular season extremely important, and OOC play also important for earning those at-large bids. I would also be okay with a 12-team playoff (only one at-large spot, so the regular season would be REALLY important, plus the Top 4 teams would get byes, another way to keep the regular season relevant) or even, say, a 14-team playoff (3 at-larges, top 2 get byes). I also believe there are various tweaks that could be made which, while imperfect, would be vast improvements on the current "system" and would not devalue the regular season to an intolerable extent. "Plus-One," however, is very weak tea. "Plus-Three" -- with certain rules and safeguards built in to make sure that undefeated mid-majors like Hawaii/Boise/Utah get a shot regardless of their ranking -- would be a much bigger improvement.

5) I appreciate you calling it "Division I-A," not "FBS," and a pox on anyone who comments that doing so is incorrect. Damn the NCAA's ridiculous Orwellian renaming schemes! It's Division I-A.

[Brendan]

Oh, and 6) I'll have more to say about Hawaii in a new post at some point in the future. It's a more nuanced issue that I think comes across here, because to simply say "they're undefeated," without more, ignores the strength-of-schedule problem and potentially encourages teams at all levels to schedule soft non-conference opposition. However, there are good reasons why Hawaii should be taken seriously (not as seriously as Boise '06-'07 or Utah '05-'06, but seriously nonetheless), which I will attempt to marshal in a post soon.

[Derek]

Watching George Mason make the Final Four was atrocious. It was clear that they'd get burned at some point, and sure enough, they gave us an unwatchable semi-final. The people who "love to see the underdog" are a bunch of basketball-illiterate office secretaries who're wrecking the bracket pool and think Mason's unis are "cute."

[Brendan]

In fairness, UCLA didn't look much better against Florida than George Mason did. I'm not sure the Gators' romp over the Patriots is so much a testament to GMU's weakness as it is to the fact that the Gators were an absolute juggernaut that year.

[David K.]

I agree with Sam, a playoff in College Football at this level would be less interesting rather than more interesting, not to mention the time and physical drain it would take. I don't think most people realize exactly how taxing the football season is, nor how long it would take to do a playoff like is suggested in this post. A 48 team playoff?!? Thats a full third of the teams in Division 1-A. Going say by Jeff Sagarins rankings that would mean Arizona (5-7), Oklahoma State (6-6), UCLA (6-6, lost to Notre Freakin Dame) and others would be in. At that point you have teams that have allready LOST to other teams having a chance to beat them for the National Championship just because one team might have had a bad day. Its bad enough we have Conference Championships that set up rematches, but a playoff system that does so? Why play the regular season? Just set up a huge 120+ team playoff system from the get go, who cares about conferences!

In a playoff, such as basketball, its possible that a team (say Arizona) could go undefeated all the way to the final game and lose to a team its allready beaten 2-3 times (say Stanford) and even though it has a) the better record and b) beat them 2 out of 3 times, they aren't champions. How is that a better system of determing the best team?

The BCS is hugely flawed, but I will say that atleast it gives schools like Boise State and Hawaii a SHOT at the big name bowls even if they never get a national title shot, that would never have happened before, and a tournament system would make much less sense for logistical reasons as well.

[dcl]

I think there needs to be a playoff. I think it will never happen. I think all I-A conference champions should get in. I don't necessarily think it needs to be extended at all beyond conference champions-though I'm not necessarily against doing so. I also don't think there is any real need to go beyond 16 teams--perhaps 14 is just about right, though the at large thing actually bugs me a bit, but I suppose we need to convince ND to go along.

As to devaluing upsets in the regular season, that's rather ridiculous. It seems they would still be rather important. Does the NCAA basketball tournament devalue upsets? Certainly doesn't seem to. Some turn out to be crazy important...

[Sandy Underpants]

Tom Hansen doesn't give a damn about a playoff, his Big-10 teams don't need to beat anyone to make the big game, even if they lose to the only ranked team they play.

Sam, the only reason USC isn't in the title game is because of injuries. LSU lost to 2 unranked teams and they still made it. The system is obviously rigged as no team has ever gone from #7 to #2 in one week in the history of the BCS. But hell, at least LSU beat good teams to justify being in The Big Game.

[alphadog]

Hawaii does not deserve a shot at the National Championship this year just like Boise did not deserve it last year. It sucks that they are in an inferior conference, but thats just the way it is. Perhaps what needs to happen is the creation of a progression/regression policy for schools entering/leaving the BCS conferences. Exit Stannford from PAC 10, enter Hawaii/Boise. Exit Baylor from Big12, enter TCU. That way, the "Cinderella" teams can EARN a place at the table and not be left out in the cold with an insulted 12-0 record.

[Sam]

dcl, the NCAA basketball tournament DOES devalue the regular season, a great deal in fact. #1 UCLA lost to #8 Texas last night, but does that really matter? Of course not, UCLA will still make the tournament and, in all likelihood, be a #1 seed. If the #1 football team falls (well, in any season other than this one) it cripples their National Championship hopes.
Granted, a lot of this involves inherent differences in the sports (basketball plays more games, etc.), but we also don't think of the basketball regular season as being "devalued" because that's the way it's always been; we have nothing to compare it to.
I don't know about everyone else, but I enjoyed seeing the upsets in football this year and knowing that they would actually matter in determining the national champion, as opposed to saying, "Oh Stanford beat USC, good thing that didn't happen in the playoffs" and moving on.
The BCS isn't perfect by any means, but one of the great things about NCAA football is that every game TRULY matters.

[dcl]

Some quick math, currently we play 32 Bowl Games in 4 weeks. A playoff on Brendan's model would require something like 13 to 15 games in five weeks. So that's a loss of a little over half the bowl games having meaning in a playoff system. But a 33 team playoff would just be a bad idea-even if it would account for all the current bowl games, even the Meineke Car Care bowl and the PapaJohns.com bowl... And lest we forget the Chick-Fil-A bowl or the Champs Sports bowl... Nobody cares about them now, and nobody would continue to care in a playoff system...

[Mike's brother Matt]

Well, this seems as good a place as any for my playoff proposal. Have an 8-team playoff. The 6 BCS champions get six of the slots. The remaining two slots are filled as follows: Take the highest ranked independent, and the five non BCS champions. Between these six teams, take the two highest ranked teams. Then we seed these 8 teams by their rankings. Going off of Sagarin's BCS ranking (the computers will be needed as we could easily have the 50th or so ranked team as the bottom seed) this years seeds would be as follows overall rank is parentheses):
#1: Virginia Tech (1)
#2: LSU (2)
#3: Oklahoma (3)
#4: Ohio State (4)
#5: Hawaii (8)
#6: USC (9)
#7: West Virginia (11)
#8: BYU (23)
With the possible exception of Va.Tech vs. BYU (I have no idea how good BYU really is) all the opening round matchups would be interesting games. This system would keep all the undefeated team in the playoffs barring some totally insane season, keep the conference schedules exciting, and create more incentive to schedule quality non conference games. As it currently stands, the sane choice really is to schedule one marquee opponent to boost strength of schedule while minimizing the risk exposure. If however, losses in non-con games didn't cripple BCS teams, they would have much more incentive to play multiple top tier teams, as it would be key to getting the presumably much easier #1 or #2 seed games, and would provide a much better test before moving into the heart of the conference schedule.

[uscroger]

alphadog: that's a great idea

[uscroger]

Whatever happened to all the ND fans?????

[David K.]

Hawaii does not deserve a shot at the National Championship this year just like Boise did not deserve it last year. It sucks that they are in an inferior conference, but thats just the way it is. Perhaps what needs to happen is the creation of a progression/regression policy for schools entering/leaving the BCS conferences. Exit Stannford from PAC 10, enter Hawaii/Boise. Exit Baylor from Big12, enter TCU. That way, the "Cinderella" teams can EARN a place at the table and not be left out in the cold with an insulted 12-0 record.

1) It's not Hawaii's fault they didn't play a tougher non-conf opponent or two, they TRIED. So given that all the tough schools and conferences who refused to play them blew multiple chances at the NC, and Hawaii finished unbeaten, why NOT give them a shot? Everyone else had theirs now its hawaii's turn.

2) A progression/regression scenario is ridiculous for many reasons
a) Traditional rivalries
b) Revenue sharing arrangments
c) The conferences extend to way more sports than football. Stanford may suck in football but they don't in basketball for example
d) Schedules made up years in advance

[David K.]

Some quick math, currently we play 32 Bowl Games in 4 weeks. A playoff on Brendan's model would require something like 13 to 15 games in five weeks. So that's a loss of a little over half the bowl games having meaning in a playoff system. But a 33 team playoff would just be a bad idea-even if it would account for all the current bowl games, even the Meineke Car Care bowl and the PapaJohns.com bowl... And lest we forget the Chick-Fil-A bowl or the Champs Sports bowl... Nobody cares about them now, and nobody would continue to care in a playoff system...

Bullshit nobody cares. The schools care, and the players care and the fans care, and the communities that put them on care. I've been to the Sun Bowl and the Holiday Bowl and the Rose Bowl, and yes, the Rose Bowl was the best of the three, but the other bowls DID have an impact both on the host cities and the participating schools. Dumping the bowls in favor of using them as play off sites is ridiculous for a number of reasons:

1) Fans can't afford to travel multiple times to see their team at multiple locations during the playoff
2) Far fewer schools are allowed to participate, meaning lost revenue for schools that don't make it into bowls and less revenue for their conferences. There's a trickle down effect there. Less money to improve the team and give them a shot at maybe making a bigger bowl in the future, and less money for other sports since football programs are a large source of revenue for the ENTIRE ATHELTIC DEPARTMENT and often fund smaller programs like swimming and soccer to name a few.

[Brendan Loy]

Mike's brother Matt, I like your proposal, but I would add to the pool of candidates for the final two spots "any undefeated team that is not a conference champion." Impossible, you say? If Iowa had beaten Iowa State in 2002, they would have fit that description. The Big Ten is the only major conference where this can happen, since the others either have a championship game or a full round-robin. Not sure offhand if it's possible in any of the mid-major conferences.

[Sandy Underpants]

It's really hard to accept that if you have an 8 team elimination that the bowls can't be inCorporated into the system. Round 1-- Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, Capital One Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Round 2 Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Round 3 National Championship game. Seems like a no brainer.

P.S. to Matt: the biggest objection to your proposal is that it would be too easy for Notre Dame to get in. While every other major team would have to win a tough conference, ND would just have to finish ranked ahead of Navy, Army, and all but one of the mid-major teams. They'd do that pretty much any year they lose no more than two games, and probably some years when they lose three or four. Might want to add a rule that you can't be in that pool with more than one loss.

[David K.]

You do realize Sandy that planning a trip to a bowl game is not something you do on a whim right? Fans aren't going to be able to attend multiple rounds of playoffs and the bowls would be stupid to give up things like, oh playing on New Years day or hosting a team who just came from a nother bowl game that would affect their bottom line. Tell me, if you are the organizers of the Fiesta or Orange bowl, are YOU going to be willing to move your bowl back a week and give up that noteriety and revenue? Or conversely if you are the Rose or Sugar bowl do you want to give up playing on Jan 1 and moving a week later? Answer? No. If you are a conference with an arrangment with a bowl game, are you going to give up a gaurenteed spot for your champion just so they can be in a play off? Nope. As it is the Rose Bowl is barely part of the system and does everything it can each year to get a Big-Ten/Pac-10 matchup. Why? Because they know it will be hugely succesful financially and they care about the tradition. The minute the SEC/BCS commissioner tries to pull that on them I gaurentee you the Pac-10, Big Ten and Rose Bowl are out of the BCS altogether and you go back to the failed BCS predecessor and split championships.

[Sandy Underpants]

I didn't know it took a lifetime of dreaming and planning for fans to make a bowl game. I guess I take the Final Four for granted when I ignore it, but I thought those fans travel all around praying their flunky athletes win 7 games across the country. As far as tradition goes, does anyone think USC vs. Illinois is a good Rose Bowl? It completely blows. The 3rd ranked Big-10 team vs. the Pac-10 champ? I'd much rather see a semi-final USC vs. West Virginia/Ohio St./LSU/Georgia/VT/OU than what we got instead, and it can still be on New Years.

As far as New Years bowls, you may not have been paying attention, but the damn games aren't even on New Years anymore. Sugar is the 4th, Orange is the 3rd, and Fiesta the 2nd. So much for that problem. If it's a problem to run The 1st Round 10 days before New Years day then instead of using good bowls during late December have the 1st round host be the Holliday Bowl, Independence Bowl, Peach Bowl, Alamo Bowl. But I know Capital One and Cotton would come running and probably any of them. Imagine a hot freakin 1st round playoff game every night during Christmas week. Come on, that's worth way more than a New Years bowl just because Army used to represent on New Years in 1914.

[Mike's brother Matt]

Yeah, my plan could end up screwing a Big Ten team. Hopefully it'd get through to the Big Ten to have a sane conference set up. It might be too easy for Notre Dame to get in, but it seemed the most workable solution. Plus I don't see Notre Dame as having too much of an advantage over Boise/Hawaii and Ohio State do. Plus, it'd probably spur BYU, Utah, Troy, et al to move into a position to take the spot away from ND. Plus Weis might do enough damage to ND to keep it from being a problem for a while.

[Scott]

Just to throw my two cents in regarding playoffs, I went to a small DII school many years ago and way back in the 80's there was a playoff system and obviously continues to be one for DI-A, DII and DIII. All this BS about travel, student burden etc doesn't seem to extend to the smaller schools where a majority of those players aren't even on scholarship. In DII, the playoffs are regional-based to limit initial travel anyways. Every single other sport in college has playoffs. Not some. Not most. All of them.

The bowl system has been and always will be about putting money into sponsors hands as well as the city that hosts them. All other arguments null. That being said, a college football playoff is far, far in the future. Fox has the BCS rights till 2012, so don't hold ouyr breath.

[David K.]

Scott, what you say is partially true, but the attendence for DII football (and pretty much any other sport) pales in comparison to that of DI-A football. As for travel i'm talking more about the FAN travel (again revenue for the bowls) than team travel (which would be offset by game revenue anyway)

[yea]

i think people complaining about the bcs might be worse than the actual bcs.

[Brendan Loy]

LOL, yea.

Matt, I realized after my proposed revision re: Notre Dame that it doesn't work, since that would mean no two-loss ND team could ever get in (whereas your plan would mean that almost any two-loss ND team can get in). Hmm. Not sure what the solution is, other than for ND to join the Big Ten, and the Big Ten to split into divisions and have a championship game, which would solve two birds with one stone, but is about as likely to happen as... well, as an eight-team playoff. :)

[Brendan Loy]

How about this:

A 10-team playoff. Your exact solution, but with a two-loss maximum for teams to qualify for the two "non-BCS-conference" spots (to prevent an 8-4 Notre Dame from going if the mid-majors are having a down year and/or the Irish are overrated), plus two at-large slots for teams like Georgia '07, USC and Iowa '03, etc. The at-large pool would increase to three or four in the unlikely event that the independents and non-BCS conferences don't produce enough undefeated, one-loss or two-loss teams to fill the two "non-BCS-conference" slots. And with a field of 10 teams, there's a reward for being highly ranked (#1-6 get byes, and #1 and #2 get to play exhausted teams in their first game), so the regular season -- including non-conference play -- still matters. The at-large spots also help the regular season matter.

This year? Using the BCS rankings...

#1: Ohio State (Big Ten) (1)
#2: LSU (SEC) (2)
#3: Virginia Tech (ACC) (3)
#4: Oklahoma (Big 12) (4)
#5: Georgia (at-large) (5)
#6: Missouri (at-large) (6)
#7: USC (Pac-10) (7)
#8: West Virginia (Big East) (9)
#9: Hawaii (non-BCS) (10)
#10: BYU (non-BCS) (17)

OPENING ROUND
#7 USC vs. #10 BYU
#8 West Virginia vs. #9 Hawaii

QUARTERFINALS
#1 OSU vs. WVU/Hawaii
#2 LSU vs. USC/BYU
#3 VT vs. #6 Missouri
#4 OU vs. #5 Georgia

[Andrew]

Oh God, it's that time of year again: we've reached the ridiculous, never-ending, worthless playoff proposal thread. Look folks, it won't happen. If we're lucky and the BCS folks get smart, they'll give us a plus-one format, which will solve the problem 90% of the time. However, to make this work, the BCS is going to have to help itself by scheduling the best matchups (e.g., Utah should have been pitted against Auburn in the 2005 Sugar Bowl; this year would be tough, but it would have made sense to have OU vs. LSU, and OSU vs. Va Tech).

As I've stated before, my preference is an ad-hoc playoff after the bowls, where the final BCS rankings would determine the BCS bowl matchups and a decision would then be made whether to have a four-team playoff after the bowls or a one-game post-bowl championship game. That's at least as realistic as any of the playoff proposals floated above (that is to say, it'll never happen).

The most unrealistic proposals are those that include anything more than eight teams. A 16-team playoff would take too long and allow in too many teams that don't deserve a shot. An eight-game playoff would make sense, however everyone would have to ignore conference titles/championships and just take the best eight teams (and to do that, we'd need to go back to a BCS formula that takes into account elite wins, bad losses, and SOS). They could start the first round on the third Saturday in December (this gives everyone a week off after "championship Saturday"), hold the second round on January 1, and the championship game would be a week later.

For those who are still bitching about Hawaii's schedule and saying it should preclude them from a chance at the title, I think that's BS. The plain truth is, BCS schools have been dodging their "mid-major" brethren. The NCAA should take action right away to ban games against I-AA teams and force BCS teams to schedule other I-A teams. If this was done, I guarantee you Hawaii would have found two willing partners to replace their I-AA games and would have had a chance to improve their SOS. But since we're in a situation right now where BCS schools can refuse to play mid-major teams like Hawaii in favor of near-automatic wins over I-AA cupcakes, the only way to disincentivize them from doing so is to put a team like Hawaii in the title game. BCS schools would say it's not fair and point out Hawaii's weak OOC schedule, but the fact is Hawaii had no worse an OOC schedule than three-quarters of the BCS teams out there. If BCS schools are going to schedule weak, we should not punish WAC, MAC, MWC, and Sun Belt teams for having weak schedules. When BCS teams start filling their schedules with non-cupcakes, then we can start holding teams like Hawaii to a higher bar.

[David K.]

This is one of those rare occasions I agree 100% with Andrew. Therefore we MUST be right ;-)

[yea]

why the hell should the bcs schools have to play hawaii? its like a 6-7 hour flight and the game will be on a weird time for television. bcs schools dont have anything to prove or gain by going into hawaii. if hawaii wants to be in the national title discussion they will have to win road games at major programs. the bcs schools just dont want to go to hawaii, they arnt ducking hawaii at home. when you are located out in the middle of the pacific ocean, life is kind of tough.

this is all moot anyway because hawaii isnt that good of a team. top 20 at best. this is a team that has barely beaten mediocre competition throughout most of the year. if they had played like boise state did last year this discussion might have more teeth to it.

[David K.]

yea, you might want to try and get a clue before posting. Hawaii TRIED to schedule games AT other schools such as Michigan and Michigan State. How much different is it for a school from the east coast or midwest to play on the west coast (or vice versa) tahn it is to go two more hours and back to Hawaii anyway? Jet lag is jet lag. No, as Boise State proved the little guys can hang with the "big guys" maybe not always win but certainly be competative. No, schools don't want to play Hawaii because its not an easy win. But ok, so not Hawaii what about the other decent I-A non-BCS schools on the mainland that the conferences like the Big 12, SEC at al refuse instead choosing to play 1-AA teams or I-A weaklings. Boise State has the same problems getting schools to play them, whats the excuse there? Is Idaho too far for those widdle ACC schools to travel to?

[AO]

Yet another year where people whine about not having a playoff system. To paraphrase Jim Delaney, if you hate the BCS and want a playoff, then stop watching CFB! Don't waste your time coming up with these oh-so glorious match-ups, just turn off the tube and you'll get what you want.

To me a playoff system is ridiculously stupid, considering there are FAR easier and feasible solutions in determining a true champion, but to each his own...

[Mike's brother Matt]

Umm, AO, what better solution do you see than a playoff? Seriously, the current system is far from easy, and there are only a few cases it handles well. USC/Texas and Ohio State/Florida were good, but we've also had a couple of 3 teams being virtually tied, and this year's 37 million team pile up.

[jlr]

Brendan, I'd be willing to do away with a much larger playoff system, but I think it's still important to include all of the Top 25 teams, at the very least, and it's also extremely important not to leave out any I-A conference champions (Troy).

There's just too much here for me to respond to everyone else. Suffice it to say, you're all wrong, and I'm right :-P

[Brendan Loy]

Josh, I agree about I-A conference champions (though Troy is not a conference champion this year, Florida Atlantic beat them) and disagree about the Top 25. Every conference champ plus a handful of at-larges would be fine. The, say, #11 team in the country that lost its own conference doesn't need to be in -- they had every opportunity to earn their way in (by winning their conference) and if they were unable to do that, they have no gripe. Allowing a handful of at-larges will take care of the few truly deserving non-champions (like Georgia this year, Michigan last year...well, or so we thought until they played USC in the Rose Bowl...Iowa and USC back in 2002-03, etc.), and that's all we need. Once you start letting in three-loss Big East teams and four-loss SEC teams, the regular season really has lost all its oomph. No need to go there, and every reason not to.

[Scott]

AO, are you serious? DI football is the only sport in college and for that matter all other sports that doesn't use a playoff system, and you know of a far easier way to determine a champion? Do tell.

[jlr]

You're absolutely right about Florida Atlantic and Troy. My eyes must have crossed or something.

What if you have a team that has a great season, but they recorded 2 or 3 losses to truly spectacular teams (like if they lost USC from a couple of years ago and another absolutely fantastic team)? Would that detract from their SOS? Should they be denied a place in the tourney?

I'm guessing that you would say that SOS would likely put them in one of the "at-large" positions, but I'm still skeptical.

I'd also be willing to acknowledge a 16-team playoff system, but I think that a lot of deserving candidates (Wisconsin, Texas, Virginia) would be left out of the hunt. I see your point about multiple-loss teams, but let's not forget the real reason for a playoff to begin with: to determine who the best is. If we don't even acknowledge the possiblility that a team like Virginia (with Chris Long, who should have been considered for the Heisman, but Virginia didn't have a "good enough" run this year) might be able to be national champs, then why play it?

Look: the cream rises to the top. Would Virginia this year win the tournament? Probably not. I sure as hell wouldn't bet on them. The best team would win, and the lesser teams would fail. We'd still end up with teams like Ohio State and LSU and VT and Oklahoma on top at the end.

Your earlier suggestion of a 16-team tourney (11 champs plus 5 at-large) sounds good, but I still think it leaves some chances for good spoilers and upsets. If they decided to adopt your plan, Brendan, I'd support it.

[Brendan Loy]

Josh, obviously losing to "truly spectacular teams" does precisely the opposite of "detract from...SOS." If you're playing good teams, that helps your SOS. It also helps pollsters' perceptions. See: Notre Dame 2005, which almost beat a spectacular USC team (and also lost in overtime to a mediocre Michigan State team), beat nobody of note, and was ranked #6 at the end of the year. Same with Ohio State that year, which lost to Texas and Penn State, and beat Michigan, and was ranked #4. Or, going back to 2002-03, USC and Oklahoma were highly-ranked two-loss non-champions that would have been in contention for an at-large bid. The history of the BCS makes abundantly clear that worthy two-loss teams generally will not have a problem.

As for three-loss teams... it's a very, very rare three-loss team that I'm going weep for if they're excluded. I don't care what your schedule is, if you can't do better than 9-3, you have no right to complain about being left out of the national-championship hunt. Almost nobody plays three "spectacular" opponents every season, not even in the "war-like" SEC -- and even if you do, and you can't even win 1 of those 3 games, then what business do you have competing for a national championship? The philosophy that a 9-3 team with three quality losses ought to be competing for a national title is a philosophy that renders the regular season far, far less meaningful than it is now, and that's what most college-football fans, myself included, desperately want to avoid.

Now, I know what you'll say next: but college basketball lets in teams with records like 21-10, and March Madness is great!! True, but it's undeniable that college basketball's regular season is less exciting than college football's, for that very reason. I'm not saying it isn't exciting, certainly it is, but you're not absolutely on the edge of your seat every single week like in college football, knowing that a single loss could spell doom for your team's chances. I don't think that wonderful aspect of college football is worth abandoning entirely to create a 32- or 48- or 64-team tournament, just so that we can give UConn or Virginia a chance to pull a bunch of upsets and prove that they are... not the "best" team, as you claim... but the hottest at the right time. Any playoff, of course, rewards being "hot" over being "good," but an 8- or 12- or 14- or 16-team playoff strikes a much better balance between "hot" and "good" (and between preserving the regular season and crowing a legitimate champion) than the sort of playoff you're talking about, which requires only that teams be kinda sorta reasonably decent throughout the regular season, and then hot in the playoff. A smaller playoff requires teams to be quite good during the regular season and hot during the playoff. I think that's the right balance.

In other words, I cry no tears for Virginia. Sorry. You go 9-3, with losses to Wyoming and N.C. State (along with the admittedly "good loss" to Va Tech), and you want me to give you a shot at the national title??? No way. Next time, beat Wyoming and N.C. State, and then we'll talk.

That said, with regard to three-loss teams, Florida's #12 ranking (with losses to LSU, Auburn and Georgia, two of which are arguably "spectacular," at least by this season's standards, and the other fairly good), suggests that a team with three quality losses and some high-quality wins, which Florida basically lacks (the win over Tennessee is the closest), will at least be in the ballpark for at-large consideration in some circumstances. But again, I really don't think this is something to be losing sleep over.

We just have to agree to disagree on this point, because we have totally different philosophies about what should be required for a team to be allowed to compete for the national championship in college football. For you, it's "show some signs that you are reasonably good and might be able to win the title if given the chance in a playoff." For me, it's "win your conference or otherwise show during regular-season play that you are one of the sport's truly elite teams."

At least we agree that the BCS sucks, though. :)

[Scientizzle]

Jerry Palm: "Why There Isn't a Playoff"

The BCS was created primarily to give us a 1 vs 2 game every year, but one of the unintended consequences of that is that it has fueled the fire of desire for a bigger playoff, which college football is not ready to accommodate. As I wrote below, the BCS has only given us a clear 1 vs 2 matchup that would not have been possible under the old Bowl Alliance twice in nine years. Also, there have only been two seasons where a playoff would have really been useful in order to solve the national championship puzzle. In the other five seasons, the BCS has been irrelevant.

However, now that the annual push for a playoff is underway, so that Division I-A can be "just like every other sport," let me remind you of the many obstacles to creating a playoff, starting with the much hoped for four-team variety.

The first issue is that a four-team playoff fixes almost nothing. The whining about a bigger playoff wouldn�t stop or even slow down. There�s virtually no difference between leaving out the #3 team and leaving out the #5 team. They would still be leaving out at least one team every year that has the talent to win a national championship. The only time this would have really been nice was in 2004, but even then, that would have depended on how the playoff was structured.

One option for a playoff would be to play the BCS bowls in their "traditional" matchups and then pick two teams after that. That's not really a playoff, per se, but is the basic version of plus-one. That structure placates the Rose Bowl, but seasons like 2004 remain unresolved because the top three teams (undefeated USC, Oklahoma and Auburn) would be in different bowls. It simply puts the problems of that season off a month.

No, if they�re going to mess things up, they need to at least solve the problems they�ve already had. Making two bowls semifinals (1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3) with the winners playing (at least) a week later is the only sensible way to do this. However, that would be a tough sell to the Rose Bowl (and in turn, the Big Ten, which is interested in protecting the Rose Bowl) because it would greatly decrease its chances of getting its traditional matchup. The Rose Bowl has said it has no interest in being a national semifinal, and whether or not that would bring in more money is not relevant to the bowl.

Now, you may disagree with this, but the bowls feel they exist to be the ultimate reward for the teams at the end of the season. Bowls that become semifinals will not be that. It changes their identity in a way that they don�t like. The other BCS bowls might be OK with that, but the Rose is the Granddaddy of them All, not a stepping stone to some other game. It�s bad enough for the Rose Bowl that it has become a place to avoid for its conference partners instead of a goal. Being relegated to a national semifinal would be too hard to swallow.

That leads to a concern among the other BCS bowls with regards to attendance. It�s not reasonable to expect that many fans could travel to both a semifinal and a final, so some might opt to save their money and not go to the semifinal. There would be other fans that have the money to go to both games (even with very short notice airfares for the second one), but may not make the big vacation out of the first one in order to conserve money to make both trips. Obviously, this is a bigger issue for Northern teams, which are nowhere near any of the BCS bowls and have to travel great distances no matter where the game is. Bringing fans to the host city for four or five days is one of the reasons the bowls exist, and that aspect would be severely damaged (the bowls feel) if they are no longer THE destination and are merely semifinals.

Some feel that if the Rose Bowl and Big Ten (and presumably Pac 10) don�t like the four-team playoff, they can just opt out and the other four major conferences will create their own like they did with the Bowl Alliance. They figure the money would eventually follow the Alliance and force the hand of the Big Ten and Pac 10. Maybe it would, but if the Big Ten and Pac 10 continue to have the #1 and/or #2 teams, like they have for the last five years, it would diminish the value of the playoff. This year, which is an extreme case, three of the top five and four of the top seven teams are Big Ten or Pac 10, so the playoff would be #2 Florida, #4 LSU, #6 Louisville and #8 Boise St and they could be playing for a final ranking as low as third. Actually, last year would have been even more extreme because four of the top five were from the Big Ten and Pac 10. That �playoff� would have been #2 Texas, #6 ND, #7 Georgia and #8 Miami.

The biggest problem with splintering apart is that unlike the current BCS structure, which fits in well with the current bowl system, a playoff of any size would require a change in the NCAA rules that prohibit teams from playing more than one postseason game. Everyone will have to be on the same page to get that done.

The other big problem with the four-team model is that another bowl would have to be created or "promoted" to the BCS so that the BCS can still accommodate ten teams. The change to ten teams was made to create a greater opportunity for access to the non-BCS conferences, and there�s no going backwards on that. In fact, once a true playoff of any size is created, those schools are going to start looking for access to that as well. You may see something like a guarantee for them and/or ND if they make the top eight or top six or some other, lower standard than top four, which would probably be the standard for everyone else.

But I digress. The additional bowl is a problem because it means each bowl�s share of the money gets smaller and that the championship comes to each city only once every five years. That�s the reason a fifth bowl wasn�t promoted for the current structure. The sponsors of the four existing BCS bowls felt that the value of their sponsorship was diluted if their bowls hosted the championship only once every five years, so they came up with the rotating host model instead.

Now that we know that the four-team model is a very difficult problem to solve to anyone�s satisfaction (let alone everyone�s), let�s look at bigger playoffs.

The eight-team model and any bigger playoff than that would probably be scheduled to begin in December, right after the final week of the regular season. That�s because starting in January, besides simply making the entire season way too long, cuts too much into basketball season. Another advantage of starting in December is that the schedule may be able to work so that the championship is around New Year�s Day, which would elevate that traditional date back to its rightful place on the college football calendar. Besides, it�s not really fair to the participants to make them wait a month before beginning a playoff. After all, no other sport has a long wait between its regular season and its playoffs, and being just like every other sport its one of the goals, right?

The big problem with the eight-team model is selecting the teams. Many feel that just going with the top eight teams in the BCS or some other ranking system is good enough, but politically, that won�t fly. There is no chance that a major conference is going to support a playoff system of this size without a guarantee that its champion participates.

However, if six of the eight spots are taken by conference champions, that only leaves room for two at-large teams, and that might not be enough for some people. That is especially true if it is necessary (and it certainly would be) to create a separate standard for the non-BCS schools and maybe Notre Dame.

And, of course, the other problem with a playoff of this size or larger is that the games would be played at campus sites, except for the final. While this may not be like every other sport, it is certainly like every other level of football. If the bowls think there would be attendance problems at a semifinal, it doesn�t take much insight to realize that neutral site quarterfinals would be played in half-empty stadiums. This does significant damage to the top bowls because eight top teams are being removed from the bowl equation. Also, sponsorship dollars become an issue because the bigger a playoff gets, the more money and attention gets taken by the playoff leaving less for the bowls.

Many people feel bowls and a playoff can peacefully co-exist, but bowl people don�t feel that way. The people who think that way say the bowls become just like the NIT in basketball, but keep in mind that the NIT is a money loser. Maybe some bowls would try to carry on, but I would expect them to just die off, probably quickly.

Of course, all the bowls� problems are magnified even more in a sixteen-team playoff, which is probably the minimum size needed to keep everybody happy. There would be room for all 11 conference champions and still room for five at-large teams. It would be rare that a team capable of winning the championship would be left out. That doesn�t mean those just left out wouldn�t complain � teams left out of the 65-team NCAA basketball tournament complain � it�s just that those complaints would fall on mostly deaf ears.

Some might not like the idea of including teams like #78 Troy, the Sun Belt champion this season, but politically, it�s a much easier sell. Teams like that might never win a road game against Ohio St, but in the 21 years of the 64-65 team basketball tournament, no 16-seed has ever won a game either. That doesn�t mean they shouldn�t be invited.

A 16-team playoff could be scheduled to run through December and end around New Year�s Day. Again, games would be played at campus sites and the bowls would be further damaged by the removal of 16 top teams from the pool of teams to pick from. There would be even less money for the bowls and they would surely go away. However, you�d have a football tournament on par with the basketball tournament. You also wouldn�t have eight SEC teams playing postseason football, which is partly why there isn�t a whole lot of movement in this direction.

Another problem that the school presidents have with playoffs of 8 or more teams is the length of the season. It would be possible for a team that played in the championship game of an 8-team tournament to play 16 games in its season, which is the length of a regular NFL season. Many presidents feel that is too much wear and tear on a college athlete. The only way around that would be to shorten the season (lower divisions play no more than eleven games), but considering that it was just lengthened for financial reasons, it seems unlikely they would go backwards.

Like I have always said, if creating a playoff was easy, we�d already have one. It�s tough to come up with even a measly four-team system that will satisfy all the interested parties enough to make it happen, let alone something bigger. I�ve seen all the playoff proposals, but haven�t seen any that takes all these issues into consideration, and I probably haven�t even listed all the issues that need to be addressed.

In order for a playoff to be created, the university presidents will have to come to the conclusion that the bowl system is not worth having. They are not at that point, and it doesn�t look like they�re going that way anytime soon. If they feel the bowl system is the way to go, then the BCS is probably the best they can do in terms of deciding a national champion. If it�s not, then they ought to just skip all the nonsense and go straight to a 16-team playoff. There appears to be no reasonable compromise.

[teresa]

A play-off system doesn't have to kill the minor bowls. Let them continue to play their games, using the teams that don't make the play-offs. The cities and schools still get the revenue, since fans will still travel.

[jlr]

OK, Brendan. I was really trying to balance the fact that getting rid of bowls would lower the $$$ brought in by some of these schools, wich have good teams, but not necessarily great ones (Virginia, Florida). As has been repeated over and over in the comments on this post, getting rid of bowl games will lower the money that goes to other sports and to the universities as a whole.

Ideally, Brendan, I agree with you--there is no football reason for teams like Virginia to play in the playoff. But I'm trying to take a broader view of the situation.

This especially speaks to Scientizzle's point of getting universities to "buy into" the playoff system. Why would a perennial bowl team but a perennial not-great team (I'm thinking Maryland, who has had 1 ACC championship in the last 20 years) buy into your system? By expanding the field to include more teams, we might be able to convince those not-so-great teams to buy into the new system.

[David K.]

teresa - but it does kill the upper tier bowls, i.e. the ones that bring in the most money and the ones that reward the better teams. Now you could start seeding those bowls after each round of the playoffs and still have the upper tier bowls I suppose except for one major problem. Each week you push out deciding on which team goes to which bowl makes it harder and harder for fans to travel there, add on to this the fact that you'd basically be making fans choose between going to playoff rounds and the final bowl game and you are spreading the potential revenue too thin.

So lets say we go with the top 16 team arrangment (and for the sack of argument we just pick the top 16 in the BCS. Illinois is goign to the Rose Bowl! Under your system they would have a shot at the championship, but they'd also have a better than decent shot at goign to the first round playoff and being done. Oooh that sounds fun!

[Brendan Loy]

That's a fair point, Josh. I guess I wasn't thinking about the likelihood of the plan being adopted since it's so patently obvious that neither of our proposals have a snowball's chance in hell of happening. :)

[Brendan Loy]

P.S. Having read Jerry Palm's post, quoted in Scientizzle's comment, I think Palm makes a lot of great points. I still don't understand, however, why a "Plus-Three" (as opposed to "Plus-One") is such a terrible idea. Yeah, so it would extend the regular season to ~January 15 and cause two teams in Division I-A (out of 120) to play potentially as many as 16 games, instead of the current season end day of ~January 8 and the current maximum potential of 14 games. Are those trifling differences really enough to reject the idea?

And whereas a "Plus-One" system would solve very little, a "Plus-Three," combined with some BCS selection rules to ensure that everybody who deserves it has an opportunity to play their way into the Top 4 during the bowls, would solve 95% of the problems we encounter -- provided we define the word "problems" as meaning "preventing undefeated teams and major-conference champions from ever having a legitimate gripe," and, less importantly, "giving truly dominant-looking one-loss and two-loss non-conference-champs a chance to play for the national title." All other concerns (i.e., arguments among six indistinguishable-looking two-loss teams, after the bowls, about who should be in the final four) are far less important than those.

By the way, my "Plus-Three" model does not designate each BCS bowl as a semifinal. In fact, you'd have to add a fifth BCS bowl (maybe promoting one of the other New Year's Day bowls to BCS status) in order to continue offering the same payouts and small-school access as currently, and that's fine, because the bowls aren't semifinals - they're just bowls, and then we re-rank teams and make semifinal pairings after the bowls. It would even be hypothetically possible for a team from a non-BCS bowl to sneak into the semifinals (thus increasing interest in some of the higher-tier non-BCS bowls!) if things play out just right.

The BCS bowl pairings would have to be designed so that worthy or potentially worthy teams are given a shot to prove themselves. I could go into detail composing the selection rules, but for present purposes I won't bother. Suffice it to say that it can certainly be done, if the bowls are willing to balance their need for profit with a "good of college football" outlook (a dubious proposition until you realize that, if done correctly, we can most definitely achieve both). The point is, if we had a Plus-Three, the recent controversies would all have been avoided, and any controversies that would have taken their place would have been trifling by comparison.

In 2003-04, USC, LSU and Oklahoma would all have played in different bowls, and if they'd all won, they all would have advanced to the semifinals. And then we'd have had some two-loss teams arguing over who deserve the other semifinal spot (or spots, if one of the one-loss teams lost). Who cares? Let 'em argue. That's a much less significant controversy.

In 2004-05, USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah and Boise State all would have had a shot -- my selection rules would have required that Utah and Boise be given a chance to prove themselves, and would further have ensured that no more than four undefeated teams could emerge from that pack heading into the semifinals (so at least two of them would have had to face off in a bowl).

In 2006-07, obviously, the Florida-Michigan debate would have been easily resolved, and Boise State again would have had a shot. And again, you might have some relatively less worthy teams arguing about the other spot(s). Who cares?

This year, you'd have a lineup something like this:

Rose Bowl: USC vs. Ohio State
Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. Missouri
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. Georgia
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs. Hawaii
Some Other Bowl: West Virginia vs. Kansas

In all likelihood, the winners of the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls would be your semifinalists. However, if Kansas beats WVU, then they certainly have an argument, and maybe USC or Georgia or somebody else (hopefully not Missouri!) gets left out. That would be a controversy, but again, we're arguing over the respective merits of one- and two-loss teams that didn't win their conferences. Who cares? That's a hell of a lot better than the current situation, where undefeated and one-loss conference champs (USC/LSU '03-'04, Auburn and Utah '04-'05, Boise State '06-'07) can potentially get screwed. And this plan, unlike the full-fledged playoff plans or the "1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3" bowl seeding plan, doesn't seem to have the same drawbacks in terms of pissing off the Rose Bowl and/or devaluing the bowls (and the regular season) generally. The only real objection is that it makes the season one week too long, and two games too long for two teams (one game too long for two others). Those are pretty lame objections IMHO, which should not derail the idea, given the massive upside.

[Brendan Loy]

Oh, I forgot, the other objection is that the bowls, especially the Rose Bowl, feel they "exist to be the ultimate reward for the teams at the end of the season ... not a stepping stone to some other game." Well, whoopdee-freakin-doo. Somehow, I think if you promised the Rose Bowl that it could match up the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions every single year, something it hasn't been able to do since 2003-04, they might be able to swallow the idea of being a potential "stepping stone" given that said "stepping stone" status would also increase the interest in the Rose Bowl in any year when either the Big Ten or Pac-10 champion is a potential semifinalist (i.e., most years).