A Totally Rational Defense Of The BCS, And Why You’re Gonna Miss It Next Year

the federalist ^

[Perdogg]

Five years ago, “Saturday Night Live” ran a sketch in which Will Forte expressed his undying love for college football’s Bowl Championship Series with a comic song. The point was, needless to say, not terribly subtle.

I love stepping in dog crap And I love it when children get sick I love paper cuts on my corneas And I love the BCS



[fortheDeclaration]

End the nonsense bowl games and go to a playoff system!

[fortheDeclaration]

If you want to play at home, win your division.

[Steve_Seattle]

"This is what burns me up. At least the NFL has an objective method of seeding teams. We will soon discover how big of a joke these playoffs are."

' The "objective" NFL format would seed a 15-1 team that finished second in its division lower than an 8-8 team that won it's division. What is your formula for an "objective" NCAA Division 1 format that includes about a dozen conferences and about 120 teams? With - say - two 12-0 teams and three 11-1 teams and 7 10-2 teams and 10 9-3 teams, what is your "objective method for determining who gets in the playoffs?

[Steve_Seattle]

I agree entirely. There should be about 12-16 bowl games, not 34 or whatever, so that at least they mean something.

[crusher2013]

Correct.

Have an 8 team playoff based on the conference champions.

If you don’t win your conference you don’t get to the playoffs.

The Polls are the most rigged fraudulent things around. Even worse than the political polls.

[Steve_Seattle]

"It is easy to establish a set of objective playoff standards."

No it isn't. The NFL setup rewards division winners even if they have mediocre records. The NCAA has about 4 times as many teams, in numerous conferences, and with very similar records, playing dissimilar opponents. The BCS was an attempt to computerize it, to objectify it, as much as possible, and people still bitched. You think any other system will be better? Next year, people will still bitch about the system, about who was left out, about who plays who, about the refs, the penalties, and blah blah blah.

This is just college football, and I'm tired of all the crap, as if it is really even possible to determine who is the best team, and how much it really matters in the grand scheme of things to determine that. You want an "objective system"? Ok, have every team in the country play every other team home-and-home, a 240 game schedule, and then a playoff, if it's that important to you. Then we'll have some separation - the 230-10 teams will clearly separate from the 203-37 teams.

Does the best team necessarily win the NCAA basketball tournament every year? No. It comes down to talent, seedings, and luck. Does hitting a 50-foot buzzer-beater mean you are the better team? Does hitting one more shot in one game mean that? Not necessarily.

[Gunslingr3]

It will be Notre Dame (which is not part of conference) plus three teams each year.

I'm not sure how much you watch college football, but Notre Dame has lost at least 3 games a year in 19 out of the last 20 seasons.

Their odds of getting into the playoff are actually pretty slim, especially when so many of the decision makers have conference affiliations, and are giving credit to conference winners.

The major issue is how the money will be divvied, and whether or not (or how often) the SEC gets two teams into the playoff, and thereby a much bigger chunk of the spoils. Make no mistake, the playoff is about getting more of the money to the top5 conferences.

[fortheDeclaration]

Exactly!

[redshawk]

I agree with you. You win the conference, you are in the playoffs. Can't get easier than that. As far as Notre Dame, well, they better join a conference or be left out in the ‘polar vortex’.

[FroggyTheGremlim]

BCS - Playoffs - ...

"What difference, at this point, does it make?"

[RayChuang88]

I still wished they used the current BCS ranking system so BCS #1 plays BCS #4 in one playoff and BCS #2 plays #3 in the other playoff.

But it's still way better than what we have now, especially what happened in the 2003 season when LSU won the BCS title and USC won the AP final #1 ranking and in the 2004 season when we ended up with three undefeated teams with title chances (USC, Oklahoma and Auburn), and the only reason why Auburn never had a chance was because both USC and Oklahoma started higher in the rankings at the start of the season and both went undefeated.

[Resolute Conservative]

You mean like Texas paying a new coach $5 million a year? Or the likes of Saban/Stoops pulling $7 million? College football was co-opted a long time ago.

[dmz]

Objective? Is that why an 11 - 5 team has to play an away game against a team that went 9 - 7?

In the NFL conferences should be realigned every year, top to bottom. That would be ‘objective’. ;-)

<><><><

Objective means that there is an inviolable method by which the playoff seedings are made. You can determine who gets what by an objective criteria.

Objective does not necessarily mean ranked in order of 1-32.

[dmz]

We’ll have college football until Spring Training starts.

<><><<>

That would be a dream come true.

I only pay attention to baseball and football.

[crusher2013]

Yes, No special treatment for the Domers.

The system they have right now is so rigged. The new one isn’t much better. They want to keep the number of teams in the playoff low (4) so they can still manipulate the process.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

That was a joke, son.

[Resolute Conservative]

Yep, so is paying a coach that much.

[sean327]

If you don’t really give a crap why are you commenting?
There is nothing wrong with being a football fan. No one is forcing you to watch it.

[trisham]

Isn’t the author’s name Rachel Lu?