College football playoffs?
For those of you who favor a playoff in football, does this tounament cause some pause for you? The big reason I always hear when people are arguing for a playoff in football is that it provides a "true champion". With one game left the elite eight there is a good chance that no team in the top 10 will even make the final four. No one can argue that any of the remaining 5 teams have been the best team in college basketball this season. I don't care for the bcs but I would like to see the old bowl system (pre-bcs) restored. The bowls allow for the whole season to count. The unintended consequences of a playoff are a bigger risk than most will let on.
But this problem could be easily solved by not releasing the first polls until, like after week 4 or 5. This is something I am actually in favor because rankings would be based on an actual tangible product, and not expectations about that product.
Love that idea, love that avatar, but it's never going to happen.
That's really not true - your point that you don't have a fair shot if you're ranked too low in the preseason. Auburn was #22 in the preseason, Stanford was unranked. They finished 1 and 4, respectively, and Auburn played for the national title. Had Stanford won their game against Oregon, no doubt they would have been in the national title against Auburn. In the current system, unless you aren't in a major conference, if you have a national title worthy season, you'll be in the champ game. In week 12, no one remembers what you were pre-season.
Last year OK State wasn't even close to ranked pre-season, but by week 11 they were top-10, and had they beaten OU at the end of the season, would have been in the BCS. Bottom line, about halfway through the season, the pollsters and the computers look at who you're beaten and who you've lost to compared to everyone else. No one cares about the preseason rankings then. The only time it really matters is when there are more than 2 BCS conference undefeated teams, but that happens very rarely.
Ignoring the sporting issues a 16 team tournament would mean two teams play four posteason games, three more than under the current system. Given what we know about the effects of football on health, especially brain health, that's not something we can do in good concience to kids who aren't even getting paid for it.
Do you think the regular-season should be shortened back to 11 games? That's a rule change that affects everyone, not just a couple teams.
Which only plays 9, 10 games in the regular season. Try getting them to cut back to nine games in I-A football. Ain't happening. If you're gonna say "it works in D-III" then you have to include the whole model, not just the parts you like.
You'd also need the hits to be between slower, 100 pound smaller people. That's part of the reason no-one is disabled from HS football. But, I think we probably should go back to 11 games instead of 12.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:50 PM ^
Your argument is actually an argument against the sport as a whole. I doubt you could get one brain trauma specialist on the planet to say football is safe enough for 12 games plus a bowl, but then it falls off the cliff at game 14. The more recent science is saying the trauma is there from practice 1 and the more it is looked at by medical science, the scarier the game looks.
I appreciate you at least not bringing up the favorite "caring about the kids" argument of Presidents at BCS schools: that it would cost the players class time. Somehow we never hear that one from say Duke's President when he is carting his basketball team across the country for 4 or 5 days each week in late March/early April.
I don't want a gigantic football playoff field, but we should be clear: this year in basketball is an outlier. Usually, the Final Four is dominated by #1 and #2 seeds.
The #1 ranked team in at least one of the AP, UPI, or USA Today polls entering the tournament has not won it since 2001 (Duke). Only 8 teams entering the tournament #1 have won it all since 1975 when the tournament expanded to 32 teams.
You're arguing about something else. In basketball, with almost 350 teams, the top four teams in the country are virtually indistinguishable. The final regular-season #1 is usually a team that won its conference tournament, but not all coaches put much value on them. Some don't mind losing early in their conference tourney to gain additional rest, even if it costs them the #1 ranking.
There is generally a pretty significant difference between the #1 and #2 seeds and the rest of the field - which is why so many people were upset that we drew a #8 seed.. The Final Four is normally dominated by #1 and #2 seeds.
I think college football is different because the field would necessarily be smaller, you can't have teams playing twice a week, or in the case of VCU, playing twice in just over 36 hours. That the field would have to be limited to 16 teams (absolute maximum) makes it more feasible.
But I agree in that it does diminish the regular season when you have a tournament like this. Don't get me wrong, the BBall tournament is entertaining but you can't really argue VCU or Butler were amongst the top teams this year. Yes they've won their regions and beaten some good teams doing so but in a single-elimination format anything can happen. Put Kansas and VCU in a best-of-7 series and I don't think VCU's coming out on top.
But the BBall tourney doesn't affect whether or not college football should have one only because a football tournament won't be nearly as big and allow teams that were fairly mediocre through the season in. I also think the gap between the elite and middle-of-the-road football teams is more noticeable then what you have in basketball. FWIW, I don't have a problem with the current football system but would not be opposed to a playoff, and a 68-team single-elimination tournament while exciting, is a pretty poor way to determine a national champion.
It proves that the polls (seedings in this case) are just an educated guess. A playoff will eliminate that.
Yes there will still be controversy over who gets in, just like there is now for the Tournament. But I'd rather be arguing over opinions about who is really the 16th team than who is the number 1 team.
16 teams is way too many, we don't need any 4 loss teams getting in. 8 at most, but i think a plus-one is the best option.
If a playoff is inevitable, I would support a Plus One.
In my system, you would scrap the current system and go back to pre-Alliance/Coalition days with the old conference tie-ins. All major bowl games would be played on New Year's Day, where they belong, while all lesser games would be played prior to NYD (where they belong, as well). None of this crap where the Poulan Weedeater Bowl is played on Jan. 7.
After all the major bowl games have been played on NYD, I would institute a BCS-style ranking system to select the top two teams. These rankings would take into account the bowl results. The top two teams would then play in a Plus One game -- possibly in the open week between the NFL conference championship games and the Super Bowl.
Best of all worlds in my book. Preserves the importance regular season while restoring the glory of NYD, plus it at least begins to appease the playoff crowd.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:39 PM ^
It would be way better than what we have now, but still totally inadequate economically. The only way it would work is if you could negotiate bigger pay outs from the greedy bowls and an overhaul of their corrupt little cash cows, to make it economically viable for the participating schools. It currently isn't and the payouts of the bowls as a whole are pittance v. what a playoff run through December could fetch.
The reason the old bowl system is scrapped is because of money. It wasn't bringing in enough to cover costs and athletic departments were suffering. The reason that New Years Day is a shadow of what it used to be is TV. Would TV still pay the needed money if you had 5 or 6 games competing on the same day for viewership? They forced New Years Day's demise in the first place.
I think if you had a plus 1, you'd put some (not a lot) umphh back in the bowls. I doubt the TV folks would do them all on one day and pay big money for them. The thing would still be dancing around the issue of what the fans really want and what the TV people and sponsors would pay serious cash for. That's a playoff. Why do that when everyone can make serious money? Enough money to restore full operation of non-revenue sports across the board and not have to dip into the general funds at these schools.
Was there any real arguments in the seeding? All this tournament proves to me is that there weren't any dominant teams this year. There's a reason these runs are so special, because they rarely happen.
As far as I'm concerned the football playoffs start in August and that's why the entire season is so exciting and unique.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:23 PM ^
The playoffs never really start for most teams in Divison 1-A then. Teams like Boise every year, Utah in 09, TCU for most of the last decade. 2007 2 loss LSU politics it's way in to the BCS title game. Did those two games count? Autburn's undefeated season in 2004?
The games would count way more for everybody with a playoff. Your argument is a tired one from the BCS defender talking points. No offense, but every game doesn't even come close to counting now. The system discourages big conference teams from playing quality competition. The games count for nothing for most of September as the big schools duck interesting matchups in favor of the cupcake circuit. Bad for football, bad for the fans.
I too am an oldtimer (M 74,78) and would like to see a return of the traditional bowl games being played on January 1. Not only did it make that the single best day of the entire sports year, but there were on occasions MULTIPLE national championship games played on the same day.
I remember a #1 Texas losing early in the day in the Cotton Bowl which magnified the importance of the Rose Bowl that followed. When the Big 10 chumped it up (as was usually the case) then the Orange and Sugar Bowls became very important. The excitement would build throughout the day which is all we can ask for.
The current system devalues the bowl games and the long wait between Jan 1 and the MNC game waters down the interest. We will never return to the "good old days" (too many dollars involved) but the current system simply isn't that good.
It's a shame that the "kids" of today like justingoblue never got to experience the glory of NYD as you so wonderfully described it, dearborn. There was no better sports viewing day in the entire year.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:15 PM ^
And it died because of money. Hell the Big Ten had a chance to preserve the traditional Rose Bowl but dropped that for a bigger pay day. That's how little the conference thought of the nostalgia of that day. The economic pressures killed New Years Day and the same will move the BCS toward a playoff or more preferably, destroy the BCS and put the NCAA in charge of real playoff.
I've always argued that the NCAA Tournament, despite how fun it is, does a poor job of determining the best team in the country. Duke, Kansas, OSU and Pitt are all better than any team in the Final Four - hell, Michigan is better than half of the Final Four. It's fun, but the Champion of the tourney is rarely the best team in college basketball.
However, in football it would be different. In football, the better team wins the game more often than in basketball. Basketball is a flukier game than football, so VCU over Kansas type upsets wouldn't happen in football nearly as often. Also, you'd have far fewer teams, so a VCU type team wouldn't have the chance to knock off Kansas. Since it would likely only be 8 teams, a "big" upset would be the equivalent of Oklahoma or Arkansas beating Auburn this past year, which I'm OK with. If this past year, Oklahoma beat Auburn, then Stanford, then Oregon to win the championship, they would deserve the crown. They would have needed a very good season to get there, and beating 3 of the top 8 teams in the country to finish. That's a championship season.
I'm in favor of a limited playoff, but I'm under no illusions that it will happen. If a playoff is adopted, it will almost certainly have 16 teams, if not more. There's too much money at stake for it to be otherwise.
16 would still be OK. In the final pre-bowl poll, the #16 team was Alabama. If Auburn lost to Alabama in the first round of the tournament, they shouldn't be in the champ game just like if they would have lost to Alabama at the end of the regular season.
4 weeks of tournament would be long, but 16 still wouldn't be too big. Anything bigger is too much for football.
four games is too many. With the nature of football, injuries would begin too pile up. It would be a tournament of attrition and not of who is a better team.
That is part of the game. Injuries happen the whole year. Ask any NFL team.
Of course they are a part of the game. If you have a system that can elliminate the chances for injury is that not prefrable.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:11 PM ^
That's a great point that often gets overlooked. A single elimination tournament format is way more fair for football than basketball. Yet basketball wouldn't dream of doing it like football does.
College football and college basketball are vastly different sports. For one, we see more and more basketball players leave after their freshman season. Even when guys were going pro right out of high school, there were basketball teams a hell of a lot better than any team from this season. Think of that 2005 title game. Both the Illinois and North Carolina teams from that year would destroy Ohio State and Kansas from this year, imo. There's more parity than ever.
Football does not have the same situation. You have a chance to get at least three years of playing time from every player and I don't think anyone can say that Auburn or Oregon wouldn't have destroyed middle of the road teams from this past season like Michigan or a host of other schools (look what happened to Michigan State vs. Alabama), where as a middle of the road basketball team like us nearly beat three number one seeds in one season.
Football's solution is a four team playoff like someone else said. Or if there happen to be two undefeated teams left when all of the bowl games are played, just have them play eachother. You wouldn't even have to use the option every season.
Cal was 5-7. A bit better team catches them in a tournament, and they could be upset.
Battle Royale!
If your goal is to simply reward the best team, then there is no way that there should be more than an 8 team playoff in basketball and probably no more than 4 in football. But rewarding the best team is not the point. The point is entertainment for the fans, fun/exposure for the players, and money for others. All of these would are maximized by larger playoff tournaments. If rewarding the best team is the point of the whole season and playoffs, why do they even let three quarters of the teams play at all if they might prevent the best team from making the playoffs/MNC game, without really having a chance to make it themselves?
Competion is the point of sports. You play games to see who is the better team is. If you want entertainment go watch the WWE.
This year is an aberration. In the last twenty years, 15 ones, 2 twos, 2 threes, and 1 four have won the tournament. In other words, 75 percent of the time, one of the four top seeded teams won the tournament.
The season counts for seedings and whether or not you even get in. This system isn't perfect, but the champion is still determined in the arena of competition and not on the computer.
Remember, too, that a two, three, or four could still win the tournament. March Madness is great and the bowl system is an outdated POS that only exists to gratify the egos and fortify the wallets of the people running the them.
The football champion is not awarded by computers. You still have to win on the field. Both have flaws and that is why we shouldn't mess with what makes the regular season of college football the best of any sport. And why exactly is the bowl system an "outdated POS"? And are you really satisfied that 25 percent of the time the best teams not winning the tourny? You could argue that the BCS has a better rate of success than that.
But only two teams get the chance to win it on the field. Is that fair?
everyone has a chance every week to prove they belong.
Really? I think TCU would disagree.
They were not as impressive week in and week out as Auburn and Oregon.
Fine, then have them play Auburn and we'll find out. It's only one game.
Some would argue TCU was better. If they were a better team, how could they not even get a chance at a championship? Sure, by tougher schedules Auburn and Oregon had more impressive resumes...but you still can't ultimately say they were better than TCU, because teh sample size and variety of games played was not large enough to determine. Playoffs in college football make up that deficit, or at least try to. Limiting the playoff to two teams (what it is now) is only marginally better than crowning the #1 team after the regular season, and wouldn't that be a crappy way of determining a champion if 5 teams have teh same records. The solutions are either substantially more football games (impossible), or a playoff system that includes more deserving teams. Leving out a 2-loss team is a lot more justifiable than leaving out an undefeated team who lost style points based on how "good" their wins looked and how tough their schedule was.
Arguing the merits of playoffs between college basketball and college football are two completely different things. Completely different.
+1 for at least recognizing that there's already what amounts to a playoff or tournament in college football, however limited that it may be. I'm so tired of hearing people complain that college football's post-season championship should be "decided on the field."
March 27th, 2011 at 10:07 PM ^
Are you tired of hearing it currently isn't? Because it isn't. The current system is silly and does the complete opposite of basketball. It operates on assumptions that weight the entire thing towards a few schools in 6 major conferences. Rather than encouraging strength of schedule, it encourages teams to play weak competition in September than fall back on the same old assumptions that the Harris poll, the computers, and the coaches poll operate under: Major conference superiority.
Every game counts unless you are TCU, Boise State, Utah or any other school that doesn't run the system. These outsider schools can decide nothing the field. This dorky "BCS Bowl" name plate for the non-championship game is their lame consolation prize. Basically the whole thing screws the vast majority of fans who want a version of what basketball has.
A 16-team playoff would be the greatest sports event in America and would print money to a degree that it would save non-revenue sports in every Division 1-A school currently bleeding. Win/win for everyone but a few conferences and their commissioners who would rather control the smaller pie than go create a big one and share it like adults.
March 27th, 2011 at 10:24 PM ^
Well, I usu. agree with a lot of your takes, but on this one I couldn't disagree more. Not about the BCS itself -- I'd like to go back to pre-BCS days -- but about having a 16-team playoff (way too many) and it being decided on the field (it is).
March 27th, 2011 at 10:55 PM ^
I agree that you could call the current system a "2-team playoff," but you can't say that TCU's elimination from the title hunt last year was "decided on the field." They went undefeated and got snubbed.
March 27th, 2011 at 11:03 PM ^
That's what happens in tournaments. Teams get left out. I don't want to get bogged down in a battle of semantics, but it was clearly decided on the field. There was no vote involved.