Inexact Science of National Championships
SIAP, even if it was a couple of years ago. As some of you may know, the Bentley Library has a page devoted to Michigan's eleven national titles:
http://bentley.umich.edu/athdept/football/misc/natchamp.htm
As noted there, "Determining a college football cational [sic] champion has never been an exact science."
October 20th, 2010 at 2:18 PM ^
obviously better than everyone else. Most seasons, the difference between 10-2 or 12-0 is simply a missed block, or a DPI call that was or was not made, a RB slipping on loose turf, or any of a couple dozen different random events.
A tournament doesn't determine the best team, a poll doesn't determine the best team - there is simply no practical way of doing it. We have to live with ambiguity, and recognize that there's a fair amount of luck involved in determining a champion.
I'm OK with that. It's part of the joy of being a college football fan.
October 20th, 2010 at 2:43 PM ^
I think Major League Baseball does it the best. The 162 game season actually means something as you either A) Have to win your division or B) Have a better record than anyone who didn't win their division and B is only 1 team per league. I think any team that makes it through that season and then the playoffs and is still standing after the World Series deserves to be called Champion. I think the NHL does it the worst although they have the most exciting playoffs as you have upsets left and right.
I think the problem with crowning a Champion in Division 1A football is the fact that you are trying to pick the best team out of a pool of 117 teams and since there aren't 116 games in the season and since teams rarely play the other teams during the season, there is no yardstick to really determine the stacking of the conferences. Even if you have a conference championship, is a 13-0 Ball State (for instance) from the MAC better than a 12-1 Nebraska team (saying their loss comes in the Championship game)? Is there any objective measure to determine that?
The current method of crowning a champion is flawed because it is highly based on the human polls and as we have seen, those are biased. Even the computer polls have some degree of bias. I mean we've had cases where Michigan ends up going to the Rose Bowl because the Ohio State field goal to either tie or win goes wide right (or left). So can you truly say that Michigan team is better? (Well I do but that's my bias).
October 20th, 2010 at 2:43 PM ^
It determines the team that gets the job done when it has to. At the very least, by definition, it determines a tournament winner. There may not be an absolute, but a tournament pretty much determines who has played well enough to get there, and who played well enough at the end of the season to win it.
Besides, somewhere around a thousand college teams DO get to play for a national championship. Only the FBS, with 120, doesn't play for one. If a tournament is good enough for every other sport and every other division except the FBS, then it is good enough for the FBS.
October 20th, 2010 at 3:14 PM ^
that in any head-to-head matchup between any two football teams, the better one always wins. There's no such thing as an "upset" in your world, as you allow for no variance from week to week in the performance of teams. I prefer to evaluate a team on their whole body of work over the entire season, not on how they perform in a single game at the end of the season.
In reality, the better team merely has a higher probability of winning a given game. Inferior teams can and do win individual head-to-head matchups. A single-elimination tournament rarely ends with the best team winning, particularly when the participants are all fairly closely matched to begin with.
There is no objective way of determining the best team, as the very meaning of "best" is subject to dispute. A tournament provides an unambiguous winner at the end, but is ultimately no better at selecting out the best team than anything else.
But that's all part of the fun.
October 20th, 2010 at 2:44 PM ^
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Wolverines_football#Other_undefeated_seasons
There were 12 seasons we finished undefeated and don't claim a national title. I wonder if we were selected by anybody as a champion in any of those seasons?
October 20th, 2010 at 3:02 PM ^
Those years:
1879, 1880, 1884, 1885, 1886, 1887, 1898, 1910, 1922, 1930, 1973, and 1992
Most of those are prehistoric. 1910, 1922, and 1930 would probably be classified as "before the modern era." Who knows? Maybe they played all MAC schools those years.
1992 is memorable for its three ties.
1973? Sore subject around these parts ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Ohio_State_vs._Michigan_football_game
October 20th, 2010 at 8:19 PM ^
Good points on '92 and '73 - I sorta think we should claim a title for 1973. I also know that for the 1985 season (one loss, finished #2 in both polls) one major selector gave us the nod for the title
As for the other seasons - in 1930 we finished with one tie, and ended fifth between 3 undefeated/untied teams AND behind our co-Big Ten champs - Northwestern (despite the fact that they had a loss). 1922 had a number of unbeatens and untieds, including Iowa in our conference. Our only blemish was a tie against Vanderbilt, who also finished with only a single tie. In 1910 we were not in the Big Ten, and had three ties (against a decently tough schedule though). The 1898 team may have a legitimate claim since they won the Big Ten in dominating fashion, and were the inspiration for "The Victors." All the rest were prehistoric, with Michigan never playing more than three games.
But if I had a say, we would also claim titles in 1898, 1973, and 1985. Hear me, Mr. Brandon?
This information is all from Wikipedia, of course. If you didn't notice, your post inspired me to obsession.
October 20th, 2010 at 5:47 PM ^
Don't forget the mythical part. It's important because there is no real national champion.
I really wish people would stop calling the BCS champ a national champ. It doesn't award national championships, it simply sets up an exclusive little exhibition which (if the regular season plays out favorably) should settle on the field the debate between the two best teams. Frankly, I would still rather win a Rose Bowl than a BCS title because in my old-fashioned brain it is more prestigious.
And an interesting side note on "national championships": up until about the mid 1960s, the final polls (AP, UPI, etc) were voted on at the end of the regular season before any bowl games were played. Bowl games themselves were intended more as exhibition matches than any real (i.e., fair) proxy for a playoff. Simply going to the Rose Bowl was meant as a reward for a championship season (in either the Pac 10 or Big 10).
Not having a national championship and having a system of bowls (instead of a cutthroat playoff system) is a large part of what makes college football fun. You know, fun for the young student athletes. It's really perplexing how many "fans" keep hitting their head against a wall complaining about a lack of a playoff...these people (fans & writers alike) claim to like college football, yet they don't seem to understand it all.