First of all, the BCS is a huge improvement over the old system, where teams were all assigned to bowls based only on their conference standings, which led to situations where the top 4 teams all played in separate games, making bowl season just another week of the regular season, with a vote deciding the champion.
The biggest problem with the BCS is that there is still only one game that matters, with the other 4 BCS games acting as consolation prizes for conference champions and very good runners-up. This year, there are 3 teams that finished undefeated and won their conference championship, yet only 2 can be picked to play for the title. In addition, there are an additional 6 teams that finished the season with only 1 loss. These 7 teams (including TCU) are left to look on as Auburn and Oregon play for the national title, each believing that they are good enough to win that game. There's only one way to know for sure - a playoff.
There are a few arguments against instituting a playoff system. One of the major ones is that college football's regular season wouldn't mean as much, kind of like college basketball's under the current setup. The big difference is that in college basketball a conference can have 10 teams in the playoffs, which is far too many. Under the current BCS system, and under the playoff system I'm proposing, a maximum of 2 teams from any conference are allowed in the playoffs, thereby keeping the regular season meaningful, and actually adding meaning for teams from smaller conferences who currently don't have a chance, or for teams who lose once late in the season.
Another argument is that a playoff system would make the season too long, which is an absolute fallacy. The current bowl season lasts nearly 4 weeks, which is the exact amount of time it would take to play a four-round, 16-team playoff. There are also those who worry that the current bowl system, which is unique to college football, would not survive the institution of a playoff. In response, I say that most college football fans don't care about any bowl game before the BCS games unless their favorite team is playing in it. I would even recommend that the current bowls rotate through the first-round games each year, allowing each the chance to host one of the best teams in the country once every few years. This would reduce to total number of bowl berths available, but that is also easily remedied by returning to the rule that a team must finish with a winning record to play in a bowl game, not 6-6.
Here is a rundown of the teams and matchups that would be included in my proposed playoff, with teams chosen and seeded according to the current BCS rankings:
(1) Auburn (SEC Champ)
(16) FIU (Sun Belt Champ)
(8) Arkansas (SEC Wild Card)
(9) Boise State (WAC Champ)
(4) Stanford (Pac10 Wild Card)
(13) UCF (CUSA Champ)
(5) Wisconsin (Big 10 Champ)
(12) Nevada (WAC Wild Card)
(3) TCU (MWC Champ)
(14) Connecticut (Big East Champ)
(6) Ohio State (Big 10 Wild Card)
(11) Virginia Tech (ACC Champ)
(7) Oklahoma (Big 12 Champ)
(10) Missouri (Big 12 Wild Card)
(2) Oregon (Pac 10 Champ)
(15) Miami OH (MAC Champ)
There are a few interesting matchups in the first round, like Wisconsin-Nevada, Boise-Arkansas, and Ohio State-Virginia Tech. The 2nd round matchups all look like great ones, with Auburn-Boise, Stanford-Wisconsin, TCU-Ohio State, and Oklahoma-Oregon all looking likely. Who wouldn't want to watch these games play out over the month of December, which is usually littered with 6-win games playing in the Beef "O" Brady's St. Petersburg Bowl.
But as interesting as that sounds, it is only a dream, at least for now. What we have for now is a matchup of two very good teams playing for the national title, and it should be a very entertaining game, whether you agree with the system or not.
Many people like to use a link they make between 2 teams as proof that their team is better than another. The problem with this is that a positive connection can be made between almost any two teams. Making these links between teams is actually a very strong way of predicting a winner, but there are two things to keep in mind. The shorter the link between the teams, the stronger it is, and the more links you can make, the better. A head-to-head matchup is obviously the strongest possible, but that's not always possible. In that case, the next best thing would be opponents in common, which Oregon and Auburn happen to have none of this year.
The next level would be looking at opponents' opponents', or in other words, a link that has two teams between them. There happen to be 6 such links this year between Oregon and Auburn, each through Oregon's matchup with Tennessee earlier this year. Here is a rundown of the 6 links, with points in terms of Oregon's perspective, each adjusted for home field advantage.
Oregon +41 Tennessee +4 LSU -1 Auburn = Oregon by 44
Oregon +41 Tennessee -21 Georgia -12 Auburn = Oregon by 8
Oregon +41 Tennessee -37 Alabama -7 Auburn = Auburn by 3
Oregon +41 Tennessee -8 South Carolina -20.5 Auburn = Oregon by 12.5
Oregon +41 Tennessee +32 Mississippi -26 Auburn = Oregon by 47
Oregon +41 Tennessee +4 Kentucky -9 Auburn = Oregon by 36
As you can probably guess, the next level, which would include all possible links with 3 teams between Oregon and Auburn, would be very tedious and time-consuming to figure out by hand. Thankfully, that is exactly what my rating system is designed to do. It finds all possible links of 50 or less teams and averages them all out, with shorter links counted more heavily. As of today, my pick would be OREGON OVER AUBURN BY 11. This could change over the next few weeks as the results of the other bowl games come in, but with an 11-point cushion with that few games remaining, it's unlikely that Auburn will overtake Oregon in my rankings.
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