Whither BCS?

Another year, another freak out about who’s playing in the national championship (it’s LSU and Alabama).  We are witnessing the precipice of change that seems predetermined to happen, which brings up interesting questions about how we go about change. What will it look like? Will it be better? Will there be an overreaction, giving us a system that is much worse than now? These are the critical questions that I don’t hear anyone talking about. All I hear is the same as every year; people complaining about team X or Y and fairness, or greed*, or stupid, or whatever.

So what would it look like? Would it be an NFL/NCAA Basketball format, with conference champions getting automatic bids? Would that only include BCS conferences, meaning 6 automatic bids? Would there be Wild Cards allowing for the smaller conferences to get in, or maybe tiered bids, as in NCAA Basketball (e.g. for 2011, if you had 4 wild cards, Alabama and Stanford would get in, as well as Boise State and…TCU)?  There are a few problems that come up here, for example, that puts Wisconsin, Clemson and West Virginia in and leaves out:

• Arkansas
• Boise State
• Kansas State
• South Carolina
• Wisconsin
• Virginia Tech
• Baylor
• Michigan
• Oklahoma
• Clemson
• Georgia
• Michigan State
• TCU
• Houston
• Nebraska
• Southern Miss.
• Penn State
• West Virginia

Then there’s the seeding issue, do you do it like the NFL? Where divisional champs get the top seeds and the Wild Cards get the last two spots, I think it would look like this (I won’t go into bye’s and I’ll keep it at 8 teams to keep it small enough but still let in higher ranked at-large bids:

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The issues that jump out here are that you have the #4 Stanford, going up against #1 LSU, while the #22 WVU goes up against #5 Oregon. Also, you have #2 Alabama going up against #3 OK State. Haven’t these higher teams earned the right to go up against lower ranked teams? What did Oregon do to get an almost lock to get in to the second round? Well, I also don’t think it works in the NFL, where in 2010, the 7-9 Seattle Seahawks not only got IN to the playoffs (more on that later) but they HOSTED (!) a playoff game, in Seattle…home of the 12th man…against the 11-5 New Orleans Saints, a dome team. No, this isn’t the way to go and the NFL should change their format too.

So what would it look like if we seeded it by BCS rank?

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That’s better, but I still don’t like that WVU and Clemson made it in. What did they do to deserve to get in? All West Virginia did was be the best in a Conference (Big East) that is a apart of the BCS because they are a good basketball conference. This goes to my point about last years NFL Playoffs. Seattle got in at 7-9, ahead of the NY Giants and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, both of whom BEAT the Seahawks.  Simply terrible.

And what about Clemson? Why should Virginia Tech get left out because they were forced to play them in the ACC championship? They had 3 losses and were ranked 20th when they played Tech, VT was #5 and had only 1. On the other hand, is that Clemson’s fault? Is it their fault that VT choked? Same for WVU (or Seattle for that matter)?

If you find the arguments against WV and Clemson compelling, perhaps you’ll like this bracket better:

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Teams ranked 1-8 in the BCS are in, regardless of conference championship. But wait a minute,  3 SEC, 2 Big12, 2 Pac12 and a MWC team gets in? No Big 10 (or ACC & Big East?) Does that render those conference titles meaningless? Does that matter? What do you think the Big10, the ACC and the Big East would have to say to that?  This to me is where the rubber hits the road on why we haven’t seen a playoff in College football.  It’s not greed, or stupid-ness, it’s people with power and influence are making their case, and it is a difficult decision to make between this bracket and the above.

I personally think if there is a playoff, it should be as small as possible, I just don’t see what Kansas State, Boise State, Arkansas, Oregon or even Stanford did to deserve a shot at the title. In fact, I can make a compelling argument that LSU should be crowned as champ now, clearly they are the best in the nation.  Sure, Alabama can say, “the only team to beat us is the best team in the nation, we deserve a shot.” But conversely, LSU can say, “We beat the best team in the nation, that’s not us. We should be champs outright.” But that’s just not going to happen, so we’ll move on.

What about the controversy-du-jour; Alabama and OK State? The difference between their BCS averages is 8 one thousandths of a point. I am one who is skeptical of any type of playoff, however as a compromise, I would accept the NCAA having a special one game playoff between Oklahoma State and Alabama at a neutral location (say in St. Louis, which, according to Google Maps, is roughly equidistant between the two schools), the winner would then move on to the title game against LSU. I think that if the NCAA keeps it to these special cases (say, when the difference between 2 & 3 is less than 1 one hundredths of a point), that would be the best case scenario, in my opinion. 

What’s yours?

*The greed argument is the worst offender. What is so altruistic about a playoff? Will a playoff magically erase all money from the college football bowl season, or in college football at all? Does March Madness, or the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, etc. playoff systems not bring in big big BIG dollars? Ridiculous…