“Death to the BCS”: A 2010 Hypothetical
By Paul Myerberg // Oct 19, 2010
The book provides an outline for a potential 2010 playoff.
I’m going to keep bringing up “Death to the BCS” until each of you agrees to check it out. I have, and I can’t recommend it enough — it’s like Dan Brown for college football fans. Eminently readable, full of cogent arguments and meaningful statistics designed to reveal the B.C.S. system as the sham the book purports it to be. This is third post about the book leading into a Q&A with co-author Dan Wetzel later in the week; the first, written last Wednesday, showed how a hypothetical playoff system would have played out following the 2009. What if we used that same logic for 2010? Now that we’ve reached the halfway point, how would the 16-team bracket look?
If you remember from the earlier post, the 16-team bracket consists of the 11 conference champions: the A.C.C., Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Pac-10, SEC, Sun Belt and WAC. That leaves five at-large bids. I’m going to tweak it somewhat to include one of three F.B.S. Independents. Like in the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament, there will be one play-in game: it will pit the two lowest-ranked teams included on this list, according to the P.S.R. weekly rankings.
Using that logic, here’s how the 16-team — 17, if we include the play-in game — bracket would look if the season ended today. In cases where a conference championship remains to be played, such as in the A.C.C. or Big 12, the conference title winner will be the team who currently has the highest ranking. It’s extremely flawed, I know, but it’s just a hypothetical. Either way, it can’t be any more flawed than the B.C.S., right?
In each division, the higher-ranked team is listed first and hosts the game. One note: I’m giving Boise State the WAC even though Hawaii, at 3-0, is technically in first place. In addition, please don’t be upset if your team — Iowa, for instance — doesn’t receive an at-large bid. Not only is the season only halfway done, but the bids are based solely on this week’s rankings. Basically, I took the five highest-ranked teams that were not conference leaders and gave them the at-large bids.
Play-in game
16 East Carolina vs. 16 Troy
Oregon division
1 Oregon vs. 16 play-in winner
8 L.S.U. vs. 9 Alabama
Oklahoma division
5 T.C.U. vs. 12 Florida State
4 Oklahoma vs. 13 West Virginia
Boise State division
2 Boise State vs. 15 Navy
7 Utah vs. 10 Wisconsin
Auburn division
6 Michigan State vs. 11 Stanford
3 Auburn vs. 14 Northern Illinois
Just something to chew over. How interesting would this be? The Spartans, in East Lansing, hosting Stanford? L.S.U. and Alabama? What a potential matchup of T.C.U. and Oklahoma in the second round?
Tags: Dan Wetzel, Death to the BCS
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Alabama or Auburn wins everytime
I’ve got the Kindle sample of the book and will likely buy the book soon.
Ugh, this is garbage. Why do people continue to fantasize that a March Madness style tournament with all the conference champs would be good for football? What do you do if a new conference is formed? Automatically let them into the playoffs? Suppose Vanderbilt, Duke, Wake Forest, Army, Syracuse, and Baylor decide to form their own conference, does their champ get in? Just give me an 8-team playoff with the most deserving 8 teams.
A 16-team play-off means extending the college football season into December, which means that for 16 teams, their students will have their ability to take their final exams seriously disrupted, which means there would be a huge backlash against the play-offs, which is one reason such a system is not under consideration by the college presidents.
RU Professor – the kids at D1-AA schools do just fine.
I’d at least like to see an agreement where the seeds move one place each way (but not affecting home-field rights) to avoid regular season matchups, with priority to avoiding conference rematches. This goes back to the one argument against the BCS that holds up – Alabama and LSU already played. If that game is to retain the relevance it currently has, it needs to be eliminating teams, not merely delaying their “real” game.
A playoff would not significantly affect student-athletes.
As the season currently runs, Bowl Games start around Dec. 23, and the final game is around Jan 7.
If the teams played one game per week in the playoffs, there would only be the addition of one week to the schedule. And that final week would only affect the final two teams anyway.
Also, if you think Oklahoma will get by the WVU defense you are crazy.
Sorry for multiple posts, but I have one problem with the setup of the playoff as described above (it is the same problem I have with the NCAA basketball setup):
Why is the play-in game always between two conference champions from smaller conferences? Those teams played hard all season and they won their conferences. And their reward is an elimination game against each other just for a chance to play against a bigger team?
Shouldn’t the play-in game be between at-large teams who didn’t play well enough to win their conferences?
@KLB I think RU Professor is being facetious (at least I hope he is).
Overall I could really get into that stuff.
Really need the book.
Why the tweak to include Navy? Does this mean you think ND is going to be able to negotiate a reserved spot for the three independents? Or is it more that they get a spot if they meet certian criteria?
Kindly let me re-post what I just posted to the Wed. version of this story. I want fresh eyes on it:
****************************************************
I don’t have time to research this, but I’d guess you comment-board guys have a pretty extensive collective knowledge:
What’s the biggest outsider champion in the (fairly recent) history of NCAA playoff sports? Maybe we stick to FBS/D-II football and March Madness. Maybe college baseball, too.
Am I right that there’s never been a true outsider champ to make it through a playoff system?
Even in basketball (where you only need a couple of good players to make a run) all champs have come from big basketball conferences, right? A middling Big East team pulls off a championship more easily than, let’s say, a 29-1 SoCon champ.
Is this true in FBS history, too? Baseball? (Not sure how a Cal St. Fullerton, Fresno, Pepperdine counts.)
You see where I’m going with this.
If we expanded the FBS field to 64 (true inclusiveness!), we’d be less surprised to see a 2009 LSU or Georgia get to the final than a Cincinnati or ECU or even TCU/Boise.
Isn’t the BCS just cutting to the chase?
Would love to see what counterpoints you guys come up with from the historical facts.
Sorry guys. Obviously mean FCS when referring to playoff history.
@DMK this is my opinion on it:
I’m ok with the results of the NCAA tourney, etc, because at least all those teams had the OPPORTUNITY to upset a higher ranked opponent. The majority of the time we’ll have (and I’m using basketball as the example) UConn or Duke or N Carolina, etc., winning.
In football, the majority of the time, we’ll probably have the big schools winning it. But at least there is a chance for some sort of upset or some sort of “proving it on the field”. If you are truly the better team, you have to prove that by actually being the better team.
@ Damien
I totally agree. If major college football had that 64-team tournament, then we’d all be pretty comfortable with the champ at the end of the year. But, for obvious reasons, that’s not happening. It’s not even being advocated.
But if you’re going with just 16 or 8 teams, why throw in a Troy, Navy, ECU, Northern Ill., or even Boise/TCU, when the better teams are Nebraska, South Carolina, Arkansas, Iowa, Arizona (gosh, even UGA or Michigan)?
That’s what the BCS does. It cloaks its foregone conclusions in fake analytical garbage. But polls, with all of their tallied numbers, give the false appearance of certitude, too. Always have.
The debate says that Boise/TCU are given *deflated* values in this poll/computer system. (As an aside, I’ve always see the computers as just one man’s algorithm-vote, only it’s given outsized value.) But doesn’t this system actually *inflate* the values of Boise/TCU. Voters aren’t voting on the best team, but on the team they think will end up at number one in this screwed up system. Those are different things.
That is to say, of the fifteen AP voters who put Boise St. at number 1 this week, how many of them would stake their house that Boise St. would beat Bama (zero first-place votes) on a neutral field (provided they *must* stake the house on one of the two)? Not fifteen of them, I bet! Against Auburn? Ohio St.? Florida St.? Texas? How far down the poll do we have to go before you would honestly place that forced bet on Boise St.?
@DMK
The philosophy of a voter changes from person to person. The most often-cited one that I’ve heard is: who is the best THIS week. Some guys try and predict who will be #1 at the end of the year. I guess it just depends on who you’re talking to.
I feel that the problem with the BCS is that they give far too much credit for being a big name school. Notre Dame hasn’t done anything in the last ten years. But they’ll still get a BCS bowl if they win nine games (or is it ten?).
If we’re just “cutting to the chase” then what’s the point of having the non-AQs in the discussion? Split them up and let the AQs have the BCS and let the non-AQs have a playoff in their own division.
I can’t wait until I get this book. I love college football. I think the BCS is ridiculous, and is unfair to college teams, players, and fans all across the country.
The BCS system is the attempt at making a part of the NCAA resemble the NFL. The divisions are the ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, Pac-10, and SEC. (And somehow Notre Dame.)
The goal is to have a controlled tournament where only these teams can win the championship, and only these conferences will make the profits from their bowl games and championship.
The BCS buggered their own system by insisting on seeding these teams in bowls, rather than in an 8 team playoff (with two wildcards). If the BCS had done this, there would be less vitriol against it.
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It appears that they had to allow for the possibility of non-AQ teams as to avoid antitrust problems and to keep the NCAA off their backs.
I imagine when that particular exception was placed in the BCS system (that non-AQs who placed at a certain point in the rankings would be in the bowls), they never thought an outside team would stand a chance.
And how could an outside team stand a chance? The BCS schools have the funding to build the facilities, to draw in the fans and recruits, and to win the games.
Athletic budgets in the Big 10, SEC, and Big 12 hover near 100 MILLION DOLLARS. They have the money to make the money.
(The fact that few Big East and ACC teams have budgets barely more than half that – and that neither has played in the nat’l championship since 2003 – further shows how this works.)
Terrible idea. I don’t want to see who wins a post-season tournament. I want to identify the best team. I’m all for a playoff, but only of legitimate contenders. Four teams. Four teams only, and that’s a stretch. The past decade has produced a few seasons where maybe three teams could have a claim to the title, but never eight or sixteen, or even five. And definitely not the Sun Belt champion.
Extending the number of teams makes only HCs and ADs happy. If there were eight teams, number 9 would say they were just as good as number 8. But they could not say they were as good as number 1, and that is why they should be left out.
A four-team playoff would give every team with a valid claim to being the best to have their chance to prove it, and prevent mistakes like leaving Oregon in 2001 and USC in 2008 out of the title game.
But the contrarian in me likes things the way they are. No playoff. The college sport that puts the greatest emphasis on winning has no clear way to determine its national champion. Poetic justice.
KLB – The 16-team level of the FCS bracket plays Dec. 4, which is 7-10 days before finals begin at most colleges.
On Dec. 4, not all the FBS teams have completed their 12-game seasons and the league playoffs are underway. If the FBS played its 16-team bracket on Dec. 4, the regular season would have to end at Thanksgiving.
I think an 8 team playoff would be the way to start, with the higher seeds getting home field advantage. Here’s a look at the first round:
1) Oregon vs. 8) Michigan State
2) Boise St. vs. 7) Alabama
3) Oklahoma vs. 6) LSU
4) TCU vs. 5) Auburn
Tell me that wouldn’t be an awesome first round. The second round games would be played at the stadium of the higher seed, and the third and final round could be played at the neutral field championship stadium. We could still keep the bowl system intact for all the other teams, just these eight teams would be excluded to participate in the playoff. Keep it simple, without cinderella, this is football!
Bob J,
Well said!
I too like the current so-called capitalism with exclusionary clauses better that I like a playoff’s so-called socialism masquerading as merit based.
With a playoff, the SEC wouldn’t win a single championship. The Pac 10 would take all of them.
Paul,
Can you (or anyone else) please spell out the argument for a 16-team, as opposed to an 8-team, playoff?
I made the case for the latter in an earlier post, and have yet to hear any cognizable argument for the former (simply being “more inclusive” doesn’t cut it).
It’s amazing. When it comes to this topic, literally everyone’s idea is worse than the one that came before it.
Here’s my idea; a 3 game regular season. Only undefeated teams in the double-elimination playoffs. Round-robin by random draw plus every team gets a bye week before playing Alabama. The winner gets to play Notre Dame for the title, at Boise. Obviously Oklahoma is excluded entirely.
Paul: This is a great idea. I love it. Boise State and T.C.U. are ineligible. Notre Dame gets a 10-game bye until the championship game. Once an SEC team has a loss, they are automatically damned by several egregious calls by SEC-sanctioned referees until they lose a second game and are eliminated.
Obviously people rejecting the idea of a 16 team playoff has not pick up the book. The book lays out that a 16 team playoff is the only logical solution. And the authors did not come up with this on thier own. They had help from conference comish’s, NFL people, TV people, Marketing people, and so on. People who would know what would work.
As for missing school, the game will be play at the same time as the bowls. Plus, the NCAA tourney makes players miss a lot more games than a playoff would.
I guess if you want to bash the idea, read the book first and pick apart their arguments. But do a little bit of reading before you tear apart a great idea.