Terry in Crapchester wrote:Back to Plus One . . .
Van, your argument, when reduced to its bare essentials, is "the regular season is the playoff." Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but isn't that exactly what the BCS apologists say?
The problem there is the BCS doesn't/didn't have the common sense to iron out the few obvious flaws in their system:
-Gotta have the consensus #1 in your title game. (They fixed that one. No way 2003 ever occurs again, not after they weighted the human polls more strongly following the 2003 debacle.)
-Can't have automatic conference tie ins, regardless of record. Gotta at least be ranked in the Top Eight/Ten (eight, if we have four BCS games, ten, once we have five BCS games) in the final BCS tally in order to earn a BCS bid. (Still needs fixing. Can't have Pitt and FSU bumping #5 seeds Cal and Oregon.)
-No BCS rankings until mid season. (They fixed that one. Now we just need the human polls to follow suit so that the BCS polls will have less pre season "perception based" info and more on field performance criteria on which to base their initial mid season rankings.)
-Gotta have the ability to make common sense changes on the fly, if in fact your system missed something truly obvious, as in 2003, or this year, with FSU vis a vis Oregon.
-No "contracts" with ND that provide them (or any other program) with preferential BCS treatment.
ALL BCS aspirants must be sufficiently ranked in order to get in, regardless of Independent status or conference affiliations. Doesn't matter. Big program, small program, Mid Major, SEC or Independent. Keep it simple. Either you're ranked high enough to get in or you don't get in.
-Plus One. We need the simplest and most direct path to determining a true national champion, otherwise we'll never see positive change. Plus One provides it. No major overhauls of
anything need occur. We simply need one additional game pitting the winners of the two games featuring the four highest ranked BCS teams.
Nothing suggested here requires any conference re-aligning, significant extra travel, dropping of rivalry games, adding/dropping of conference championship games or any major restructuring of the current bowl system. Put these changes into effect and all we've done is firm up our ranking system while making the bowl selection process a whole lot easier and less controversial. Then, we simply add one game and suddenly everything's solved that truly needs solving.
You can make the argument that the regular season is the playoff in MLB, where every team gets a number of shots at every team in its league. Heck, you could even make the same argument in the NBA and the NHL, although it will be a cold day in hell before either league ever makes that argument about itself. You can't make that argument in 1-A college football. There are too many teams, too few games, and too much variation in scheduling for it to apply.
I'm not changing or nulling tradition here. I'm retaining 99% of CF's status quo. The regular season has always served very well as CF's playoffs, at least insofar as narrowing the field down to the last precious few. I'm just finishing that one last job as expediently and non invasively as possible.
Not to mention that, this year, Plus One would actually provide more controversy than the BCS. The controversy would come over the fourth member, as Ohio State, Oregon and Notre Dame would all lay claim to that fourth spot, and only one (but definitely one) of these schools would go. Yes, you can go to the "well, that team is lucky to be there as it is" card, and you'd be right to a certain point.
And that's that. That's the end of the controversy right there. #4
is lucky to be chosen, since in this instance they didn't sufficiently separate themselves from the competition enough to remove doubt. Those two teams who lose out in getting the fourth seed, well, too bad. They weren't USC or Texas anyway.
The top four right now ought to be USC, Texas, PSU and either Oregon, ND or Ohio State.
Part of CF's cherished traditions is....debate. Controversy.
There it is. We retain at least a little bit of controversy and debate, but it's relegated to where it's a whole lot less damaging and non sensical. We're now only arguing about who's #4 rather than LSU-USC, Auburn-USC, Michigan-Nebraska and USC-Alabama shared titles.
I don't really mind arguing over who's #4? What I don't want is to have the season come to its bowl season conclusion only to find us still arguing over who's #1? True, while there won't be any such problem this year it's plainly obvious that we have that argument in too many other years.
This is too easy to fix, and with only a bare minimum of change required. It'd be stupid not to fix it.
But any of those teams is a quality team, and would be only two wins away from a championship in a Plus One format, so you have to concede that they have a very real shot at the national championship.
They would, but they'd still have to get through USC and Texas. I'm comfortable with that, especially in seasons such as 2003 and 2004 where we had
three teams with nearly equal arguments.
I can live with the possibility of #3 Penn State beating both Texas and then USC and walking away with the title a whole lot easier than I can live with the end of season garbage we've been through all our lives...
As it is, ND almost beat USC earlier in the season, and at least on this board, the consensus is that ND is the weakest of these three teams (although I think that's influenced at least in part by the fact that ND is the most hated of those three teams on this board).
Notre Dame would obviously be entered into the fray as to who should get that #4 ranking. Thing is, with the improvements made to the BCS ranking system that I suggested there wouldn't be much in the way of controversy there. One team would receive that final #4 ranking and they'd be in, period. There'd be nothing left to decide, in the same way there's currently nothing left to decide in terms of FSU , WVA and ND getting in while Oregon doesn't get in.
It's a contractual mandate, so everybody lives with it. ND, FSU and WVA are in and Oregon's out. It's done. That's how the system is currently drawn up. Can't keep debating it in the hopes of overturning the decision this year, can we? The cool thing though would be this contractual mandate is a whole lot more sensible since it includes the fixes necessary to prevent all the stupidity we've seen each year. If
all we're reduced to is squabbling over whether Ohio State, Oregon or Notre Dame was the team that deserved that final #4 ranking and subsequent Plus One/Final Four inclusion then we've come an awfully long way towards having a really good system; a really good system that
didn't require what we know is otherwise an impossible to implement complete overhauling of the system including an all new playoff system.
Common sense changes to the BCS ranking system, plus the addition of Plus One? That's not pie in the sky stuff. Getting everybody to agree to all the details of an all new sixteen team playoff system is pie in the sky stuff. It's not going to fly.
Better, imho, to err on the side of caution, and invite a substantial enough number of teams so that any team having a legitimate claim to play for the national championship can do so.
There's never been more than four teams tops (even factoring in farcical claims like Utahs's) that had a legitimate claim to CF's national championship.
Never. We don't need more than the obvious three or four teams vying for it.
You'll never completely eliminate controversy over who goes, no matter how many teams you have
My system changes pretty much bring us damn close to eliminating all controversy. A potential squabble over the fourth and final seed means you've just about reached the point at which there's really no more controversy.
-- the basketball tournament is proof of that. But this way, the teams who get left out are truly teams that would've been lucky to get there in any event.
So good riddance to them. No reason to let them have the potential of muddying the waters. Whether it's the 68th ranked team in college hoops who misses the NCAA Tourney or the seventh ranked team in CF who misses the Plus One Final Four, good riddance to 'em. They didn't earn the opportunity.
Most of this is pure nonsense anyway. Again, there's
never been a season of CF whereupon season's end we couldn't ALL narrow it down to no more than four teams who truly were worthy of being the national champion based on the body of their work over the entire season.
We don't need to go beyond four teams. #'s 5 on down simply do...not...matter.
And if a longshot wins the tournament?
In this version of Plus One there are no
real long shots remaining in the final four seeds so whoever wins it, hey, it won't feel like the entire regular season was tossed out the window by one lucky hot streak.
Again, if PSU should beat Texas and then USC those two wins combined with their season long body of work would satisfy me that we have a real national champion and not just a fluke. (Obviously if Texas or USC should win their two games then they're no fluke either.)
Better yet, looking at last year, if USC and Auburn win their first game and then USC beats Auburn in the Final (or vice versa), case closed. No matter
who wins, in either season, there's no flukes.
Easy. Precise. No doubts.
As it should be.
Using either scenario, this season's or last season's, it's still case closed.
Well, for that to happen, they're gonna have to beat four of the elite teams in college football in a row. If they can pull that off, under those circumstances, I don't have a problem with crowning them as national champs.
Earn the right during the regular season. It's simple. End the season ranked in the top four or else you obviously aren't national championship material. You had all season long to prove it, same as everyone else. Don't look to simply coast and maybe lose a couple games during the regular season and then flip the switch come tournament time. By doing that you're doing an injustice to your fans during the regular season.
Also, my proposal, by incorporating the bowl games into the mix, solves or at least reduces the problem of bowl bids going to mediocre teams. The rest of the bowls would continue to operate outside the playoff system, but now you have a total of 42 teams in postseason play as opposed to the current 56. That's a 25% reduction.
No problem there. As far as I'm concerned merely getting to six wins shouldn't automatically put you into a bowl game. We could easily lop off half of these recently added Product Placement bowl games and nobody'd miss 'em.
), Army-Navy and Michigan-Ohio State.