"Playoffs?!?!": A Reply to Garnet and Black Attack's Modest Proposal (Part II)
by T Kyle King
on May 19, 2008 9:49 PM EDT
in Football
Ere the weekend’s baseball action got underway, I offered a partial response to the playoff proposal put forth by Garnet and Black Attack’s Brandon before he went fishing (metaphorically, of course).
I was pleased to see this subject generate some discussion, particularly since Brandon’s subsequent posting upon the subject helped to highlight the extent to which this has been a topic of offseason discussion at Addicted to Quack, Around the Oval, the Georgia Sports Blog, MGoBlog (on multiple occasions, in fact), and, of course, Sunday Morning Quarterback. Accordingly, I now return to my reply to Brandon’s points in opposition to popular anti-playoff arguments, secure in the knowledge that this remains a central issue of contention in the intercollegiate athletics blogosphere.
Wrote Brandon:
Ah, the pomp, the circumstance of the Rose Bowl (presented by Citi). So perfect, so noble, so aimed at infusing millions of dollars of tourist money into the Pasadena economy. . . .
Now, with some bowls, like the Rose, there is a degree of pround tradition there.
But there is no tradition to the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game.
In fact, so steeped in tradition is the TBNCG that it won't even come around again for another couple of years. This past year, it was the AllState National Championship Game. We still have to go through the FedEx National Championship Game and the Citi National Championship Game before getting back to Tostitos. What grandeur. What memories.
Let's not even get started on the tradition of the International Bowl, an abomination that has to qualify as a war crime against the nation of Canada.
Obviously, I have a hard time quarrelling with some of that. Were it up to me, I would restore the old bowl order, whereby the S.E.C. champion always went to the Sugar Bowl and the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions always met in Pasadena. It isn’t up to me, however, and, besides, as has been pointed out at Carolina March, the current college football landscape of twelve-member superconferences and no remaining independents of significance probably renders a restoration of the old order impossible, in any case.
That, however, does not mean that there are not valuable bowl traditions worthy of being preserved. The International Bowl isn’t one of them---although I believe I have watched every minute of every International Bowl ever played, which is more than I can say for any first-round N.F.L. playoff game---but venerable pieces of the sport’s long postseason heritage remain viable in Dallas, Miami, New Orleans, and Pasadena.
Moreover, the B.C.S. is not alone at fault for the current deviations from the historic norm in this regard. Yes, the "double-hosting" model for the rotating national championship game is a novel development bolted onto college football’s longstanding postseason structure, but that has been the latest development in an ongoing evolution, not a stark break with a previously steadfast past.
While the B.C.S. was responsible for the fact that neither of the 2002 Big Ten co-champions went to the Rose Bowl, the B.C.S. was not to blame for the fact that no Southeastern Conference squad appeared in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Eve 1995, or for the fact that the Orange Bowl no longer is played at the Orange Bowl. The drive for an annual No.-1-v.-No.-2 showdown, which produced the Coalition and the Alliance before culminating in the B.C.S., wrought incremental changes leading up to the current system. Mindless calls for a "true" national championship game---the very siren song to which playoff advocates have fallen victim---resulted in the B.C.S.
Beyond that, though, it isn’t as though the B.C.S. national championship game represents as dramatic a departure as a playoff would represent. At least the double-hosting approach keeps the national title tilt at the game’s historic bowl sites; there is no guarantee that a college football playoff would even do that.
Maybe the B.C.S. doesn’t preserve as much of the sport’s tradition as I would like, but it salvages much, much more of it than any N.C.A.A.-approved tournament arrangement would. I agree with Thomas Jefferson that half a loaf is better than no bread. If we cannot safeguard all that is valuable in college football’s heritage, let us preserve what we can.
Brandon goes on to argue:
To an extent. But only to an extent.
Sure, it's nice to argue about who should have won the national championship in such-and-such a year, when UPI picked this team and AP that one, etc. But when you have a "national championship game," this is nonsense. In fact, to exclude a team like 2003 Southern Cal from the mix isn't just controversial; it's manifestly unfair. It's against the values of fair play and sportsmanship that are supposed to lie at the heart of any sport. Put the way we like to say it in the South: It just ain't right.
I freely admit that the Trojans got hosed in 2003 by being excluded from the Sugar Bowl. Fortunately, though, an otherwise untenable situation was salvaged by the continued vitality of the Associated Press poll, whose 1936 debut came four years after the N.F.L. introduced its original "plus-one" playoff game and more than three decades before professional football established a playoff which was anything other than a tiebreaker.
When told his team had been excluded from the designated national championship game, Pete Carroll responded appropriately, stating in interviews that he wasn’t disappointed because his U.S.C. team was ranked No. 1 in both historic polls and was going to the Rose Bowl to play Michigan with a national championship on the line. He was right, the 2003 title was split, and an outcome that offered less closure but probably more correctness was obtained.
Under a playoff, there’s no way out of a ridiculous result. If the Giants beat the Patriots, then the Giants are the N.F.L. champions, no matter how preposterous that may be. All tournament formats foreclose options and produce occasionally absurd results, from the cognitive dissonance of a team winning a national championship without first winning its conference championship (the risk of Brian’s playoff proposal) to the absurdity of lowly conference champions from weak leagues getting a shot at winning it all (the risk of Brandon’s playoff proposal). In college football, where human judgment remains relevant as it does nowhere else in sports, the A.P. voters were able to rectify a wrong.
"It just ain’t right"? What just ain’t right? The reality that the flexibility of the historic bowl structure prevented Southern California’s unjustifiable exclusion from the designated national championship game from robbing the Men of Troy of their fair share of the national championship? That, by me, is a no-harm-no-foul scenario if ever there was one . . . and Division I-A college football’s postseason format stands alone in all of organized sport at every level in allowing for such a possibility. 2003 was a triumph of the traditional system, a result worthy of praise rather than condemnation.
Controversy is good for college football, but at least college football’s controversies concern outcomes which are arguable, from the exclusion of Oregon in 2001 or Auburn in 2004 to the denial of a title to Alabama in 1966 or Penn State in 1994 to the dividing of a championship between Colorado and Georgia Tech in 1990 or Miami (Florida) and Washington in 1991. At least college football allows fans like Brandon to argue, "It just ain’t right."
Under a playoff, though, there is no right or wrong; there is only the result, no matter how incongruous or irreconcilable with previously established facts. If a team that didn’t win its conference championship, or even a team that finished with a losing record in conference play or a record barely above .500 over the course of an entire season, goes on to win the postseason tournament, that team gets to hoist a trophy and there is no arguing about it. Simply stated, playoffs demand that you check your brainpower at the stadium gate; the subtleties and nuances of such thinkers as Brian Cook and Sunday Morning Quarterback are among the most powerful arguments in opposition to adopting the approach they advocate, which would reduce to a mere spectator sport a game that now engages such fine minds as theirs.
All sports have controversies. Maybe college football’s fixation with arguing over the controversies decades afterwards (the fact that Ara Parseghian’s gutlessness in the 1966 Michigan State-Notre Dame game was rewarded absolutely turns my stomach, in spite of the fact that the contest settled a national championship bestowed two years before I was born) has its unhealthy elements, but it’s a darn sight more healthy than any playoff format that renders inarguable would-be (read: should-be) controversies that are shameless and scandalous, yet must be accepted blindly without question.
We should bear in mind what Brandon admits . . . namely, that our modern conception of playoffs was very much a late arrival on the scene. The oldest B.C.S. bowl game is two years older than the World Series; the youngest B.C.S. bowl game is only three years younger than the first game to bear the "Super Bowl" name. When the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament began (three years after the A.P. college football poll crowned its first national champion, mind you), only eight teams were invited, and that format did not change until 1951. From 1903 until 1968, the World Series functioned much like the B.C.S.: the league champions with the best records met in the Fall Classic. As noted previously, the N.F.L. eschewed playoffs in favor of a single designated postseason contest (called simply the "N.F.L. Championship Game") from the early ‘30s through the late ‘60s.
It is, I believe, no accident that two storied sports which are cultural fixtures in the United States---professional football and major league baseball---retained a single established national title tilt for decades and did not chart the misguided playoff course until the hippy-dippy social upheavals of the radical years 1967 and 1969, respectively, caused the powers that be in both sports to take leave of their senses. The leftward lurches accompanying those departures from athletic tradition serve to remind us that, in sports, as in Cold War politics, there’s a republican system that allows decisions to be made by voting (which, however imperfect, at least possesses democratic legitimacy and human judgment) and there’s an authoritarian system that requires decisions to be imposed from above without regard to logic, evidence, or common sense. In my book, that critical distinction renders playoffs quite literally un-American.
To be continued. . . .
Go ‘Dawgs!
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Yes, Playoffs.
From 1903 until 1968, the World Series functioned, much like the B.C.S.: the league champions with the best records met in the Fall Classic.
It’s not quite the same. Baseball in 1968 played an 162 game season. College football manages… twelve. There’s a slight difference in sample size there, and that’s before you consider the fact that the bowl system discourages playing other top-flight teams, since one screw up and you’re out of playoff contention. I just don’t think you can determine the two best teams in the country this way.
By the way, I’ve been kvetching about the bowl system again as well. Just to get your blood pressure up.
by T.H. on May 19, 2008 10:40 PM EDT 0 recs
No, it isn't quite the same . . .
. . . but they still play a 162-game season, yet now two additional rounds of the playoffs have been added. Pooh-pooh it all you like, but mission creep (or, in this case, bracket creep) is real and the national championships such systems produce inevitably are watered-down and often are indefensible. Whatever may be said of the bowl system, at least college football has not produced any eye-rollingly undeserving national champions in the era in which the final polls have been voted on after the last bowl game is played.
Meanwhile, the point remains valid that the fundamental principle underlying the B.C.S.—namely, to take the two best teams at the end of the regular season and match them in a single-round postseason pairing—held sway in major league baseball for 65 years and in the N.F.L. for 35. The formats differed because the sports were distinguishable, but the underlying notion was identical.
I dispute strongly the claim “that the bowl system discourages playing other top-flight teams.” One of the clearest positive benefits to the B.C.S. is that it rewards the strengthening of schedules, thereby giving incentives to play tougher games. A win over Ohio State vaulted Texas into the national title game in 2005; a win over the Longhorns did the same for the Buckeyes in 2006; a win over Virginia Tech did the same for Louisiana State in 2007; this fall’s Ohio State-Southern California game could do the same thing for the winner of that showdown in 2008.
After Auburn’s weak out-of-conference schedule kept the Plainsmen out of the national championship game in 2004, S.E.C. teams have been beefing up their non-league slates, as evidenced by the upcoming Alabama-Clemson and Georgia-Arizona State games this autumn. This is the state of affairs the B.C.S. helped to create, and it is a clear upgrade for the sport.
As I will set forth in greater detail tomorrow evening, I agree with you regarding the exclusion of non-conference champions from the mix (and I said so last December, when many in Bulldog Nation were arguing the case for Georgia, which tied for first place in the S.E.C. East but did not represent the division in the conference championship game due to losing the head-to-head tiebreaker to a Tennessee team that beat the Bulldogs by three touchdowns in a game that was not as close as the score indicated).
This, however, is not a minor detail, yet it continues to divide playoff proponents. Brian Cook says you have to include non-conference champions; you insist that you shouldn’t include non-conference champions; Brandon appears somewhat undecided upon this issue; Sunday Morning Quarterback has his preferences, but he’s prepared to leave the specifics to be determined at a later date.
I am able to report, based upon actual history and evidence, what results the bowl system produces. That system is imperfect--all systems designed by the mind of man are—but it has the virtue of being definite and existent. Playoff proponents can’t even agree on what their system is; until you can, you simply cannot state with anything approaching certainty that your idea is better. Y’all don’t even agree what your idea is.
Playoff proposals are perfect because they are vague, ephemeral, and dependent upon fictitious results from a world that never was. Introduce them into the real world and they will prove even more flawed than what we have now. I’ll gladly take the devil I know instead of the devil you’re sure is an improvement, even though you don’t know him, either.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on May 19, 2008 11:59 PM EDT 0 recs
It's Nothing Like the Same
You’re not going to get me to defend the MLB playoffs; I’m also on record as opposed to the interminable length of the NBA playoffs and expanding the NCAA basketball tournament a whit more. But college football has been among the worst in mission creep in recent years, with the creation of conference championships that exist purely as a cash grab and to throw a wrench in the subsequent bowl games, the push of the New Year’s day games further and further into January, and the ongoing expansion of bowls designed to send every .500 team on a dismal vacation in mid-December. If nothing else, playoffs wil reset mission creep – since you’re fond of mentioning the NFL and MLB’s years of being playoff-free it’s worth noting that the NCAA basketball tournament didn’t expand beyond eight teams for eleven years, and didn’t allow more than one team per conference until the 37th tournament.
I also think you’re giving too much credit to the recent trends in college footbal scheduling. Auburn’s big sin wasn’t it’s weak nonconference schedule – it’s that it started the season ranked 17th, while USC and Oklahoma were 1 and 2. Nor did Texas’s win vaut them anywhere – they started the season ranked second, and went into the championship game at the exact same ranking, one of only two undefeated teams in the country (and a rare actual entertaining championship game, unlike USC-OU a year earlier). Schools are merely coming around to the idea that marquee matchups bring in money, as FSU’s athletic director let slip with his Chatanooga comments. If it was about BCS positioning, Hawaii might have actually been able to play someone before January last year.
And finally, you can’t criticize playoff proponents for not being in perfect harmony while arguing for the superiority of the mecurial, unstable BCS system that never seems to play under the same rules two years running. But even so, I can give the succinct, simple arguement for why mine, Brian, Brandon’s, and SMQ’s various systems are all better than the BCS morass:
Football games.
Teams actually playing one another. Good teams. On a field. Running. Throwing. Tackling. Not the dead space of entire month and a half of Lee Corso talking about what might happen in a game down the road. Not an anticimactic finish where one team blows out another after they’ve both been sitting since November. Football.
Because try as I might, grafting the bowl system as it currently stands onto any other sport just seems ridiculous. The Lakers playing the Celtics or UNC versus UCLA or New England versus Dallas after a month and a half of not taking the field, after an endless parade of lesser teams playing lesser games on ESPN2, after the talking and dissecting and analysis has sucked every last little joy out the only game we want to see… why would anyone choose that over athletes playing the damn game?
by T.H. on May 20, 2008 1:38 AM EDT 1 recs
Well, which is it, T.H.?
First, baseball wasn’t quite the same; now, it’s nothing like the same.
First, the problem with college football’s postseason (as noted in the posting of yours linked to in your first comment) was that there were too many postseason games; now, the connecting thread among playoff advocates’ inconsistent ideas is that you all want more postseason games.
I’m sorry if “an endless parade of lesser teams playing lesser games” and “the talking and dissecting and analysis” (which I thought was what we in the blogosphere provided) succeeds in “suck[ing] every last little joy out of the game” for you, but some of us actually enjoy the traditions that have defined college football for more than a century.
Beyond that, did you really just bust out the Hawaii card? I mean, Hawaii? Really? That’s part of your argument for a playoff? If so, may I say, with all due respect: Bowl System 41, Playoff 10?
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 6:26 PM EDT
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Just out of curiosity...
Was the final paragraph meant in all seriousness, or is it an example of the practice of extending an argument as far as possible to see where it will go?
by DC Trojan on May 20, 2008 2:49 AM EDT 0 recs
It's an exaggeration for the sake of making a point
Obviously, I don’t believe playoff proponents actually are communists.
I do believe, however, that the criticism of making decisions by voting is disingenuous in a society that prizes the electoral process as much as ours does, and that the playoff systems in other sports which we take as sacrosanct are, in fact, much later deviations upon previously existing systems which much more closely resembled college football’s system for a generation or two. Also, a Division I-A college football playoff, like Karl Marx’s scribblings, may look appealing to some on paper, but it would be disastrous in reality. It’s an imperfect analogy, as all analogies are, but there are similarities.
Don’t worry, though, DC Trojan; I know you’re to the left of me politically, but I’m not advocating blacklisting you for disagreeing with me about how college football ought to crown its champion. I have no interest in being the Joe McCarthy of the bowl system, going around asking my fellow bloggers, “Are you now or have you ever been a playoff proponent?”
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 7:44 AM EDT
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One critical difference
A democratic political system requires fairly broad-based voting, and stupidity is not grounds for disqualification. However, since college football has no such requirement, I’ll take voting for national champion more seriously when the half-wits are expunged from the process. Heck, you’d probably get as good or better a result if you threw the question open to the great unwashed rather than a bunch of previously ink-stained sports writers and back-biting football coaches.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 10:53 AM EDT
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Also...
...if I took seriously every criticism – either in jest as here, or in earnest – that I was un-American seriously, I’d be in a bad way indeed.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:22 AM EDT
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Well...
I’m a journalist, so I’m sort of used to being called a communist by now.
by cocknfire on
May 20, 2008 12:05 PM EDT
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Alright Kyle,
there’s really no reason to bring Scott Bakula into this. Unless of course you intend to make a Necessary Roughness joke, in which case, go right ahead.
by MaconDawg on May 20, 2008 10:01 AM EDT 1 recs
Differing expectations
The problem with this debate is everyone has different expectations and goals.
Kyle seems to resist a playoff because he is interested in preserving the tradition of the bowl system. T.H. made the point that I did in the other thread that the biggest benefit of a playoff is more football, and the more the better we say. Others are looking to make a more perfect champion. The conference commissioners more than anything are looking to preserve revenue streams, and don’t believe a word otherwise.
Because different people want different things, this will never reach a consensus. And controversy is good, right? Although I must say Kyle, if you think playoffs end all controversy, you don’t follow as much pro sports as I thought. The argument simply changes from a “who’s the real champion?” debate (like what college football now has) to a “who was really the best team?” debate. It’s semantics, but that kind of controversy definitely exists in playoff leagues.
As for mission creep, the reason it happens is because sports leagues get larger than the postseason format was designed for. If MLB had 20 teams, there would not be a wild card right now. If Div. I college basketball had 100 teams instead of 300+, there would not be a 64-team field.
The I-A/I-AA split was supposed to solve that problem in college football, but they kept letting more and more teams into I-A. Until the issue of there being too many teams in I-A is solved, mission creep is a real problem. Pare the numbers down, and there will never be a problem with keeping a playoff at no more than 8 (a reasonable number given how many people complained about #7 USC not getting a shot last season, ignoring the debate for now as to whether USC actually deserved a shot at it).
by Year2 on May 20, 2008 1:46 PM EDT 0 recs
A reminder
Kyle, I’m the closest thing to a commie pinko in your circle of friends - you know it, I know it, and the American people know it - and even I’m not completely in favor of a playoff for college football.
But someone with your grasp of history should know better than to use the NFL’s playoff system as a symbol of creeping radical leftist influence. Don’t you know that with the 1967 NFL-AFL merger, and the expanded playoffs it spawned, came the Super Bowl, the most decadent, capitalistic sporting event in modern history?
Me and my comrades in the Alabama People’s Liberation Army condemn you in the strongest terms as a running dog for the bourgeois imperialists of the BCS.
by Doug G. on May 20, 2008 2:42 PM EDT 2 recs
Point of order, comrade
My in-laws were in the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in the late 60s and early 70s, and I know for a fact that they were attempting to drain the precious bodily fluids from the American professional sporting corpus by introducing playoffs to the championship process.
(It was actually supposed to be an elaborate inside joke about the limits of logical positivism from a devotee of the Frankfurt School, but it backfired badly.)
None of which changes the fact that the BCS is the running dog of playoff capitalism!
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 4:33 PM EDT
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Two points:
1. I got a “Doctor Strangelove” reference out of your comment, DC Trojan, for which you always will earn points from me.
2. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Phi Kappa Literary Society (the University of Georgia debating society of which I am an alumnus, albeit one of a much more recent vintage) was much the more radical of the two student debate organizations on campus, and many of its members also belonged to the S.D.S. During that tumultuous period, they caused a stir on more than one occasion by inviting a communist to campus to debate communism v. capitalism and by extending an invitation to speak to Julian Bond, who then was considered quite a rabblerouser.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 6:17 PM EDT
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Again?
Under a playoff, there’s no way out of a ridiculous result. If the Giants beat the Patriots, then the Giants are the N.F.L. champions, no matter how preposterous that may be.
This was a weak argument in February, and it has not improved with age. The Giants bested the Patriots on the field of play, which, although I’m a product of a state university, seems to be the most straightforward method of determining superiority. Are we to infer that these matters should be ruled by fiat. You mention the AP voters “rectifying a wrong”...would you have had them overrule the results of the Super Bowl, were that possible? Would you have the national championship arbitrarily determined by an elite cabal, rather than settled on the playing field, like men, in front of God and country and a national television audience? Who is un-American, sir?
by Holly on May 20, 2008 6:42 PM EDT 0 recs
Not by fiat, just by facts
Earlier today, Brandon asked: “And on the NFL tangent, the Giants not only beat the Patriots once, but also came very close to doing it another time—so maybe the Giants were better, no?”
Uh, no.
Six regular-season losses is not as good as no regular-season losses.
Finishing three games out of first place in your division is not as good as winning your division.
Losing narrowly in the regular-season finale is not as good as winning closely in the regular-season finale.
Don’t take my word for it, though: listen to what The Man says.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 9:17 PM EDT
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Wait a minute
You (rightly, it now seems) pointed out that Kansas wasn’t necessarily the second best team in the country just because they were undefeated until late in the season. But now that it fits your argument, a 6-loss team is necessarily worse than a zero-loss team? (I recognize that there’s a more level playing field in the NFL than in college, but still: Miami Dolphins. Against whom, it should be noted, came two of the Patriots’ wins.)
Sure, you could say that the Giants didn’t win the Super Bowl because they were the superior team, but because they had a better game plan, Tom Brady wasn’t feeling well, whatever. But then how do we know that those same sort of circumstances didn’t bog down the Giants (who played a game in freaking London, after all) in some of those six losses? How do we know the Patriots didn’t win some they should have lost? (And they did; they got outplayed by the Ravens, a truly terrible team that would have won had Brian Billick’s brain not locked at the wrong time and had the referees actually been watching the game-winning “catch.”)
You can’t simultaneously throw out the results of one game - the Super Bowl - because it doesn’t fit your definition of what “should” have happened—and yet say that “[l]osing narrowly in the regular-season finale is not as good as winning closely in the regular-season finale.” Why are the results of the regular-season finale any more or less definitive than the results of the Super Bowl? Because that game’s outcome fit your predetermined opinion?
Either what happened on the field during the Patriots’ previous 18 games matters, and the Super Bowl does as well, or what happened on the field during the Super Bowl doesn’t matter, and neither do the Patriots’ previous 18 games. You cannot have it both ways.
by cocknfire on
May 20, 2008 10:33 PM EDT
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How am I trying to have it both ways?
I don’t think one New England-New York result ought to matter more or less than the other. Both are equally important. The fact that one came at the end of the regular season and the other came at the end of the postseason is of no importance to me. Both results represent 1/19th of the data set for the Patriots and 1/20th of the data set for the Giants. The playoff proponents are the ones claiming that the later game means everything and the former game means nothing; I would weight them equally.
As far as the Kansas comparison goes, there are, of course, degrees to this. An undefeated team with a weak schedule (e.g., Hawaii in 2007) has not compiled as impressive a resume as a once-beaten team with a strong schedule. A single loss doesn’t mean everything, but neither does it mean nothing.
Wins and losses carry consequences which must be weighted, but, as the losses pile up, they drag a team down. I thought Auburn was a pretty good team last year, despite their four losses . . . but they did have four losses. I couldn’t conscientiously overlook that, at least not entirely. (I hate Auburn.)
The Jayhawks lost one game and missed out on the conference championship game berth only because of their head-to-head loss to a Missouri team that entered the Big 12 title tilt as the No. 1 team in the nation. The Giants lost six out of 16 games and finished three games out of first place in their division. I think very little of K.U.’s resume, but it was a darn sight better than New York’s.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 11:00 PM EDT
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Both games are not equally important
The fact that one came at the end of the regular season and the other came at the end of the postseason is of no importance to me. Both results represent 1/19th of the data set for the Patriots and 1/20th of the data set for the Giants. The playoff proponents are the ones claiming that the later game means everything and the former game means nothing; I would weight them equally.
It doesn’t matter whether you would weigh the games equally or not. The structure of the playoff system for the NFL says that one set of games count to get you into the playoffs, and then it’s win or go home. You can argue that the NFL sets the bar too low for participation in the playoffs by letting in wild card teams or by having too many divisions within the NFC or the AFC, but you can’t complain that their playoff structure doesn’t produce results that meet a resume ranking or total season assessment because that’s not what it’s meant to do.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:08 PM EDT
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Agreed
I simply believe college football’s playoff structure should continue to produce results that meet a resume ranking or total season assessment, which is what it currently is meant to do and should continue to seek as its objective.
A playoff would undermine--obliterate, really—that historic goal by substituting a less desirable N.F.L.-style goal in its place, which is what I emphatically do not want.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 11:13 PM EDT
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And that's where it comes down to worldview
Because at some level, one’s preferences in this debate are going to be framed by opinions that aren’t necessarily to do with the matter at hand. I may be overplaying my hand here, but I read in your posts not a stout defense of the BCS as the zenith of methods for getting a national champion in football, but a defense of the evolution of that process against radical change – Burkean conservatism with a small “c,” in other words, with a preference for incremental and measured change.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:21 PM EDT
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DC Trojan . . .
. . . I don’t know that I’ve ever been summed up quite so succinctly and well in such a complimentary fashion.
Great minds, it appears, think alike . . . upon this point, at any rate.
Much obliged, as always.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 21, 2008 12:11 AM EDT
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Whose Moving the line now Kyle?
You continue to dig yourself a bigger and bigger hole on this Kyle. You know there is such a thing as peaking Kyle. If you talk to any coach in America they will tell you straight up that the most important part of the season is the end. Of course you have to take care of the beginning and middle to set the table for the end, but once you get into the playoffs it makes no difference what seed a team is, nor their record.
The professional sports leagues are hypocritical as their lust for greater and greater revenue trounces the ethical compass of defining a champion. Just because they include the wildcard teams now doesn’t make the playoff system an evil entity. It makes the NFL, MLB and NBA hypocritical money magnets who place more importance on revenue rather than a champion. A playoff doesn’t have to be orchestrated that way.
There is this end all belief out there that you have to go undefeated to be crowned a true champion, but injuries, strength of schedule and old fashioned LUCK play an important part of the over all equation. You mentioned above that:
I dispute strongly the claim "that the bowl system discourages playing other top-flight teams." One of the clearest positive benefits to the B.C.S. is that it rewards the strengthening of schedules, thereby giving incentives to play tougher games. A win over Ohio State vaulted Texas into the national title game in 2005; a win over the Longhorns did the same for the Buckeyes in 2006.
Can you honestly believe in that when Ohio State, Kansas and Hawaii were rewarded this past year by playing considerably weaker schedules than most other top flight programs in last years Top-25? That year, Texas was being branded as a national title contender the year before after playing one of the weakest schedules and performed poorer against weaker teams than any other BCS team, the same year of the CAL-Texas debate (2004).
They were already headed to the championship inner-circle, how convenient it was they were playing another juggernaut Ohio State. Of even greater interest to me is how the elite juggernauts (Ohio State, Michigan, USC, Oklahoma, Texas, LSU, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida – etc) are connected to each other and the Council on Foreign Relations and the CIA. That is the connection that most people do not even know of and the BCS controversy plays its role in masking this relationship as people are so tied up and busy paying attention to the BCS they don’t look or venture far outside its circle of confusion.
The playoff IS THE ANSWER because you will never be able to sort through the teams playing dissimilar schedules which enter the championship from different directions.
Secondly, the reason the playoff pundits can’t agree on the same playoff proposal is because we don’t know who is in charge of the BCS. The media passes it off to the presidents, but the presidents won’t offer us any leadership on the issue because they are tied into the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Rothschild business foundations which control funding at most state led and private institutions.
We all agree that the BCS and conference championship games are all about the money, but if you follow the money trail in college football (Citibank, Federal Express, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, AT&T..etc) you will find that the same banking institutions (central banks) have been behind every major war and American controversy since the civil war. These same institutions control the media and what has been taught at the university level since the early 1900’s, which is why you wont find any of this information related to the New World Order in any text books. I tried to provide this information at www.addictedtoquack (Dave) and was branded a conspiracy theorist who was rude and obtuse.
That may be true, but only as a result of going through this same argument over and over and over again. I am passionate about college football and I am passionate in my responses, but the money trail leads to the central banks who are in control of the United Nations and Council on Foreign Relations and if you research the issue, history and relationships between these organizations and how connected and inter-related they are to the Rockefeller, Rothschild, Carnegie and Ford foundations, you could understand why we are at this point in college football. Thank you DC Trojan for putting me on the trail of this path months ago, it has taken me four months to sift through the interlocking relationships between corporate American, the political parties, the central banks and the Illuminati conspiracy theory in relation to big money foundations that control the university system (presidents), which oddly enough control the destiny of the BCS.
These issues that occur today, inside (collegiate sports) and outside (the political arena of world events) are very much connected and part of a world wide unification to destroy the American constitution, national sovereignty and our nationality. The BCS fits the equation via the Illuminati concepts of divide and conquer and constructive confusion. Of course you would have to think critically by looking a little outside the box to tie this together. I may be rude, pissed off and passionate about a once dying country, but I’m not an idiot or a conspiracy guy… I just tried to search through the bullshit to find the right answers.
BCSBusters - A Regular Season Bracketed Playoff Truly Making Everygame a Playoff In College Football.
by bcsbusters on
May 21, 2008 3:25 PM EDT
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Good point! Why even play the games?
I’m not here to defend the Giants, and I’m not a playoff proponent, having never seen a proposed scenario that’s in any way feasible, but I can’t get my head around all this—the idea of the best football team being decided by circumstances other than football games is a philosophical stumbling block for me.
by Holly on May 20, 2008 9:36 PM EDT 0 recs
I completely agree
I just think the best football team should be decided based on all of the football games, not just on some of the football games.
The Giants clearly weren’t the best team in the N.F.L. last year, as Sunday Morning Quarterback (the thinking man’s playoff proponent) argued both before and after the Super Bowl. Taking the entirety of their respective seasons into account, the Giants’ 1-1 record against the Patriots (when measured against New York’s 13-5 record and New England’s 17-0 record against teams other than each other) in no way entitles the Giants to claim a championship . . . yet, because the playoff said so, the Giants are the reigning champs. That is nothing short of ludicrous.
My answer to the question, “Why even play the games?” is: “Why, indeed?” I think it’s to determine which team is the best over the course of the entire season, taking every game into account. It is the playoff proponents who ought to be asked, “Why even play the regular season?”
If 11 to 19 games in October can trump 162 games between April and September, why play the major league baseball season?
If three or four football games in January and February can trump 16 games between August and December, why play the N.F.L. season?
I like knowing that Labor Day weekend matters as much as Thanksgiving weekend in college football. I like knowing that conference crowns and grudge matches matter on their own merits. Would any Tennessee fan ever want to see the Alabama and Florida games reduced to mere contests to determine the Volunteers’ tournament seeding? Would you ever want Phil Fulmer to rest his starters against Kentucky because Tennessee’s playoff berth already had been secured?
“Every game counts” became a cliche because it is true of Division I-A college football in a way that it simply is not true of any other sport in the world. As a fan, I will never be willing to surrender that.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 10:14 PM EDT
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Then why play the NC game?
And maybe that’s where your going, but then you’re willing to replace fact - who beat who on the field - with opinion. Again, as Holly said, why play any of the games. Let’s just take out the schedule at the beginning of the season, decide who “should” win each one, crown our champion, and be done with it.
I know you don’t believe that, and as I said in A Modest Proposal, I’m not a huge playoff fan myself. But that’s the logical extension of your argument.
by cocknfire on
May 20, 2008 10:36 PM EDT
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Again, I don't think I'm relying on "shoulds" . . .
. . . I’m simply applying judgment to the reality of the “dids.”
I don’t like having a single national championship game. I’ve been clear on that. I like it when the Cotton, Orange, Rose, and Sugar Bowls all carry consequences rather than being mere opening acts for “the big one.”
I don’t pretend that my BlogPoll ballot has any predictive value; in fact, I freely admit while forecasting games that I’m bad at prognosticating, which is why I call it “Don’t Bet On It!” My ballot is based on what has happened, not what I think would happen.
Can a reasonable person disagree with my judgment calls? Of course; many reasonable college football fans can and do differ strongly with my evaluation of the results. That, I believe, is a strength of the sport, not a weakness.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 11:04 PM EDT
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Simply not true
Your claim that every game counts in college football more so than every other sport in the world isn’t true. Off the top of my head, the only instance I can think of there being a play-off in any form is the English football league, where the teams in 3rd – 6th place in the league play for the third promotion berth to the Premiere League. In other words, the play off is a actually a pre-requisite for participation in next season’s league. You could argue similarly that placing 4th in the English Premiere League isn’t much of a qualification of participation in the UEFA Cup, but all it gets you is an entry ticket. Otherwise, whether it’s a league cup, an association cup, or a cross-association cup, every game (or game pair, in qualification stages) counts. There’s a clear path forward, and it requires that you win.
As for the notion of the Giants “claiming” the championship last season, there’s no “claim” about it. There was a structured playoff system, and they won out. End of story. The issue is not that playoffs are inherently flawed, the issue is the structure and the entry criteria.
You want a playoff approach that provides the discipline of having to win, and every game counting? Conference winners only. End of issue about every game counts, and end of issue about whether any team can complain about being on the bubble. Win, or go home. Any system that is based on something other than participation solely on the basis of winning in college football involves inherently subjective judgment calls, and that only has to be the case because we want it to be so, not because it is the only way.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:03 PM EDT
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Fair points all the way around
I completely agree with you about conference champions, as I argued even when my team (as a non-conference champion) was on its way to a No. 2 finish in the final polls. I believe I have been completely consistent upon this point.
You are absolutely right about the Giants, which is precisely my point. In 2003, both L.S.U. and U.S.C. had a claim, about which judgment was possible, arguments were available, and different results could be obtained. The Giants have no plausible claim, yet, because of the inflexible structure and artificial definitiveness of the N.F.L. playoffs, professional football has as its reigning champion a team whose credentials are laughable.
I apologize for my ignorant and erroneous omission of the English Premiere League, of which I had heard but with which I was unfamiliar. I overstated my case; what I really meant was American collegiate and professional sports, and I should have said so. Mea culpa.
Go 'Dawgs!
by T Kyle King on
May 20, 2008 11:10 PM EDT
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I wouldn't sweat the furrin sports, it's just an interesting comparison
One part of all of this debate that I find interesting is that it’s not just a question of American exceptionalism in the sports that are played, but in how champions are chosen. I can assure you that English soccer fans who take the time to stop condescending about the quality of play in MLS are baffled by the playoff structure, which is like the NFL’s structure inasmuch as average play is not necessarily a barrier to participation.
Considering the popular perception on this side of the Atlantic that American economic life is about market efficiency and the survival of the best, and that Western European economic life is about inefficiency and coddling underachievers, it’s deeply ironic that baseball and the NFL are characterized by income redistribution and the absence of consequence for failure – indeed, by a reward in the form of high draft picks. The business of Euro soccer, on the other hand, is conducted with a degree of economic social Darwinism that would make Grover Norquist blanche and consider pulling the plu out of the bathtub.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:29 PM EDT
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minor correction
The first sentence should read, “the only instance I can think of in soccer” because there are some screwy rules about participation in the All Ireland Championship in Gaelic Football, for instance, and for another the Air New Zealand Rugby Union’s Air New Zealand Cup has a round robin structure in which not every team plays one another based on seedings from the prior season, and a points per result total is what drives participation in and seedings for the elimination portion of the tournament. There may be similarly wacky rules governing county cricket in England but I would have my Scottish birthright revoked if I took an interest in that.
by DC Trojan on
May 20, 2008 11:16 PM EDT
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Now we're talking
I just think the best football team should be decided based on all of the football games, not just on some of the football games.
And that’s an excellent point as well as another BCS pitfall. I could spend all summer going round and round with this, about teams with frontloaded versus backloaded schedules…but I’m beginning to think Doug’s got the right idea about embracing the madness, no matter which side of the argument you land on.
by Holly on May 20, 2008 10:34 PM EDT 0 recs
New FanPost
