Kyle Gets Contrary: The BCS Is Better Than a College Football Playoff
by T Kyle King on Jan 26, 2010 4:00 AM EST
in Football
16 comments
I count myself a Matt Hinton fan, despite my disapproval of a Southern Miss fan rooting against Brett Favre. (I admit, however, that I am biased against the Saints, since I grew up near the hometown of the Falcons, who number New Orleans among their rivals, largely because both teams have been lousy for most of the last 45 years. Also, I continue to hold it against Drew Brees that Mr. Birthmark was named MVP of the 2000 Outback Bowl, a game in which Purdue lost to Georgia. Seeing as how the Boilermakers lost, I think it’s fair to say that the Bulldogs had 85 scholarship athletes who were more valuable than Brees, who, to repeat, lost. Even ten years later, it still chaps me. Darn you, Drew Brees.)
Anyway, I’m a Matt Hinton fan, but there is nothing about which we disagree more than playoffs. He favors a Division I-A college football playoff and I don’t. Accordingly, Dr. Saturday’s latest posting pounding the playoff drum has inspired another round of "Kyle Gets Contrary," as I provide you with a handful of reasons why you should support the BCS.
Yes, I would prefer a return to the old bowl arrangements of the 1980s, but that isn’t happening. Hinton’s and Favre’s fellow Mississippian, William Faulkner, wrote that, when faced with the choice between grief and nothing, he would take grief. Likewise, when forced to choose between the Bowl Championship Series and a Division I-A college football playoff, I will opt for the BCS as the lesser of two evils. Here is why:
1. The BCS gives us the best of both worlds . . . a full New Year’s Day slate, plus an extended college football postseason. I absolutely love January 1. A new year dawns, full of limitless possibility; you get the day off from work without the responsibility that accompanies Thanksgiving and Christmas; and you get wall-to-wall college football. Granted, it isn’t like it was in the old days, when every big game was played on New Year’s Day, but a playoff would gut January 1 and render it meaningless. If the first didn’t fall on a Saturday, there might not be New Year’s Day college football at all under a playoff system; think about how arid and depressing the initial day of the new year would be without football. It would set the wrong tone for the entire twelve months. With the BCS, we have a full day’s worth of games to ring in the new year, followed by several straight weeknights of college gridiron action leading up to the culmination of the whole campaign. The BCS offers us a happy---nay, joyous---medium.
2. If Congress is busy holding pointless hearings, the national government will have less time to mess with us. During the Whitewater probe and the ensuing impeachment proceedings, many commentators complained of the wasteful expense of the investigation. For reasons having nothing to do with the political views of the respective sides, I favored the perpetuation of the battle between the branches. The investigation cost $50 million? Fine, but, as a result, for a couple of years, Congress and the president were too occupied with each other to pester the American people. I’d call that a bargain; I say charge $75 million and tell the Supreme Court to shut up, too. Likewise, meaningless grandstanding and political posturing about college football by frivolous members of the national legislature keep our elected officials from messing up anything of actual importance. If nonsense like the extraordinarily silly College Football Playoff Act of 2009 keeps Congress out of my hair, it’s worth it. Ditching the BCS might force the politicians to address actual issues, and no one wants that.
3. The Bulldogs might make it back to the Rose Bowl. It couldn’t happen under the old arrangement annually pitting the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions and it wouldn’t happen under a postseason format that, at best, used Pasadena as a playoff site but likely would eschew sending East Coast competitors to the Golden State. The only scenario that gives Georgia any shot at a return trip to the Rose Bowl, site of an immortal Red and Black triumph led by Frank Sinkwich and Charley Trippi on New Year’s Day 1943, would occur under the auspices of the BCS.
4. College football is big business and the BCS brings home the bacon. No, not literally, although I would strongly support giving BCS bowl status to the Chick-fil-A With Bacon Bowl. I mean that figuratively. All the playoff advocates bandying about pie-in-the-sky dollar figures while speculating about the money a postseason college football tournament would make sound like Dr. Evil making a ransom demand; they’re making up numbers that may or may not exist. Meanwhile, college football is more popular and profitable than ever, and the rising tide is lifting all boats. (Since I essentially defended the impeachment of Bill Clinton a couple of paragraphs ago, I figured I’d better even out the political allusions by quoting John F. Kennedy.) Business is booming under the BCS. Maybe that’s in spite of, rather than because of, college football’s current postseason format, but there’s a good chance the folks pushing a playoff are, however unwittingly, metaphorically advocating changing the formula for Coca-Cola. We know the BCS is laying the golden egg, but, with a playoff, college football’s goose might be cooked.
There are more reasons for favoring the BCS over a playoff, but, gosh, shouldn’t those be enough? I’m sure you’ll let me know whether you think so in the comments below.
Go ‘Dawgs!
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the tradition of bowl games
Kyle,
I’ve heard several people say that they support the continuance of the BCS system because, among other reasons, of the great tradition of the bowls such as the epic Dawg triumph you mentioned in your post. But, it occurred to me, that tradition is largely lost. I realized this while talking to my grandmother during the beginning of bowl season one year. My grandfather played his college ball at a small school in Illinois, but was a Bulldog fan all his life. His concrete company sported a bulldog logo on its trucks for years – in Leesburg, Florida, heart of gator country. He’s passed on now, but my grandmother was telling me about them watching the games together back when there were only the ones we now call the BCS bowls. She was very confused at the Magicjack.com bowl, but trying to be polite about it.
And I realized. The BCS devalues the bowl games through inflation. If you aren’t in the BCS title game, your season doesn’t mean a lot, as TCU/BSU this year and UT/Bama last year demonstrated. I wish we could go back to those days when every bowl game mattered, if we can’t have a playoff.
I agree with every word of that, except the last six, opsomath
I wish we could go back, too, but we can’t, and I believe the bowl games have been devalued more by the proliferation of lower-tier bowls than by the addition of a fifth major bowl.
I’m completely with you regarding the elevation of the national championship to the be-all and end-all. There are plenty of goals for which to play, including conference championships and rivalry wins, that fall short of the national title. I quite agree that the scales have been tilted too far in favor of making the national crown the only measure, but the scales would be tipped even farther in that direction by a playoff.
Does anyone think a division or even conference title means a thing to the NFL teams that don’t win the Super Bowl? Does anyone even remember who won the division championships if they didn’t make the Super Bowl? Do we want college coaches to consider resting their starters in late-season games after playoff positions already have been decided? That’s the world a college football playoff ultimately would create, and I want no part of it.
Go 'Dawgs!
I agree… The BCS “championship game” isn’t even a bowl game. I used to love January 1st, but now the games are spread out all over the week. New Years is a holiday and having all the games one day meant more people could watch.
We might has well have a playoff with all these games on for three weeks. I can’t see how the BCS is good for teams outside the major BCS conferences. In basketball teams like Davidson, Gonzaga, and George Mason have proved making runs in the tourney can help the programs in the future. In the Zags case they’re a real basketball power now and although they play in a non BCS conference they have a shot in the tourney. That is not the case for Boise State, Utah, and TCU.
How important is tradition when the biggest powers in football the past 30 years are from Florida? Teams that don’t have any tradition. How important is tradition when there are 30 bowl games? How important is tradition now that teams cannot tie? How important is tradition now that there’s instant replay? How important is tradition now that conferences hold championship games?
The BSC is good for teams outside the major BCS conferences
because before the BCS, those teams played in what are now referred to as BCS bowls exactly zero times. The BCS gave them access to the big money bowls they didn’t have before. Under the old system, there were conference tie-ins and after the tie-ins were fulfilled, the bowls could make what essentially amounted to an at-large bid (as we now refer to it). Those “at-large” bids never went to those smaller teams. Now there’s a mechanism that forces the big bowls to choose them.
The reason the teams you mention in Basketball (Davidson, Gonzaga, and George Mason) get into the tournament is because the field has expanded to a ridiculous number: 65 (and now they want to take it up to 96). If there were a college football playoff (and hopefully there never will be), the teams from non-BCS conferences would be less represented in a 4 or 8 team format than they are now in the BCS and would probably be represented equally in a 16 team format. And since what they’re really after is the money (and not the chance to play for a title), they are better served by the BCS.
by marktheshark on Jan 26, 2010 1:18 PM EST up reply actions
I Used To...
“I absolutely love January 1.”
… and I might again some day if the powers that be would cram all of the toilet bowls back into the previous year where they belong. I read on a blog the other day, the name of which slips my mind, griping about how the announcers in the GMAC Bowl wouldn’t shut up about the BCS Championship Game scheduled for the next night. At risk of alienating all fifteen fans of Central Michigan and Troy (my Senior Prom date ended up going to some place called Troy State), who cares? What did you expect? The GMAC Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Alamo Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Papa Johns.Com Bowl [sic] and The International Bowl (!) should all be played before Christmas, let alone before New Years (alright, we can give the Cotton Bowl a pass to return to Jan. 1, but you get the point).
by Comin' Down The Track on Jan 26, 2010 9:13 AM EST reply actions
and, they are adding more bowls next year
but it aint about history, tradtion, making the bowls have meaning, its about $$$$$$
funny how people think playoffs will change that. What history and tradition remains will completely be subsitituted for $$$$$$$$$$$$$
"I look forward to developing an aggressive, physical, attacking style defense that offenses will not look forward to playing against." - Coach Grantham
Personally, I think y'all are missing the point
The BCS currently upholds the best thing about college football: the regular season. Say you qualify for the playoff and you have a chance at a MNC, are you really going to play all your players for that last game of the year? Even if it’s against that annoying little brother in-state rival whose whole life revolves around beating you, what’s the point? You’re already going to the playoffs, why risk your best players? Why play Peyton Manning against the Jets?
Though yes, a playoff system would gut the bowls, the real harm would be in the damage it does to the regular season. This is college football, it’s not the NFL. Let’s keep it that way.
Exactly.
Even if it starts as a +1, the eventual outcome of any limited playoff will be a 16-team playoff. Apart from people resting players and what not, you could potentially end up with a hot 3-loss team upsetting a team to whom they lost in the regular season. I do not think it is particularly fair to have, say, just as a random example, an 11-5 NFC wildcard team play for the title against an undefeated AFC Division Champion who beat them in the final week of the regular season, as might very well happen someday in the NFL.
by Biggus Rickus on Jan 26, 2010 5:52 PM EST up reply actions
Happy to see you go un-PC and support the BCS!
And your list was not all inclusive. If there are 33 bowls (is this right?) then 33 teams get to finish with a win and gain momentum for the next season. How can that not be a huge advantage over a system where everyone but one team ends their season with a loss.
I have ZERO problem with the proliferation of lower tier bowls. If some town wants to invite two colleges to play football there, give them gifts and showcase their city at the same time, where is the harm in that. And SO WHAT if 6-6 teams are rewarded with a bowl game. I wish that all these athletes who give so much to their school and can’t have part time jobs to earn money for perks could have a weekend where they are celebrated and given cool swag. And the better you play during the season, the better the bowl at the end; so those who succeed reap the bigger benefit.
I would not trade a system where my Dawgs got to match up against the Big 12 in the Independence Bowl for a system where they got to stay home and watch 8 other teams play in 7 playoff games. Give me the bowls. Let me see the conference match ups. Let everyone understand if they want to make it to the big game they need to play tough teams and win tough games. I can’t wait until September!
Confused
Why would a Division 1A college football playoff system mean the end of bowls? I would think a playoff would mean more games for those teams deemed qualified to compete for a national championship and all the other 6-6 and up teams would play in the traditional bowls. I don’t think that would take any meaning away from the Gaylord Music City Bowl and the like. To follow suit with tankertoad’s post, the playoff system could mean more bowls and more money, just thinking out loud I guess.
I think the current BCS system could be an excellent tool to narrow down the top 8, 10 or 12 teams in the country; but is somewhat troubled in nailing the top 2 teams (especially with pre-season polls added to the mix).
So there ya go, my two cents: BCS stays, Bowls remain, we gain some fidelity in predicting the top teams by expanding the limit or limiting our reliance on it, Schools get money, Sponsors get potentially more money, all teams from mediocre on up have a chance to get a trophy and everybody is happy…
A playoff could mean that 1or 2 losses doesn’t end your championship hopes, that if you’re in the mix for a top 8, 10 or 12 ranking you’re not going to pull starters against an important in-state rival (although i would personally trade a victory over that trade school on North Avenue for a National Championship every time), and for the same reason I’m glued to the television for college basketball playoffs – it could mean some really awesome football games that we have all had stolen from us since money became more important than the beauty of competition in college football.
whoa -
I said they are adding more bowls. Not supporting a playoff. I was just saying more bowls waters it all down some. But I do appreciate you reading my posts )
i am not going to argue about playoffs anymore i dont think….too tiring.
"I look forward to developing an aggressive, physical, attacking style defense that offenses will not look forward to playing against." - Coach Grantham
Here, here ...
I don’t know that a limited playoff – say, 4 – would devalue the bowls. But it might.
I submit for your consideration, though, the “true plus 1.”
Four or five BCS Bowls (if five, bring the Cotton, Peach, or Capital One … if they’ll rename it into the fold). The top four BCS are seeded. If this sounds like a playoff … well, it kind of is. However, the final game is not guaranteed. If a team sits atop the BCS standings at the end of the season with fewer losses than any other in the land … BOOM! Season over. So, say, for example, 2000 Oklahoma, 2001 Miami, 2002 Ohio State, or 2005 Texas happens, then no “National Championship Game” happens. This maintains the must-win element of every week. However, if the #2 team in the standings (remember, we’ve done a 1-4, 2-3 matchup making things just as fair as they need to be) has equal or fewer losses than the #1 team, we have a championship game the following week.
{YOU CAN’T JUST HAVE AN EXTRA GAME!} Sure you can. Cities handle MLB and NBA game sevens all the time with less than a weeks’ notice. Only those four teams would even have to prepare for the extra week. Also, it would maintain the drama of needing other teams to lose all the way through Jan. 1. And it would all but mandate that the Big 4 (or 5) be moved back to Jan. 1. I haven’t figured out who hosts the final game, yet.
Red Cup Rebellion - Changing the culture of Ole Miss Athletics
Destroying your traditions since [YEAR REDACTED].
BCS vs Playoff
From a purely selfish POV, any Georgia (or, really, SEC fan) should recoil in horror at the idea of a playoff. Why, after 2007, would one say such? There are two overriding reasons.
1. Money. Georgia (and all other teams from auto-bid leagues) get more money in the current arrangement than they ever would in a realistic playoff run by the NCAA. A playoff system might generate more money, but it will be split among more teams/conferences. This is the way of the NCAA. If you deny it, you are foolin’ yourself. Say what you want about equity in college athletics, etc. Whatever. I want one thing: GEORGIA to WIN. The current arrangement favors Georgia’s treasury at the expense of TCU and Memphis. Sorry, but I’m totally ok with that. You don’t see Yale giving up part of its ridiculous endowment to improve the quality of education at Swathmore, do you? No. I don’t see why UGA should sacrifice its favored place along with other BCS schools so that Western Kentucky can have a “fair shot” at the millions which the BCS schools (more or less) generate.
2. The SEC Champion, in most scenarios, will play in the BCS championship game. Georgia’s two BCS-era SEC titles were in ‘02 (two undefeateds from other BCS leagues) and ’05 (Georgia had two losses going into the championship game). The SEC, more than any league, wins in the BCS system. For crying out loud, LSU was the first team to win the BCS title with two losses. (And I’ve come to accept that if you want to be taken seriously, don’t get blown out by Tennessee).
So, SEC and UGA have a financial and competitive advantage over non-BCS leagues (and, I think, some BCS leagues – you didn’t see Cincinnati getting serious consideration for the BCS title game, did you?) in the current arrangement. I’m OK with that.
HBTD
by Gen. Stoopnagle on Jan 26, 2010 4:56 PM EST reply actions
The world changes...so must college football
1) Even with a playoff, there are room for New’s Year Day bowls (wouldn’t January 1 been a little better than an obscure post Christmas Monday for the Advocare-Shreveport bowl-a-pa-looza?). Pull up a chair, bag of chips and your favorite beverage and enjoy.
2) THIS! But I fear it’s not enough to keep our heros in DC occupied. Send them butter perhaps to entertain themselves.
3) Dawgs chances to go to Pasadena are about the same…they have to go to the championship game. I don’t see why the assumption on this changes in a playoff format.
4) Assumptions about where and how the money flows goes to the point of my header. Times are changing, and new media will alter how the money flows. There is simply no basis to assume the BCS will make more money in the future than a playoff for either all of college football, or even Georgia in particular. Ultimately, the forces of economics would make either approach equal. References to the money generated today just don’t make sense when the future will work to alter the formula one way or another anyway.
I’ve been in the same “preserve the bowls” camp for a long time, but the reality is that college football will change, and I’d rather see a dialogue and debate occur about the right way of doing it than to leave it to the same BCS boneheads in a smoke-filled back room that left us with the mess we have today. We’re not going back to the ’70s, so lets try to influence…positively….what the future will look like.
Wishing for no change is a little like not voting…it accomplishes nothing.
Run Lindsay Run!
Gunthered breaks down the playoff system debate- very long read - but very detailed
The National Championship Issue
"I look forward to developing an aggressive, physical, attacking style defense that offenses will not look forward to playing against." - Coach Grantham
BCS DECLARES GERMANY WINNER OF WORLD WAR II
US Ranked 4th
After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.
“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work—including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule—our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”
Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated “The US only had two major victories—Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren’t influenced by head-to-head contests—they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event.”
German Chancellor Adolph Hiter said “Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks.” Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn ‘style points’ to enhance Germany’s rankings. Hitler protested “Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional forces.”
The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented " France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2."
Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.
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