How the 2006 B.C.S. Controversy Will be Settled on the Field
by T Kyle King
on Dec 8, 2006 1:27 PM EST
in Football
The more I think about this year's B.C.S. controversy, the less I understand it.
It seems to me that there are three possibilities:
- Ohio State wins the national championship game
- Florida wins the national championship game and Southern California wins the Rose Bowl
- Florida wins the national championship game and Michigan wins the Rose Bowl
In the case of the first possibility, there is no room for argument. The Buckeyes will be the only unbeaten team from a major conference and Ohio State will have beaten three teams (Florida, Michigan, and Texas) ranked in the top two at the time the game was played. The Gators and the Wolverines each will have gotten their shot and the Buckeyes will have beaten them both.
In the case of the second possibility, there is no serious room for argument. The Maize and Blue will have finished with two losses, thereby blunting their argument for a rematch, and the Orange and Blue will have claimed victory over the team that beat the Wolverines.
In the case of the third possibility, both Florida's and Michigan's resumes will come into play. At first glance, the Gators would appear to have the better claim, inasmuch as Nancy Meyer's team will have beaten a team to which Lloyd Carr's team lost, but the difference between a narrow loss on the road and a victory at a neutral site may be appreciable enough to bring other factors into play.
Fortunately, the bowl structure provides us with a ready mechanism for judging Florida's and Michigan's final records in a way that settles the significance of their respective accomplishments on the field.
The Gators' best win was over Louisiana State. The Wolverines' best win was over Notre Dame.
The Gators' second-best win was over Arkansas. The Wolverines' second-best win was over Wisconsin.
The Gators' third-best win was over Tennessee. The Wolverines' third-best win was over Penn State.
L.S.U. and Notre Dame will meet in the Sugar Bowl. Arkansas and Wisconsin will meet in the Citrus Bowl. Tennessee and Penn State will meet in the Outback Bowl.
Short of adding a Georgia-Central Michigan Music City Bowl to the mix, that's about as comprehensive a mechanism for drawing reliable head-to-head comparisons between Florida and Michigan as you are liable to find.
The problem with a national championship game rematch in 2006 is the same problem I had with the Florida-Florida State Sugar Bowl a decade ago; if the two teams go 1-1 against one another, don't we need a third game to break the tie? (I have never been able to understand why playoff advocates, who state a preference for certainty, are willing to countenance the real and regularly recurring risk of split decisions between repeat opponents in which one game, inexplicably, counts more than the other.)
This year, though, we have a much better best-of-three scenario in place. If we are left to decide between a 12-1 Rose Bowl champion Michigan squad and a 13-1 national championship game-winning Florida squad, we will have adequate information with which to evaluate the two contenders' resumes.
If two of the three best teams the Gators beat defeat two of the three best teams the Wolverines beat, doesn't that demonstrate pretty clearly that Florida's achievement is more impressive than Michigan's? If two of the three best teams the Wolverines beat defeat two of the three best teams the Gators beat, doesn't that demonstrate equally clearly that Michigan's accomplishments are more noteworthy than Florida's?
If one team's three best victims go 3-0 against the other's, doesn't that end the argument?
Go 'Dawgs!
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What if...
Boise State beats Oklahoma by two touchdowns in the Fiesta Bowl.
Florida beats OSU close in a boring and uninspired game.
USC beats Michigan in a pedestrian game.
When the dust settles, the most impressive win in the bowl games belongs to Boise State, and they are the only unbeaten team in the country.
Unlikely, absolutely.
Is there any way that the Broncos could convince voters to give them First Place votes?
by LD on Dec 8, 2006 1:38 PM EST 0 recs
If Florida and Michigan both win
by Doug on Dec 8, 2006 4:23 PM EST 0 recs
aarrrggghhhh
Fortunately, the bowl structure provides us with a ready mechanism for judging Florida's and Michigan's final records in a way that settles the significance of their respective accomplishments on the field.
Or we could just adopt a playoff system, and note the final score. As much as I enjoy reading Dawgsports, I would rather watch the Gators and Wolverines settle it on the field.
by 34hawk on Dec 8, 2006 6:03 PM EST 0 recs
I was simply describing the present reality . . .
However, I remain uncertain why we are not "settling it on the field" as it stands.
The top two teams in the B.C.S. standings are facing one another in a one-game single-elimination playoff to decide the national championship. One of those teams got there by winning what can only honestly be characterized as a previous playoff game (the S.E.C. championship game between the Eastern and Western Division champions), while the other got there by playing a de facto playoff game between undefeated and second-ranked Michigan and undefeated and top-ranked Ohio State in the season's final, conference-settling Big Ten contest.
I know of no system that would ensure a Florida-Michigan matchup in the postseason. Were a playoff to be implemented, there is a chance the Gators and the Wolverines could win their respective first-round matchups and meet in the second round, but that is not the system we have, which was all I was addressing.
Even if we had such a system, though, what if Michigan lost its first-round game and Florida won its first-round game to meet the team that beat the Maize and Blue in the ensuing round? Isn't that, in effect, the system we have now?
What would be the benefit of extending the season by turning the other bowl games into playoff games, as well, and adding additional rounds?
If the winner of one B.C.S. bowl game advanced to play the winner of another B.C.S. bowl game, we might well get a scenario in which a Sugar Bowl champion L.S.U. squad matched up with a B.C.S. title game Florida team or a Sugar Bowl champion Notre Dame unit squared off with a Rose Bowl champion U.S.C. or Michigan squad.
Haven't we seen those games already? Shouldn't we treat those previous meetings as though they meant something rather than rendering them immaterial by giving the losers a do-over and forcing the winners to prove themselves anew?
by T Kyle King on
Dec 8, 2006 8:43 PM EST
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asdf
And while I agree that "previous meetings" should mean something, they shouldn't mean everything. Ask yourself, what would Jesus do? I'm personally in favor of a chance at redemption.
And the major problem with your argument is that it is too strong. By similar logic we wouldn't have playoffs in any sport. We would just argue over resumes and arrange a matchup between those we deem the two best.
Indianapolis and Seattle would have faced off in a BCS style matchup last year (though Denver would have howled at being left out). Hines Ward and the Pittsburgh Steelers? The probably would have faced Jacksonville in the Gator Bowl. Why should they have the opportunity
Same with the World Series. We would have seen the Yankees and Mets last year, rather than the Tigers and Cards. And the Braves would be challenging the Yankees for best of all time.
Ad infinitum....
by 34hawk on Dec 9, 2006 9:46 AM EST 0 recs
Exactly!
(This is why I laugh whenever the question is asked whether the N.F.L. plays too many exhibition games; all 16 regular-season contests are exhibition games.)
Indianapolis clearly was the better team over the course of the season. Pittsburgh's performance against the Colts in one game rendered utterly meaningless what the two teams did over the course of 16 games.
I'll turn your question around on you. Why even play the regular season? Why not just go straight to the playoffs? If only a few games are going to count, anyway, why bother playing the ones that don't matter?
Playoffs either are redundant, confirming what the regular season already taught us, or counterintuitive, reaching a result that cannot be squared with the facts established during the regular season. A Michigan-Ohio State rematch could produce the latter form of cognitive dissonance, as the 1996 Florida-Florida State rematch certainly did.
If you want to keep playoffs in the other sports, though, fine; as I said, I am a traditionalist, so I'll let the other sports keep their flawed structures out of a devotion to longstanding practices. College football, though, suffers not from too little of a playoff structure, but from too much of one.
by T Kyle King on
Dec 9, 2006 10:07 AM EST
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Postscript
Single-round playoff formats hardly are aberrational; indeed, in the national pastime, they are the historic norm.
by T Kyle King on
Dec 9, 2006 10:12 AM EST
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You make a good point...
Baseball has a relatively small number of teams, and every baseball team in each league plays every other team on several occasions. College football features well over one hundred teams most of whom never play each other.
In MLB it is not necessary, for example, to compare the resumes of the Yankess and Red Sox as they actually met on the field multiple times. (It would be interesting to examine the historical record and see how many times the MLB league champions had a losing record against a league opponent -- that is how many times there was no condorcet winner).
The situation is completely different in college football. Most teams never play each other. We can only make comparisons based on things like the transitive principle -- A beat B beat C so surely A is better than C -- or even worse (A beat B and C beat D and since B beat D, A is better than C).
And even with the assitance of statistical models we are apparently not very good at making such comparisons, which is one of the reasons why lower seeded teams routinely win early round matchups during march madness.
by 34hawk on
Dec 9, 2006 12:31 PM EST
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Regular season is not moot.
Those who remain are then ordered by some measure of their performance to date, and the better teams should be given some advantage (higher seeding and weaker first round opponent, home field, etc....) in the subsequent tournament.
Thus the regular season plays an influential, but not decisive, role in which team ultimately claims the title of "champion". Plus it's fun, and generates a lot of money for beer and shoe companies.
by 34hawk on
Dec 9, 2006 12:08 PM EST
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Fair enough
Thus the regular season plays an influential, but not decisive, role in which team ultimately claims the title of "champion". Plus it's fun, and generates a lot of money for beer and shoe companies.
If we replace the word "tournament" with the word "bowls," isn't that passage equally descriptive of the system we have now?
by T Kyle King on
Dec 9, 2006 12:46 PM EST
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