Tommy Tuberville got off on a rant yesterday about why Division I-A football does not have a playoff system. He says he doubts whether an SEC team can get to a national title game with how difficult the league is year in and year out.
“I’ve about had it with this playoff deal,” Tuberville said after a lengthy, emotional argument for a playoff. “We all understand in our conference how tough it is. In our conference, that’s about the only chance we’d have to make it.”
He calls out university presidents for caring more about money than having a championship on the field. He also brings up the stat that football players nowadays actually miss less class than the average student does, so a lot of the excuses about academics aren’t valid either. Besides, I’d like to know if they’re worried about kids missing classes, why are there Thursday, Friday, and sometimes even Tuesday night games during the season?
I have always wanted a playoff system in college football. It used to be that there was an 11 game regular season. Now, everyone has a 12th game, some conferences have championship games, and then there’s bowl games. That’s three extra games beyond the traditional schedule. That’s also the maximum number of games that an eight-team playoff system would add to the traditional season. Make the title game just the title game (as it is now) and do a rotation where the four named BCS bowls take turns being the two Final Four sites, and add the Citrus Bowl (Capital One Bowl - I know, I know) and the Cotton Bowl as the other two first-round sites.
Everyone else gets to go to their regularly scheduled bowls, and that’s that. Does it marginalize the other bowls? Yes, but so does the current BCS so what’s the difference? What about non-BCS teams? How would they make it into just an eight-team field? Good point. Add one more game (some teams used to play in preseason games, so even one more game is not unprecedented) and make it a 16-team field. You need 8 additional sites, so just pick all the bowls in NFL stadiums to ensure venue quality, like the Gator, Outback, Music City, and Motor City Bowls. Done and done, as long as no one complains when things like this year happen when a third of that field would be from the SEC.
The problem is, presidents and athletic associations have come to use football as a way to pay for everything in their athletic departments. Taking away the 12th game takes away another chance to make money, though I think if the conferences shared the playoff TV revenue it might even out. Plus, they could give bonuses to the conferences for each playoff team in the system in the same way the BCS works now.
Another issue is tradition. The bowls are traditional and the bowl committees wield a lot of power. However, it’s a dumb tradition since it doesn’t produce a satisfactory champion, and holding on to dumb traditions is not bright. It should not have ever worked that way, and there’s no reason to hamper things now with unnecessary backward compatibility. Neutral-site playoffs has worked for college basketball for so long, why not extend it to football?
In any event, because he complained like this, it means that there will probably be an SEC team in the national title game. That probably narrows it down to Auburn, Florida, and Georgia, since they are the only undefeated teams left in the conference, but really just Auburn and Florida since UGA has no offense.
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One side effect of this talk of how good the SEC is that people will always bring up the subject of SEC schools loading up on weak non-conference games. This is true; SEC schools usually do schedule the Louisiana Monroes, directional Michigan teams, and the occasional Wyoming. This is mainly because they need money making home games to fund their programs. Some teams do have tough out-of-conference rivals that they play annually, like Florida with FSU, UGA with GT, and now Kentucky with Louisville. On the whole though, the Louisiana Techs tend to dominate the schedules.
Besides the monetary reasons, there’s also the fact that it’s the toughest conference in America. The next-toughest conference is the Big 10. Let’s examine the conferences top-to-bottom, throwing out Mississippi State in order to even the numbers out and because of the probation and the post-Jackie Sherrill mess. I’m making up the rankings within the conference myself for the most part, based on my own judgement, but after the top two spots it doesn’t really matter anyway.
- Ohio State over Auburn: It’d be close, but I’m giving it to OSU just because I don’t know if anyone can beat them. Auburn could probably win 2 out of 5, but that still leaves the Buckeyes on top.
- Florida over Michigan: I honestly have no idea because Michigan’s reputation is based solely on thrashing Notre Dame (who I also have no idea how good they are either) and Florida’s is based on preseason expectations and beating Tennessee and Alabama. I have to say Florida here just based on UF’s excellent run defense stopping Michael Hart. Without an effective Mike Hart, UM is a 7-5 team (see last year).
- LSU over Iowa: LSU wins in a blowout. The Tigers’ offense is more explosive than Ohio State’s, and the defense is about as good, so it’d probably be a bigger margin than OSU’s win last Saturday.
- Tennessee over Penn State: At this point, ranking the Big 10 teams is hard because they’ve all either beaten nobody, or lost a few games. I don’t care much though since it doesn’t matter much. Tennessee wins easily, and Erik Ainge would probably look like a Heisman candidate.
- Georgia over Wisconsin?: I’m grasping at straws here. The Georgia defense is good enough to win by itself practically. If Tereshinski is at QB, the Bulldog offense would be more than enough with that defense.
- Alabama over Purdue: If Alabama can put up more than 300 yards on Florida’s defense, what would it do to Purdue? Not to mention that Bama’s defense would completely shut down the Boilermakers. Purdue is frisky enough to steal this game under the right conditions, but the Tide would win 4 of 5.
- Arkansas over Michigan State: I’m going to assume pre-annual collapse MSU, because after it they can’t win a thing (see: Illinois 23 - MSU 20). Arkansas would probably cause that annual collapse. They managed to steal the game from Alabama thanks to Bama’s kicker, but they wouldn’t need anything that dramatic to beat the Spartans. Besides, Houston Nutt’s in a I’ve-gotta-save-my-job year again, and that means he beats anyone that’s within reasonable range of his team. That includes Sparty.
- South Carolina over Minnesota: The Gophers would rack up rushing yards aplenty, but that alone doesn’t win games. Steve Spurrier + Syvelle Newton + Sidney Rice does win games, however. South Carolina’s better than it showed in its first three games. SC has a tougher schedule than Kentucky does (Auburn instead of Ole Miss, for instance) but as long as they beat the Wildcats they’ll get 6 wins and a bowl.
- Kentucky over Northwestern: Kentucky actually has a pulse this year, and a pretty good quarterback in Andre Woodson too. They also are the 9th team in this conference with a legitimate shot at 6 wins and a bowl. Northwestern has lost to a I-AA team and has no legitimate shot at a bowl.
- Ole Miss over Illinois: It’s Ron Zook versus Ed Orgeron, the Cajun Ron Zook. I thought about giving it to the Illini because of the Michigan State win, but that was post-collapse Michigan State so it doesn’t count for as much. It does get them above Indiana though. Plus, Ole Miss actually looked somewhat passable against Georgia. At least the defense did.
- Vanderbilt over Indiana: Without Antwaan Randle El, Indiana is nothing. Vanderbilt isn’t much without Jay Cutler either, but Vandy only lost to Michigan 27-7, which is probably closer than Indiana’s loss to Michigan will be in a few weeks. It was nice to see someone from another conference finally get to feel the anger and frustration of the typical game versus Vandy, where you know you’re the better team by a lot, but you find yourself looking at the scoreboard and wondering why in God’s name are you only up by 6 in the third quarter. Classic Vanderbilt football.
That makes the SEC 10-1 against the Big 10 by my estimation. Some would argue Michigan over Florida, and that’s valid. Some might argue Penn State over Tennessee, and that’s really not. Plus, I could give a compelling argument for Auburn over Ohio State based on what they did to LSU. Going top to bottom like that, the only other teams that might have a chance at winning are Louisville, Texas, USC, and maybe West Virginia or Oregon.
That’s seven teams in the country (counting Ohio State and Michigan) who might win when you stack up the conferences. That’s why SEC teams go easy with the non-conference schedules. There could be nine teams with six wins or more. That’s why the SEC is the toughest conference in the country.
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Dave Revsine has posted his weekly numbers column, and there’s some interesting ones that pertain to Florida. First, Florida already has 35 plays of 20 or more yards this year. Last year? Just 45 the whole season. So much for a sputtering offense. Also, Florida and its next three opponents make up the top four teams in scoring defense in the country (another reason why this is a brutal stretch, and why the SEC is so tough). Finally, LSU’s starting defense has given up just 13 points all year, though with more than half - the one touchdown - coming at Auburn. This game Saturday has 13 - 10 written all over it if both defenses come ready to play.
