One More Reason the BCS is Bad for College Football

Playoff opponents use many arguments against a playoff. One is that a playoff is of no use because naming a champion is too dicey a proposition. Another is that it breaks with the tradition of the game. A third is that if college football really needed a playoff, wouldn’t it have collapsed by now?

Well, I’m not going to argue the playoff part. With 120 teams each playing 12 games against wildly different schedule strengths, it’s a stretch from a theoretical and mathematical standpoint to say you can pick a “true” champion with a couple more games at the end.

As to the other two points, they miss why college football is popular. It’s popular because people like football. Colleges play every other sport you can name, but none are as popular as football is because people like football.

The traditions, the rivalries, and everything else enhance the game on the field, but in the end, it’s the game on the field that matters. Case in point: the annual Florida/Florida State game used to be appointment TV for everyone nationally. ESPN College GameDay visited the game 5 times in 6 years from 1995 - 2000.

Thanks in part to Ron Zook but mostly to FSU’s decline, GameDay has visited the game just once since. At this point, even Gators are much more fired up about Georgia, a team they didn’t care so much about in the 1990s.

If you need another example, consider that the team with the most history and pageantry, Notre Dame, pulled just a 1.8 average rating on NBC this season.

It should go without saying that football is at its best when you have good teams playing good teams. College football’s popularity wasn’t built on the back of Iowa State versus Kansas.

It also goes without saying that great out of conference games don’t happen as often as we’d want them to during the regular season. Big money programs need home games to fund their empires and the current system doesn’t adequately reward the risk of playing more than one non-conference team with a pulse.

The post season does provide that reward. The games between good teams generate enough money to make it worthwhile to the power schools to play in them. There’s also more prestige on the line, which gives a bigger reward for the risk of playing them. Fans also win because they get to see more good football.

This is where the BCS comes in. Under the BCS, the best teams in college football can play a maximum of one post season game. A post season tournament may not solve many championship disputes, but it would provide more games with great matchups.

That’s what makes college football great - good teams playing good teams. The BCS prevents that from happening as often as it could, so that’s another reason why the BCS is bad for college football.

BCS Plus One Proposal Fails, but Why?

Unsurprisingly, there will be no plus one system added to the BCS for the 2010 season. It always was a non-issue since the Rose Bowl contract with ABC goes through 2014. Any big changes like a plus one system will have to come when all of the TV rights expire in the same year.

Beyond that though, the Big Ten and Pac 10 were never going to allow it to happen. Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney loves being the playoff villain. He has stated on the record that a playoff could be good for college football as a whole, but adds, “I don’t work for college football at large.” His goal is to advance the Big Ten brand, and he sees tradition, the Rose Bowl, and a TV network as the way to do that.

Pac 10 Commissioner Tom Hansen has also said that the Pac 10 would rather secede from the BCS than have a plus one system. The ACC, Big 12, Big East, and SEC were willing to discuss the matter at the BCS meetings this week, but the Big Ten and Pac 10 had no plans for giving it a fair chance. Only the SEC and ACC were fully committed to the plan.

I keep hearing the same arguments over and over about why there shouldn’t be a plus one system. I will now address them one by one.

A Plus One system will inevitably grow

Not necessarily. Major League Baseball, having had playoffs since 1903, kept a four team playoff up until 1994. The only reason it expanded was because of expansion of the league. It stands at 8 teams currently, and there are no plans for the foreseeable future to change that.

Compare that with the hallowed bowl system, which has now expanded to 34 in total. That means 68 teams, or about 57%, of the 120 Division I-A teams will be going bowling. In the two years that wins over I-AA teams have counted towards being bowl eligible, 73 and 71 teams have made the 6-6 threshold. That’s cutting it awfully close.

Also, thanks to 6-6 teams losing bowls, we now have bowl teams finishing under .500 for the year. Is that really what people want? And what if there aren’t 68 bowl eligible teams in a season?

The arrangement only encourages more I-A teams playing I-AA teams, which weakens the regular season. I thought that’s what we were preserving…

A playoff dilutes the regular season

No, extra-long regular seasons dilute a regular season. Let’s go back to baseball. When only 4 teams made the playoffs every year, did anyone care about May baseball games? Of course not. There were a million other ones leading up to October. I also hear about how March Madness killed the college basketball regular season. It didn’t; everyone playing 30+ games before March killed the college basketball regular season.

Before there was a national title game in college football and teams just played to get to bowls, college football had a great regular season. Once a national title game was established, it made it even better because the competition suddenly expanded beyond conference borders.

Somehow, these BCS proponents think that everyone competing for 4 spots instead of 2 will instantly kill the regular season. That it will make Florida and FSU fans suddenly get along because who needs a rivalry now that four teams have a shot at winning it all at the end of the year instead of two? That Sooners and Longhorns will do the same, or that a September match up of USC and Ohio State will be not be as exciting.

You know how much a difference there is between two teams and four playing for the national title at the end of the year? It’s 1.67% of all I-A teams, or 3% of all BCS conference teams. No, giving four teams a chance to win it all doesn’t devalue the regular season because the scarcity of regular season games will still be there, and an very small percentage of teams will actually be playing for the title.

A playoff devalues the Rose Bowl

Here’s a hint: when the Rose Bowl joined the BCS, it gave up all claims to tradition. The only thing that makes it special over the other BCS bowls anymore is that it’s older than them. That’s it and that’s all.

The final ship to sail in this argument shoved off when Texas beat USC in the 2005 Rose Bowl to win the national championship. It should have become clear right then and there that the Rose Bowl is a great site to hold a game, but it’s the meeting of two great teams that make the game great.

This year’s Rose Bowl just further illustrates the point. We had a Big Ten/Pac 10 meeting, and it was a horrible game. Ohio State’s performance against LSU indicated that had OSU met USC instead of Illinois playing the Trojans, it wouldn’t have been much different. Great games are made by great teams, not stadiums. What happens on the field is what matters, not what occurs on Colorado Boulevard.

Ratings and revenues are up; the BCS must be what fans want

People like college football. That is what people want. They will pay to watch it in person regardless of the postseason format. They will watch it on TV regardless of the postseason format.

Let me tell you a story. The iPod mini was once the best-selling iPod of all time. It was even the best-selling portable audio device in the world in its day. In September 2005, Apple made a bold move and replaced it with the iPod nano. It was a risk because of the enormous popularity and revenue stream the mini had. The nano ended up being even more popular, selling a million units in just 17 days.

In short, this argument is a non sequitur. Correlation does not equal causation, and the BCS format isn’t driving the rise in ratings and revenues. The popularity of football as a whole is.

A playoff would make football a two semester sport

With spring practice, football already is a two semester sport.

Ignoring that for a moment, I don’t see how a plus one makes the postseason any longer. The 1-4 and 2-3 games would happen on New Years, and the title game would happen a week later. That’s the same timing that we have with the current BCS bowl arrangement, so this one is nothing but hot air.

It kills the tradition of the bowls

Too late. By segmenting off the BCS games, we already have tiers in the postseason. Besides, once we got bowls in Shreveport, Detroit, and especially Toronto, they no longer were about giving teams a reward for a good season by getting to play a game in nice locale.

Besides, not one playoff proposal I’ve seen, Mike Slive’s included, has proposed killing off all of the bowl games in favor of keeping only a playoff. No one is suggesting that, and having a plus one system will not diminish the prestige of the Papajohns.com bowl. It never had any in the first place.

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I welcome any comments/discussions on the topic. If there are any other objections about a having a plus one system in college football, I’d love to hear them. It just infuriates me to no end to know that the people in charge of the system are getting rich off of fan dollars while not delivering what the fans want.

Congress and the BCS, Part 2

Part 1 here.

Three members of the House of Representatives – Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Georgia, and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho – have proposed a resolution that would require the Justice Department to investigate whether the BCS is an illegal restriction on trade. I’ve already looked at the financial side of that argument in part 1, and the gist of it is that it’s possible, but not probable, that they could win that part of their case.

Mike Simpson

If the question of money was the only issue that they’re bringing up, then there would be no need for this part 2. However, they’ve also included in the resolution a clause about the BCS unfairly restricting access to the title of “champion.” This resolution would make Congress officially in favor of a playoff for Division I-A college football.

Let me first say that you will not find a larger playoff proponent than me. Despite that, there are some problems with them including language about unfair restriction of the championship in their document.

Problem 1: There is no championship

The NCAA does not award a Division I-A football championship. The BCS system of determining one is set up and run by the conferences, not the NCAA. Plus, what really is a champion? I explored the topic back in December, and you’re welcome to read what I wrote. I will not rehash any of it, other than to say that defining what it means to be champion is more complex than you think it is.

Problem 2: Representative Abercrombie

Neil Abercrombie

I don’t know Mr. Abercrombie, but he clearly has no idea how college football works. Just witness this quote from the article:

“Who elected these NCAA people? Who are they to decide who competes for the championship?” Abercrombie said at a press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill, gripping a souvenir University of Hawaii football.

The NCAA is an association set up and run by its member schools, including the University of Hawaii, for the purpose of administering and regulating college sports. As I pointed out above, it does not have any hand in determining who plays for a championship in I-A football. The BCS determines that, and it’s a system agreed to by all of the conferences including the WAC, Hawaii’s conference.

He’s clearly just grandstanding here, and I hope for the resolution’s sake that he had no hand in writing it. There’s no quicker or more effective way to torpedo your case against something than lacking a fundamental understanding of how it works.

Problem 3: Determining the value of being “champion”

A study will need to be done to determine just how much schools benefit monetarily, beyond the bowl payout, and intangibly (in terms of prestige, exposure, goodwill, etc) by being named champion. That’s a Sisyphean task since the teams that generally win championships are the ones that already have prestige and move ungodly amounts of merchandise.

How do they plan on determining precisely what a title would mean for a team that’s not a traditional power? And will they account for the fact that being in a Big Six conference doesn’t guarantee wealth and prestige? Just ask Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, or UConn about that point.

Problem 4: The AP Poll

In the public view, being #1 in the AP Poll is just as legitimate as being the BCS champion. Not winning the BCS title in 2003 didn’t prevent USC from claiming the title of national champion and all the benefits that go with it. The BCS may control entry into the top bowl games, but it doesn’t have a monopoly on the ability to name a nationally recognized champion.

* * *

It’s a nice thought, but regulating championships is not the government’s business. That’s beyond its scope as defined by the Constitution. If the government wants to look into the BCS over financial concerns or the fact that state-run institutions are involved, then it makes sense. Regulating commerce is one of the roles the Constitution gives the government, as is the power to resolve disputes between states.

I want a playoff in Division I-A football as much as anyone, but it’s simply not the role of Congress, the Justice Department, or any other faction of the federal government to mandate that one happen.

Congress and the BCS, Part 1

By now, you’ve probably seen that three representatives – Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, Lynn Westmoreland, R-Georgia, and Mike Simpson, R-Idaho – are asking the Justice Department to investigate to see whether the BCS is illegal. The charge is that only the largest universities get to play in most of the largest bowl games, making the BCS an illegal restriction on trade.

Lynn Westmoreland.

It’s a tricky issue to tackle because the BCS, after all, is not an organization but rather a selection system managed by the 11 Division I-A conference commissioners plus the Notre Dame athletics director. It is not a legal entity, unlike the NCAA or the conferences. The issue is made more complicated by the fact that the bowls are separate entities from the NCAA.

Since the payout for each of the five BCS bowls is the same, the only financial argument that can be made is about the selection process for the games as a whole. Arguing that the system is too restrictive against the smaller schools is somewhat of a troublesome argument nowadays, with Utah in 2004, Boise State in 2006, and Hawaii in 2007 making appearances in BCS games. Plus, a new system goes into effect this season that requires conferences to earn their auto bids via performance over a running 4 year period, and paves the way for a non-Big Six conference to earn an automatic bid.

The only window of opportunity I can see here is the fact that all of the Big Six conferences except the Big East have contracts with the bowl games, and the auto bid earning process mentioned above cannot override them. Those conferences will always get at least one team into the games no matter what, and that violates the principle of merit-based access to the system. Those contracts with the bowls are the restrictive part, and show that the system is a lot like the US under the Articles of Confederation where the collective goal is overridden by individual interests.

Your tax dollars at, ahem, “work.”

To get change, the congressmen would have to argue that that the bowls lost the right to make those contracts when they entered the BCS agreement. They will need to show that by banding together, the bowls have gone above and beyond their stated purpose of driving tourism for their local communities. That could be doable, since the four BCS sites are in completely separate locations and I don’t believe the local communities get a larger cut of the TV revenue that they’d get if the bowls were completely separate. The next step is showing that all Division I-A schools have a right to a fair chance at participating, which again could be doable since the NCAA regulates member schools’ participation in bowl games. That official recognition of the bowls by the NCAA could imply that point.

All I can see Congress saying (if it decides the current BCS is unfair) is that the conferences will have to pick either the BCS with no conference-to-bowl contracts, or no more pooling of the prize money and going back to the old ways of every bowl being completely independent. Should that come to pass, it would mark the end of the BCS because I truly believe the Big Ten, Pac 10, and Rose Bowl would bail on any system that doesn’t keep the three of them contractually together.

Well, that would be that, except that Abercrombie, Westmoreland, and Simpson used the C word – championship.

Coaches’ Contracts: Les Miles

The next stop on the SEC coach contract tour is Baton Rouge for Les Miles’ legally binding document with LSU.

The first thing you find out, and it’s in bold and all caps too, is that LSU’s full name is “Lousiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College.” That’s LSUA&MC for those of you keeping score at home. So does the contract use Leslie Edwin Miles’s full name? Nope, he’s just Les Miles.

As with Nick Saban at Alabama, Miles had to initial every page of his contract, including the one with everyone’s signatures. The contract also has the odd convention of writing out numerical values and putting the value as expressed by numbers in parenthesis after. Money values are written out as if it was a check. See the selected quotes below for an example.

His bonuses are pretty standard – for bowl games, winning the SEC West, winning the entire SEC, and appearing in the BCS national championship game. He does not get any extra money over the $175,000 for appearing in the BCS title game, but you’d think a coach wouldn’t need extra motivation to want to win it.

This one’s for you guys, Trindon. I’m all out of performance bonuses.

On top of those, though, he gets relative pay adjustments. If he wins 10 games, his total pay must be at least the 5^th highest in the SEC, if he wins the conference his total pay must be at least the third highest in the SEC, and if he wins the national title his total compensation for the year must be at least the third highest in all of Division I. This is notable because the USA Today shows him as having the sixth-highest total pay in the conference, not counting those relative pay kickers.

The rest of the contract is mostly bland legal stuff regarding conduct, buyouts, and everything else you’d expect in a contract. Attached after the contract, though, is a letter to Miles dated December 5, 2006 from former LSU Chancellor (and former NASA administrator) Sean O’Keefe announcing that the school would extend his contract. It concludes with:

“Congratulations on another successful season! Geaux Tigers!”

Only at LSU.

Selected Quotes:

“The UNIVERSITY agrees to pay COACH an annual salary of Three Hundred Thousand and No/00 ($300,000.00) Dollars, payable in twelve (12) equal monthly installments.”

This is an example of the odd phrasing of numerical values.

“COACH further acknowledges that he has no expectation of the granting of tenure by UNIVERSITY.”

I can’t recall a mention of tenure by other contracts. It makes sense, of course, not to give a coach tenure because then it would be impossible to fire him.

“Within ten (10) days of the expiration or termination of this agreement… COACH shall return to the UNIVERSITY all credit cards and keys issued to him by UNIVERSITY.”

Do coaches usually get to keep credit cards and keys? This is the kind of frivolous contract-padding that makes me think the lawyers got paid by the word. The document already established that anything LSU gives to him as a part of his job must be returned, so why do credit cards and keys warrant their own sentence?

Keys? Wait, where did I put my keys? Crap, someone frisk Perrilloux.

Playoff Irony

From UF President Bernie Machen and Urban Meyer last year to UGA President Michael Adams this year, the most vocal proponents of having a playoff in college football have come from the SEC. I find that quite ironic.

You see, back in 2004 Auburn was shut out of the national championship game in favor of USC and Oklahoma. OU had just won a national championship in 2000 and had been to the title game the previous year, and Oklahoma had former Heisman Trophy winner Jason White at quarterback. USC won the AP national title the previous year and had then-current Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart. In the court of public opinion, and in the AP and Coaches’ opinion polls, those were the two best teams. Tough luck, Auburn.

Once that happened, SEC fans unleashed a public relations onslaught. The only way to prevent one of their own from getting shafted again was to indoctrinate everyone with the perception that the SEC is the best conference in the country (which was debatable then, but is not now). Once the country believes that 11 wins in the SEC are worth more than 11 wins from anywhere else, there shouldn’t be any more SEC teams left out in the cold.

In a bit of providence, this was also around the time that the SEC got a whole lot tougher. Urban Meyer and Les Miles came in, Steve Spurrier and David Cutcliffe came back, and eventually even Nick Saban would come back into the fold. Rich Brooks would get Kentucky turned around, Bobby Johnson would get Vanderbilt turned into a decent team, and Sylvester Croom began his rebuilding job that culminated in a bowl win this year. Now, you have Bobby Petrino finally coming to the conference, something he’s been trying to do for years. So while the braggadocio of the SEC fans waxed, the conference itself became a lot more difficult of a place to play.

Now, it’s mission accomplished. The SEC is perceived to be the best conference in the country, and 11 wins in it actually do count more than 11 wins elsewhere. You can see that through the selections of Florida over Michigan last year and LSU over USC, Oklahoma, and others this year for the BCS championship game. It basically guarantees that if the SEC champ finishes undefeated or with one loss, that team will make the championship game (provided that it doesn’t finish with one loss while two other BCS conference champs go undefeated, though not necessarily). The SEC beat the system and won the poll game.

That’s the irony. No conference is set up nearly as well to win in the current system than the SEC is. Single teams from other conferences (USC, Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, etc) have national power auras to them under the right circumstances, but no other conference can produce a champion that will automatically be seen as one of the nation’s top two or three teams. That’s why it’s ironic, that the conference that is so uniquely suited to winning under the current system would be the loudest complainers to see it overthrown.

Did the BCS Get it Right? Part II

Yesterday, I examined whether in hindsight the BCS got the national championship game participants right. As I have pointed out in the past though, that’s only half of the BCS’s mission:

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is a five-game arrangement for post-season college football that is designed to match the two top-rated teams in a national championship game and to create exciting and competitive matchups between eight other highly regarded teams in four other games.

So, did it get the second half correct?

The Sugar Bowl

Participants: 10-2 Georgia vs. 12-0 Hawaii

Result: Georgia 41 - Hawaii 10

This game sure set the tone for the 2008 rendition of the BCS. It was unwatchable unless you are a Dawg or you just liked seeing Hawaii get its comeuppance for actually thinking it belonged in the BCS and then daring to be sanctimonious about it. I feared for Colt Brennan’s life at times, and this game spooked June Jones so much that he actually willingly took the job at SMU.

The Rose Bowl

Participants: 9-3 Illinois vs. 10-2 USC

Result: USC 49 - Illinois 17

This game had the largest margin, and honestly USC could have made it even bigger if it wanted to. Illinois was overmatched from the start, and the Trojans just kept pouring it on as the Illini kept giving the ball away. From everything I’ve read, the nation wanted to see Georgia in this game, but that was kept from happening by two main things: 1) the BCS rules made it so the Sugar would’ve had to give permission to the Rose to take UGA, which it did not, and 2) the Rose Bowl officials think it’s 1960 and believe that there’s nothing better than a Big Ten/Pac 10 matchup.

Illinois had to be in a game somewhere since it finished in the top 14 and was the only eligible team left after you accounted for Hawaii’s auto bid and Georgia and Kansas’ selections. However, it should have been in a game versus someone around its talent level such as Hawaii, Kansas, or Virginia Tech. Note: it’s pretty sad if definite tiers can be seen within the BCS, but that’s the way it goes with the BCS.

The Fiesta Bowl

Participants: 10-2 West Virginia vs. 10-2 Oklahoma

Result: West Virginia 48 - Oklahoma 28

This game was probably not as close as the score indicates, though not nearly to the same degree as the Rose Bowl. The conventional wisdom said that OU had the better talent and was on a roll, as opposed to the poor old Mountaineers who had inexplicably lost to Pitt, keeping them out of the title game, and had lost head coach Rich Rodriguez. Instead, WVU rolled to a comfortable victory, and Bob Stoops’ bowl record now suddenly looks a lot like Larry Coker’s does.

The Orange Bowl

Participants: 10-2 Virginia Tech vs. 11-1 Kansas

Result: Kansas 24 - Virginia Tech 21

This one was the only actual close game, but it was the bad kind of close. Poor offensive execution by both sides hamstrung progress for these two defensive-minded teams, and yet each scored multiple touchdowns. This game proved that Kansas was good but not overwhelmingly so, and that VT (and by proxy, the ACC) probably just was not that good this year. That is all I have to say about the Orange Bowl.

The BCS National Championship Game

Participants: 11-2 LSU vs. 11-1 Ohio State

Result: LSU 38 - Ohio State 24

Ohio State got a garbage time TD late against an LSU prevent defense to keep within three scores, though the game really wasn’t that close after the first quarter. Again the SEC champion embarrassed Big Ten champ OSU in the biggest game of the year, turning the BCS’s experiment of having a special 5th game for the championship into a blowout-fest.

This game technically doesn’t fall under the second part of the BCS mandate, but the fact that it ended up a one-sided blowout reinforces the fact that the first part was botched.

Conclusion

So did the BCS fulfill its mission of creating exciting and competitive matches in the non-championship games? Absolutely not. Only one game (Orange Bowl) was competitive, and none were terribly exciting. As a showcase for the sport, the BCS gets a rating of “EPIC FAIL” for the 2008 bowl season.

Did the BCS Get it Right?

Now that LSU has defeated Ohio State for the BCS title, did the system set up the right championship game? I’ll do a quick rundown of the 1-loss and major conference 2-loss teams then make my case. After all, everything’s clearer with 20-20 hindsight. Teams are listed in alphabetical order, and the “Best Wins” category lists wins over .500 or better teams from major conferences (and Hawaii, if applicable, since the Warriors made a BCS game and had only one loss).

1 Loss Teams

Hawaii Warriors

Best Wins: Boise State, Fresno State

Loss: Georgia, 41-10

No wins over a major conference foe besides the Pac 10’s doormat, Washington. I feared for Colt Brennan’s life in the Sugar Bowl. No way, no how. I’m calling this one right now.

Kansas Jayhawks

Best Wins: Oklahoma State, Virginia Tech

Loss: Missouri, 36-28

While losing only once (and only by 8 points) is impressive. However, beating a perpetually suspect Virginia Tech team and a 7-6 Oklahoma State team is not, so Kansas is not helping itself much with the schedule.

2 Loss Teams

Georgia Bulldogs

Best Wins: Auburn, Florida, Georgia Tech, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oklahoma State

Losses: South Carolina, 16-12; Tennessee 35-14

The team was lost a listless until injuries forced Mark Richt to play Knowshown Moreno as a feature back. Uninspired play also forced Richt to pick a new motivational gimmick each week starting with the Florida game, all of which worked. This team was playing some of the best football in the country at the end of the year, but you must consider the season as a whole.

LSU Tigers

Best Wins: Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State, Ohio State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia Tech

Losses: Kentucky, 43-37 (3OT); Arkansas, 50-48 (3OT)

It’s hard to accept a national champion who had two losses and gave up 50 points in a game during the season. Still, no one had a better array of wins, and as LSU fans will be quick to point out, the Tigers were undefeated in regulation and won the system everyone agreed upon.

Missouri Tigers

Best Wins: Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech

Losses: Oklahoma, 41-31; Oklahoma, 38-17

Missouri only lost to one team all year, except that it did so on two separate occasions. The Tigers did have wins over BCS participant Illinois and Arkansas, a team that beat LSU.

Ohio State Buckeyes

Best Wins: Michigan, Michigan State, Penn State, Purdue, Wisconsin

Losses: Illinois, 28-21; LSU, 38-24

Ohio State had the #1 rated defense in the regular season and was one of the most consistent teams all year. It did however play in the Big Ten, which dropped a stink bomb in bowl season and looks awful now. Plus, Illinois was thrashed by USC and the final score of the LSU game was closer than it should have been.

USC Trojans

Best Wins: Arizona State, Illinois, Oregon State

Losses: Stanford, 24-23; Oregon, 24-17

The Arizona State and Illinois wins were certainly impressive. However, it took until November 3 for the Trojans to beat a team that would finish above .500 for the year. The Stanford loss was unimaginably bad, and though USC had it’s backup QB playing the game, so did the Cardinal. Oregon with a healthy Dennis Dixon was probably the best team all year, and USC lost by just a touchdown.

West Virginia

Best Wins: Cincinnati, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Rutgers, UConn

Losses: USF, 21-13; Pittsburgh, 13-9

The Fiesta Bowl win was a huge statement, the Miss State win was nearly as big as LSU’s, and the UConn win was overwhelming. Unfortunately for the Mountaineers, the Pitt loss was nearly as bad as USC’s loss to Stanford, and the team couldn’t get anything going against USF. In its defense, WVU lost Pat White for large stretched during the two losses.

As a side note, Pitt’s 13-9 win over WVU that sent LSU to the championship game was the same score as the UCLA win over USC last year that sent Florida to the championship game.

Conclusion

Who are the top two teams?

Hawaii is eliminated, period.

Kansas had just two wins over teams that finished above .500 for the year. You’re a nice story, Jayhawks, but you’re also eliminated.

USC, you only had 3 wins over above-.500 teams, and you still lost to Stanford. Total body of work counts, so you’re eliminated.

Ohio State had only 5 wins over winning teams, but it also played a pillow-soft non conference schedule and the Big Ten was deplorable this year.

West Virginia had also 5 wins over winning teams, but it was the weakest set of wins out of the teams with 5. WVU, you’re eliminated.

We’re now down to Georgia, LSU, and Missouri. LSU does belong in the top two because it had seven wins over .500 or above opponents and wins over two other BCS conference champions (ACC, Big Ten). Between Missouri and Georgia, the Bulldogs had more wins over teams .500 or better and beat a team (UK) that beat LSU. But, Missouri’s losses were better and the Tigers played just as well as UGA did in each’s bowl game.

For the moment, I have to pick the team with more quality wins, so I go with Georgia. That leaves an LSU/Georgia game. It might make people from the Midwest or West unhappy, but honestly those two deserved it more.

So no, the BCS didn’t get it right.

Welcome to the Big Leagues, Colt

Last night’s Sugar Bowl was immensely satisfying. I have been sick and tired of the Colt Brennan hype machine since, oh, about last year’s bowl season. It got even worse when Hawaii plundered the bakery that is the WAC and somehow played an even worse non-conference schedule to finish the season undefeated. I didn’t want to see him get injured (although Georgia’s defense appeared to be trying to accomplish just that with as many fearsome hits as it delivered), but to see him humbled on the national stage was great, and possibly even good for him as he heads into draft workouts.

I found an article at Foxsports.com with some quotes of his, and I’d like to share them with you now:

• “When you play against a team like this, you can’t miss a beat. We didn’t do that.”

No joke, Colt. When your whole team has 4 guys who might in a dream scenario play in the NFL, you have to absolutely perfect because every mistake becomes a sack, turnover, or touchdown for the other team.

• “We knew coming in this was probably the best defense we’d ever faced. We really wanted to do something special here tonight, but we just couldn’t get any momentum going. We have a lot of drives that didn’t go anywhere. It wasn’t so much a question of X’s and O’s. They just won the battles all night.”

Perhaps, but your X’s and O’s guru on the sidelines also had a hard time not calling slow-developing pass plays despite the fact you became intimately familiar with the inner workings of the “Sportexe Momentum 41” playing surface of the Superdome.

• “Everybody knows the SEC is the fastest league in the country. We just couldn’t simulate that in practice with our scout team.”

Self-explanatory. It’s similar to Billy Donovan’s comments about Marresse Speights and Alex Tyus - they’re suffering in practice because there’s no one else on the team like them to hone their skills against. Okay, back to football.

• “We had never played in this type of element before. We tried as hard as we could to keep everything the same as we have all season long, but it just seemed like we weren’t used to the venue as big the Super Dome. Georgia plays in this kind of environment in the SEC every week all season.”

If anyone has questioned whether playing on big stages every week helps teams of the major conferences, here’s your proof that it does make a difference. Hawaii started 1st and 20 on its opening drive due to penalties, and it was all downhill from there. Before you bring up Boise State last year, remember that the Broncos had a similar harrowing experience at the hands of Georgia in Sanford Stadium in 2006, and BSU regularly plays at Pac 10 venues.

• “We have done a good job most of the year protecting Colt,” [Head Coach June] Jones said. “But they had eight sacks and a couple of times we didn’t touch anybody. They just blew in and whacked him.”

Well said, June. That about sums up the 2008 Sugar Bowl.

If last year’s Fiesta Bowl set up this season’s craziness from week to week, this year’s Sugar Bowl most likely sets up next year as a season of juggernauts. Florida, Georgia, and maybe LSU in the SEC, Ohio State in the Big Ten, Oklahoma, Missouri, and maybe Texas in the Big 12, and USC in the Pac 10 all appear set to dominate next season.

West Virginia in the Big East would have counted if Rich Rodriguez had stayed, and then Pat White and Steve Slaton would have stayed as well. If WVU hires former Rodriguez assistant and spread option fan Butch Jones away from Central Michigan, and Jones can convince White and Slaton to stay, they might yet have a chance. After all, Jones molded Dan LeFevour into only the second guy to throw for 3,000 yards and rush for 1,000 yards in a season, Vince Young being the first.

Virginia Tech will likely be the titan of the ACC, but the rest of that conference save Boston College is so bad, it’d be difficult to tell if the Hokies are really that good. BC won’t qualify as a juggernaut because it wasn’t one this year and is losing its senior starting QB Matt Ryan. No one else in the conference will clock in as better than “surprisingly good.”

Defining a “National Champion”

The first part to defining a “national champion” is easy: national refers to this nation, the USA, and therefore only US schools are eligible. Or, at least until the NCAA admits Canadian schools. But for the moment, it’s about US universities only.

The second part is tricky, because “champion” can be defined in several different ways. Here are a few I could find:

• Dictionary.com: “anything that takes first place in competition”
• Wikipedia: “one who has repeatedly come out first among contestants in challenges (especially the winner of a tournament or other competition) or other test”
• Popular Use: The best team of a particular sports league in a given year, as in, “The Bears were the 1985 NFL Champions.”

By Dictionary.com’s definition, every game has a champion because one team takes first place in the game while another takes a loss. Wikipedia’s definition is more exclusive since it requires repeated first place finishes, so that eliminates 1-loss FIU, for instance, from being a champion. However, while it’s not specific on how many first place finishes define a champion, it singles out tournament winners especially as being champions. The popular use definition is the most specific, and it is commonly the one used when talking about national champions for college football.

How Many National Champions?

The standard assumption is that there can’t be more than one national champion, which is why people say things like “In 2003, there was a split national title” rather than “In 2003, there were two national champions.”

It’s all semantics, but it’s an important distinction. The NCAA’s website provides “a year-by-year history of Division I-A football national champions as determined by the BCS championship game and… polling organizations.” Since the NCAA maintains that I-A football “do[es] not participate in the NCAA Division I Football Championship,” it doesn’t care how many champions are named every year.

The BCS does care about the number of champions however, stating that it “was established to determine the national champion for college football,” (emphasis mine), not a champion for college football. This fact proves that at the very least the 6 BCS auto-bid conferences and their members, Notre Dame, and the 4 BCS bowls care about having one and only one champion as those were the institutions that created the BCS.

Now, some like Kyle T. King of Dawg Sports argue that college football doesn’t necessarily need a champion, and that’s fine. However, I’ll eat my hat (and it’s pretty nasty; ask my girlfriend) if like-minded people aren’t few and far between. Way too many people invest way too much time in determining/arguing over who is the best team for many people to be of the belief that naming a champion is superfluous. Plus, universities, investors, and advertisers have invested billions of dollars in the BCS, a construct designed to determine one and only one champion. I will not spend any more time on the concept of college football not needing a champion because it’s a fringe view at best.

The existence of the BCS to determine a champion also proves that the powers that be of college football believe that the regular season is not enough to determine a champion. Due to imbalanced scheduling and differing strengths of conferences, I wholeheartedly agree. The regular season alone is insufficient for choosing a champion.

Determining Who Is Best

Does a champion by definition indicate the best team? Go back to the definitions for a sec, I’ll wait…

Notice how only the popular use definition includes the requirement of a team being “best?” All that is required by the established definitions is first place finishes, not being the best.

Some people define the “best” as having won the most games in the most impressive fashion. Other define the best team as having the best group of players. When you get down to it though, there’s a dizzying array of shades of gray when it comes to determining the best team over the course of a season.

What do you do with Oregon? The Ducks looked like world beaters with Dennis Dixon at quarterback, but as soon as he went down, the team lost it’s heart and went into the tank on both sides of the ball. Which is the real Oregon? And when you’re picking who’s best, will you consider the Ducks with Dixon and the Ducks without Dixon to be the same team when they clearly were not?

What do you do with Hawaii? No one finished first in games more often than the Warriors did. Perhaps the games were not as challenging as others’ games, but no team fits the “champion” definition more than Hawaii does.

What do you do with Georgia? Once Mark Richt was forced by injury to quit being stubborn and play Knowshown Moreno, the Bulldogs became one of the better offensive teams in the country. Around the same time, Richt loosened up and changed his attitude and as a result the defense played better too. Which Georgia team do you count when you’re picking who’s best, the Moreno-less, fire-less team that lost to South Carolina and was blown out by Tennessee, or the team that had Moreno playing and had proper motivation that finished the season strong? Or do you count them as the same team when they clearly were not?

How about the Boston College at Virginia Tech game? For 57 minutes, VT dominated and ended up leading 10-0 over a clearly overmatched BC team. Then, for some inexplicable reason, VT switched to a prevent defense that allowed Matt Ryan to throw two TD passes to give BC a 14-10 victory. Now, which team was better? Having watched most of the game, I can tell you that VT was the better team that day, with the Hokies playing better than the Eagles for 57 of the 60 minutes. However, BC’s 3 good minutes allowed it to finish in first place for the contest. Was the best team the champion? Simply put, no.

The point is, it’s nearly impossible to choose which team is best in a season because of how many variables there are involved. Injuries and differences in schedule strength especially make comparison difficult, not to mention strange outcomes like the BC-VT game that hide what’s really going on. Picking who’s “best” is a fool’s errand.

What’s all this mean?

If picking one “best” team is a fool’s errand, what should picking the two “best” teams for a national championship game be called? Well, I’ll leave that as an exercise for you, dear reader. Some people would say that picking the two best teams is called the BCS, but actually, it’s not.

You see, the BCS says in reference to all 5 of its games that it “has become a showcase for the sport, matching the best teams at the end of the season.” That statement is a tacit confession that it can’t determine the best team, only the best teams. Yeah, it’s semantics like before, but again, this is important.

College football’s current post season is not about finding the best team, only determining a champion. Any proposed playoff system would do the same exact same thing - determine a champion, not the best team - because it’s impossible to even precisely define what makes a team best.

And, don’t forget, a post season is required for determining a champion for the reasons stated prior, so judging teams solely on the regular season isn’t enough.

The more precise definition of “champion” requires repeatedly coming up first, especially in a tournament. Because of that fact, it stands to reason that a tournament, which requires repeated first place finishes, is a better champion-finding system than a one-shot national championship game it since that requires only one first place finish. That’s really all there is to it.