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 Webmaestro's Playoff ProposalI used to be a big proponent of a playoff at Division I-A, but now I am not so sure. Having polled the audience of the SJS College Football Extravaganza on this topic before, I know that our group is predominantly in favor of a playoff. So hear me out. First, a little history. A couple of years ago, I dreamed up an elaborate playoff proposal. The object of my system was to completely remove any subjectivity from the proceedings. Most playoff proposals require some sort of selection committee to determine at large slots, as in the NCAA basketball tournament. These proposals may or may not offer a number of guaranteed slots to conference champions. I liked the idea that conference champions would get an automatic bid (because there is no subjectivity there), but I didn't like the idea that some conferences would get the bids and some wouldn't. Therein lies subjectivity: which conferences are deserving, and with realignment and the normal rise and fall of programs, how do you know that deserving and undeserving conferences will always remain so? For example, the BCS gives automatic bids to certain conferences, but the Big East has frequently been criticised for providing uninspiring conference champions. This season, the Pac Ten, likely on everyone's list of automatic bid-eligible conferences, could provide a 7-4 team for the Rose Bowl (if Stanford loses to Notre Dame). No conference is immune. So, to get rid of all subjectivity, I felt, every conference's champion should be eligible; second, there should be no at large slots. Like in professional sports, the rules for admission into a playoff are clearly established.
Thus I created my hypothetical boondoggle. Eight conference champions would enter the playoffs, so there had to be only eight conferences. One way to do that would be to merge some conferences, rearrange some to provide tighter geographic and competitive groups of schools, and you'd end up with 8 12-team super conferences. The leftover teams would be relegated to Division I-AA. The superconferences would all have a divisional structure and all have conference championship games, giving you a de facto 16-team playoff tournament. The first round would be the conference championship game ala the conference championship games of the SEC, MAC, and Big Twelve. There was no subjectivity. Win your conference, you get in. Sure, some conferences will provide better teams than others, but those teams would be eliminated early and you'd finish with two survivors for an NCAA Super Bowl. Now there are a lot of practical problems with that set up. One is that about 20 schools would have to agree to be kicked out of I-A. A second is the conferences themselves, essentially independent entities with their own TV deals, would have to agree to a certain amount of shuffling. And don't even mention Notre Dame. Third, with 4 weeks of playoff football involving the 16 best teams in the land, there would be about as much interest in the lesser bowl games as there is in the NIT. But it's a hypothetical system, so let's ignore those practical problems. I thought about the ramifications of my system, and one thing struck me immediately. How do you determine divisional champions? By in-conference record. Most conferences play an 8-game conference schedule, leaving three extra games. Who are those games against? Non-conference opponents, sometimes in-state rivals, sometimes the most anticipated games of the year. My system renders those games perfectly meaningless. The title implications of Florida-Florida State? Nonexistant. The fanfare surrounding this year's Miami-Ohio State? Not necessary. These games would have as much meaning as the Baltimore Orioles vs. Cuba, or the Florida Gators basketball team against Athletes in Action. So my system killed the best part of college football! Nothing I could think of would save it. Any way I tinkered with it, any way I tried to empasize non-conference games, ruined the objective system I had created. I ditched the whole thing. Why have I set up this straw man? Just to knock it down? No. Almost all playoff systems fall into this trap. They de-emphasize the big games. If the NCAA had an 8-team playoff, the Florida-Florida State loser would have made it virtually every year. The Michigan-Ohio State loser makes it many years. I don't want a playoff system that allows an 8-3 or 9-2 team a chance to make the playoffs. I don't want a system that allows a conference-championship loser to make the playoffs. Everything is downgraded. Playoffs are satisfying when they confirm what we already know-- like when the Dallas Stars finished with the best record in the NHL last year and went on to win the Stanley Cup, but they are perplexing and infuriating when they do not-- does anyone really believe that the New York Knicks were one of the two best teams in the NBA last season? Does anyone (besides me) believe that the Minnesota Twins were the best team in baseball in 1987 having won just 88 games in the regular season? Therein lies one of the biggest falacies of a playoff: that it produces an unequivocal national champion. Hardly. I just produces a playoff champion. It ignores a team that might go 11-0 during the season in favor of a team that finishes 3-0 in its last three games. It seems like you spend 3 months of grueling football, throw it out the window, and just consider a 3 week period of time to determine your champion. What if Duke had lost the ACC tournament last year to say, Georgia Tech. Would anyone in their right mind call Tech ACC Champion? My proposalThe upshot of all of this is we need to preserve the meaning of the regular season. I don't cry for teams like Florida that may finish 10-2 but might make an 8-team playoff. They had their chance, why build in a mulligan? I do cry for a team like Marshall or Tulane of 1998, who do all they can possibly do but end up with no possibility of a national championship. I also cringe at situations like 1996 (Florida, Ohio State) and 1993 (Florida State, Notre Dame) where two teams with identical records are subject to subjective analysis as to who should be national champion. The BCS has done a good job of matching the two best teams so far, but the prospect of wanting to see one more game played (Florida vs. Ohio State, Florida State vs. Notre Dame) is certainly conceivable. I therefore propose a 4-team playoff. In addition to the reasons noted above about preserving the regular season, I think it has the advantages of being over in two weeks, opertaing within the BCS structure already in place, and maintaining the current bowl system. The first round would be played in 2 of the 4 BCS bowls, and all the other bowls could remain with their current arrangements. The final game would be played at a rotating venue like the Super Bowl is currently done. The four teams would be selected with the following criteria:
If this system were in place and the rest of this season plays out in its most likely scenario, the BCS games would look like this: Rose Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Stanford A week later, the winner of FSU vs. Marshall would play the winner of Virginia Tech vs. Nebraska in some new location. Notice that Marshall gets its just shot at the title, and Nebraska and Virginia Tech settle the issue of who is number 2 and who is number 3 on the field. For the most part, the integrity of the regular season was not compromised. The satellite bowl games remain interesting. The season is only extended one week, and only for two schools. I think it is a fair compromise. |
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