Last week, I debuted this season’s “what if” college football playoff bracket, and there was one serious flaw — Boise State was left out of the playoff despite being ranked ahead of Oregon and having a head-to-head win against the Ducks. This week, I’ll remedy that.
Here are my assumptions:
1. The six BCS-conference champs get an automatic bid unless they are ranked outside the top 15. There would need to be some sort of ranking system used. For now, we will use the BCS.
2. If a conference champ is ranked lower than #15 in the rankings, they give up their automatic bid and it becomes an at-large bid. (This rule is to ensure that the regular season keeps its meaning and only the elite teams make the playoffs.)
3. Seeds and at-large bids are distributed based on the current BCS standings. Certainly, these rankings need to be tweaked to place more of an emphasis on head-to-head matchups, but they are fine for now. If an at-large team has a better BCS ranking than a conference champion, they will get a higher seed.
4. There will be three rounds of playoffs. The first round will be held at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team. The semifinals and the final will rotate amongst the four BCS cities (Miami, Pasadena, Tempe and New Orleans), so that those cities don’t lose the revenue from the bowl games.
I’m adding a fifth assumption, the “I Drink Your Milkshake” Rule. Last week, Boise State was left out of this playoff despite having a head-to-head win against Oregon and being ranked ahead of the Ducks. So, there is one more caveat for the conference champions: If they are ranked behind a non-BCS school, and have a head-to-head loss to that team, then they give up their playoff bid to that team. I drink your milkshake!
How does this affect our bracket? Let’s take a look…
Last year, I proposed an eight-team playoff system for college football that would take the place of the BCS. Here are my assumptions:
1. The six BCS-conference champs get an automatic bid unless they are ranked outside the top 15. There would need to be some sort of ranking system used. For now, we will use the BCS.
2. If a conference champ is ranked lower than #15 in the rankings, they give up their automatic bid and it becomes an at-large bid. (This rule is to ensure that the regular season keeps its meaning and only the elite teams make the playoffs.)
3. Seeds and at-large bids are distributed based on the current BCS standings. Certainly, these rankings need to be tweaked to place more of an emphasis on head-to-head matchups, but they are fine for now. If an at-large team has a better BCS ranking than a conference champion, they will get a higher seed.
4. There will be three rounds of playoffs. The first round will be held at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team. The semifinals and the final will rotate amongst the four BCS cities (Miami, Pasadena, Tempe and New Orleans), so that those cities don’t lose the revenue from the bowl games.
So, at this point in the season, what would a playoff look like?
Remember Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas? He’s the congressman who wants to see college football adopt a playoff system and who compared the BCS to communism.
Barton is making headlines again as he plans to investigate testimony from Alamo Bowl executive director Derrick Fox made at this month’s BCS subcommittee hearing in which Fox claimed that millions of dollars are donated to local charities thanks to the revenue generated by bowl games.
Fox, while representing all 34 bowl games during his appearance on Capitol Hill on May 1, claimed in his argument against a playoff that “almost all the postseason bowl games are put on by charitable groups” and “local charities receive tens of millions of dollars every year.”
In fact, 10 bowl games are privately owned and one is run by a branch of a local government. The remaining 23 games enjoy tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service, but combined to give just $3.2 million to local charities on $186.3 million in revenue according to their most recent federal tax records and interviews with individual bowl executives.
“That doesn’t seem like something that’s really geared toward giving to charity, does it?” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) after being presented with Yahoo! Sports’ findings.
“It’s perjury if it’s knowingly said,” Barton said of the sworn testimony, which he called “misleading.” “It’s also contempt of Congress. You’ve got to give [him] some sort of due process, but ultimately the remedy is to hold [him] in contempt of Congress on the House floor or send it to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution of perjury under oath.”
Barton, the ranking Republican on the subcommittee and a playoff proponent, did caution that in today’s political climate there is no certainty that charges of perjury or contempt would be filed even if the investigation found wrongdoing.
Fox said in a written statement the “tens of millions of dollars” testimony was “a good faith estimate based on information initially supplied by the FBA [Football Bowl Association].”
Yet Bruce Binkowski of the FBA said the organization doesn’t compile such figures and in literature doesn’t assign a dollar amount to the bowls’ charitable donations because “we just don’t know.”
As Barton stated, perjury charges may never come in light of Fox’s statements, but it is interesting that the main argument made for keeping the current non-playoff system in place is an outright lie. If you read the entire article, it notes that Fox and ACC commissioner and BCS coordinator John Swofford stated several times during the subcommittee hearing that donations to local charities and economic impact on host cities are the two main reasons of why bowl games must be saved at all costs. Yet there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the local charities receive “tens of millions of dollars every year” from the BCS, so either Fox and Swofford fabricated those statements or they flat out lied in effort to keep the current college football format in place.
If the BCS did generate millions of dollars for charities every year, then a case could truly be made that college football is better off without a playoff system. (Although if bowl games generated money for charities, I don’t see why a playoff system couldn’t.) But again, there isn’t any evidence that that is indeed the case and therefore Fox and Swofford have some explaining to do.
Hopefully this is just the start of the BCS’ unraveling.
Depending on the poll, 85%-90% of football fans would like to see some sort of a playoff. For now, we’re stuck with the BCS, which gave us Florida and Oklahoma in the title game. The problem is, now that the bowls are finished, there are three other teams (not including Florida) that have a legitimate argument that they are the #1 team in the country. Utah finished the season undefeated and beat two teams that are ranked (or will be ranked) in the top 10. USC beat up Penn State and looked great doing it. And Texas put away a feisty Ohio State team in the Fiesta Bowl…oh, and they beat Oklahoma as well. Or is the #1 team Florida, who only looked so-so in their win over the Sooners?
Regular readers know that numbers are near and dear to my heart. Maybe it comes from my background — my degree is in industrial engineering — or maybe I just like the cold, objective finality of statistics.
So when a quantitative analyst like Bill James stands up and says that all quantitative analysts should boycott the BCS, I take notice.
The entire article is a good read — and don’t worry, James doesn’t delve too deeply into the numbers. He outlines the problem with the BCS this way:
1. That there is a profound lack of conceptual clarity about the goals of the method;
2. That there is no genuine interest here in using statistical analysis to figure out how the teams compare with one another. The real purpose is to create some gobbledygook math to endorse the coaches’ and sportswriters’ vote;
3. That the ground rules of the calculations are irrational and prevent the statisticians from making any meaningful contribution; and
4. That the existence of this system has the purpose of justifying a few rich conferences in hijacking the search for a national title, avoiding a postseason tournament that would be preferred by the overwhelming majority of fans.
James then goes into each topic with more detail, but this section stands out:
In the 1990s there was a strong movement, within the NCAA, to organize a national postseason football tournament. The problem was, had the NCAA in fact organized such a championship, two other events would almost certainly have followed:
1. The smaller schools, which outnumber the big football powerhouses about 5-to-1, would have voted to send a lot of the money to the smaller schools that in fact had not participated in the national championship contest in any meaningful way.
2. The big football schools would have bolted and revolted. They’d have walked out of the NCAA and formed their own organization. The two-tiered system of NCAA and NAIA schools would have been replaced by a three-tiered system with the NCAA occupying the middle tier.
The creation of the BCS system was simply a less dramatic revolt. And, as I said, the BCS schools were right: There is no reason why schools that don’t fund programs to participate in the battle for the national championship should share in the proceeds of the contest.
There are two ways to get around this problem. First, the NCAA could pass a unanimous or nearly unanimous resolution, promising not to try to steal the proceeds of a national title contest and give the money to small schools, deserving nephews, or the church poor box. The BCS could then dissolve and be replaced by an NCAA Football Tournament involving eight to 16 teams, and the big football schools would wind up with just as much money or a little more.
Or, if that doesn’t work, we can pass a law creating a new National Collegiate Sports Collaborative and requiring all schools receiving federal funding to join and participate. And if we have to do that, we’ll decide how to split the money.
I didn’t realize that fear over the small schools milking too much money from a playoff system was the reason that we don’t have a playoff system. If that’s the case, and as James outlines, it’s not a difficult fix.
It’s already easy to criticize the BCS, but it’s even easier when USC looks very impressive in their win against Penn St. and the upstart Utah Utes complete their perfect season by dismantling Alabama. Both USC and Utah have legitimate arguments that they are the best team in the country.
If Texas works over Ohio State, you can add another team to that list. And the more, the better.
While it’s great for fans to see an exciting BCS title game, the perfect storm would be completed if Florida narrowly beats Oklahoma in a boring game. The idea is for neither team to look particularly good, which would only strengthen the position of USC, Utah and, potentially, Texas.
We could look back on the 2008-09 season as the year that the BCS shot itself in the proverbial head.
- Jason Whitlock says Erin Andrews needs a big brother, refers to himself as the #1 sportswriter in the business and then criticizes the folks at Deadspin for being full of themselves. We’ve got a feud, kids! [DEADSPIN]
- SPORTS BY BROOKS has the story of Ko Simpson, the first NFL player to get arrested in 2009, who tried to gain favor with the police by saying, “I am worth millions!” over and over. [SPORTSBYBROOKS]
- DR. SATURDAY contradicts his tagline and says that USC’s big win in the Rose Bowl is “an air-tight argument against the absurdity of a two-team playoff.” [DR. SATURDAY]
- PRO FOOTBALL TALK reports that Jared Allen would like Vikings fans to buy up the tickets. Apparently, Minnesota faces a local blackout if they can’t sell the game out. To think, there are some that still say we’re not in a recession. [PRO FOOTBALL TALK]
- DEADSPIN sheds some more light on why Charles Barkley was pulled over and cited for a DUI. Given the details, how can you blame him? [DEADSPIN]
The world is a mess. Osama Bin Laden is still at large, the U.S. economy is in a recession and our country is still fighting two different wars on two different fronts.
But I can’t control any of that. On the whole, 2008 has been a pretty good year for Team Paulsen. My wife and I had our first child, a happy and healthy son (97th percentile in height = future 6’10” power forward), and I still have a job and a roof over my head.
I write about sports, so in the spirit of Christmas, which – let’s be honest – is really about getting, not giving, I scribbled down a few things that I’d like to see gift-wrapped underneath the tree.
So, without further ado, all I want for Christmas…
…is a college football playoff.
This drives me nuts and I know I’m not alone. I’m a casual fan of college football and I only watch maybe 10-15 games the entire year, including one bowl game – the BCS title game. If there were an eight-team playoff, I would make a point to watch every single one of those seven games. Not only that, but I’d start watching more of those late-season games that feature teams that are fighting for a playoff berth. I know money is a big issue with the BCS, but if casual fans are going to increase the number of games they watch by 50-70%, how can this not bring higher ratings and more ad revenue? This whole situation is mind-boggling.
What’s done is done. That’s the…..um……great thing about the BCS system. Oklahoma jumped Texas last week in the rankings and now the Sooners are slated to face the Gators in the title game. As in years past, fans are supposed to just swallow this bitter pill and move on. Some lazy, narrow-minded sportswriters are happy to have the “debate” because their next few columns will essentially write themselves.
The truth is that the current system is not only a slap in the face to the Longhorns and their supporters, but to all college football fans across the country. The vast majority of us (85%-90% if you believe the polls) would like to see some sort of college football playoff. So the last few weeks I’ve been summarizing a proposed playoff system.
Here are my assumptions…
1. There would be an eight-team playoff. The six BCS-conference champs get an automatic bid unless they are ranked outside the top 15.
2. If a conference champ is ranked lower than #15 in the rankings, they give up their automatic bid and it becomes an at-large bid. (This rule is to ensure that the regular season keeps its meaning and only the elite teams make the playoffs.)
3. Seeds and at-large bids are distributed based on the current BCS standings. Certainly, these rankings need to be tweaked to place more of an emphasis on head-to-head matchups, but they are fine for now. If an at-large team has a better BCS ranking than a conference champion, they will get a higher seed.
4. There will be three rounds of playoffs. The first round will be held at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team. The semifinals and the final will rotate amongst the four BCS cities (Miami, Pasadena, Tempe and New Orleans).
So how does last weekend’s action affect our playoff field?
8-seed Cincinnati @ 1-seed Oklahoma
Both teams did what they needed to do. The Bearcats sneaked by Hawaii and Oklahoma was convincing in its win over Missouri.
5-seed USC @ 4-seed Alabama
In this case, it looks like the BCS rankings work. Both teams have one loss, but Alabama lost to a better team. Who wouldn’t want to see the Trojans visit Tuscaloosa? The winner would face the winner of the 1/8 game.
6-seed Utah @ 3-seed Texas
This format works for the little guy, or at least it works for Utah. (Sorry Boise State!) In order to advance, the Utes would have to win in Austin.
7-seed Penn State @ 2-seed Florida
With the Hawkeyes’ recent play, suddenly the Nittany Lions’ loss to Iowa doesn’t look so bad. They would face a tough test trying to win in Gainesville against the surging Gators.
This format would set up pair of semifinals that would pit Oklahoma versus Alabama and Texas versus Florida.
ACC champion Virginia Tech gives up its bid because the Hokies are not ranked in the top 15. With four losses, few would argue that VT should be included. With a win over #17 Oregon and an undefeated record, Boise State has the biggest gripe. We would have to move to a 12-team format (or require the conference champs to be ranked in the top 10, eliminating Cincy) to include the Broncos.
The other teams that are on the outside looking in — Texas Tech, Ohio State, TCU, Oklahoma State, Georgia Tech, Georgia — either have three losses or have lost to teams that made the playoff, so the regular season clearly still holds its importance. (If Texas Tech had beat Oklahoma, if Ohio State had beat Penn State, if TCU had beaten Oklahoma and Utah, etc.)
The exclusion of Boise State is regrettable, but like March Madness, does anyone really think that the Broncos would be able to win three straight games against the elite teams in the country en route to a national championship? Unfortunately, in an eight-team playoff, we wouldn’t know for sure. It would be nice to have an option for a play-in game when there is an undefeated team from a non-power conference. In this case, Boise State could play Cincinnati for the right to play Oklahoma. However, if Ball State hadn’t lost to Buffalo, we’d be looking at two undefeated teams that would have been excluded. Then things get a little more dicey.
Another option would be a 12-team playoff that includes all the BCS conference champions and six at-large bids. That way, in addition to Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Penn State, Cincinnati and Virginia Tech getting bids, at-large teams Texas, Alabama, Utah, Texas Tech, Boise State and Ohio State would also get bids. I’m warming up to the idea of a 12-team playoff because it would account for cases like Boise State. Critics say that it would add too many games, but the only teams that would potentially play four games would be teams ranked #5 through #12 that made it to the title game (which is an unlikely scenario). Otherwise, everyone would play three or fewer additional games.
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