College Football Discussion
I'm not going to make a poll until after next week. Last weekend and next are both sort of half weeks college football wise.
I'm going to say what my plan is to determine a college football champion. But first, an overview of other methods that have been put forth.
BCS (the current method) - Works fine when there are clearly 2 teams that are a cut above all the others, such as last year (although last year's game should have been at a more neutral location). Doesn't work in any other scenario, such as there being no clear #2 team (this year), or there being more than 2 good candidates for the title game (2 years and 3 years ago). It is an advance over the older bowl system, which had more tie-ins and often prevented title match ups, and it does preserve the importance of college football's regular season.
A playoff - A common idea is an 8 or 16 team playoff. A plus is that this would clearly determine the title on the field every year, but it would serious erode the "every game is critical" edge that regular season college football has.
The And 1 - A relatively new proposal has been to keep the bowls as is, and then have an another game for the tile. This would have worked fairly well 2 and 3 years ago, but last year it would have been really dumb for Texas to have to play another game after beating USC. This doesn't really solve anything most years.
And now here's my proposal: we let then regular season play completely out, and then we decide how we will determine the national champion. The only drawback is this would never happen because of television and they need for advance scheduling, but I believe it's by far the fairest way to determine a champion while maintaining the importance of the regular season (which is a huge strength for college football).
Last year it was very obvious what should be done, USC vs. Texas for the title. An "and 1" would have been ridiculous, and a playoff that didn't result in USC vs. Texas would have been a big letdown. 2 years ago a four team playoff would have been the way to go, and 3 years ago a round-robin between the top 3 teams would have been the fairest solution.
This year, I think the should just give Ohio St. the trophy now. They are the unanimous pick of all 242 voters in the 3 major polls. If they when their bowl game, everything's fine, but what if they lose? If, for instance, USC beats them, why should USC be the champion over another one loss team that has won their bowl game convincingly (and was never given the chance to play Ohio St.)?
And if we had a playoff this season and Ohio St. lost in it, why should the playoff winner who has also lost once (or more) and likely never played Ohio St. be the champion over them?
Technorati tags: College Football
I'm going to say what my plan is to determine a college football champion. But first, an overview of other methods that have been put forth.
BCS (the current method) - Works fine when there are clearly 2 teams that are a cut above all the others, such as last year (although last year's game should have been at a more neutral location). Doesn't work in any other scenario, such as there being no clear #2 team (this year), or there being more than 2 good candidates for the title game (2 years and 3 years ago). It is an advance over the older bowl system, which had more tie-ins and often prevented title match ups, and it does preserve the importance of college football's regular season.
A playoff - A common idea is an 8 or 16 team playoff. A plus is that this would clearly determine the title on the field every year, but it would serious erode the "every game is critical" edge that regular season college football has.
The And 1 - A relatively new proposal has been to keep the bowls as is, and then have an another game for the tile. This would have worked fairly well 2 and 3 years ago, but last year it would have been really dumb for Texas to have to play another game after beating USC. This doesn't really solve anything most years.
And now here's my proposal: we let then regular season play completely out, and then we decide how we will determine the national champion. The only drawback is this would never happen because of television and they need for advance scheduling, but I believe it's by far the fairest way to determine a champion while maintaining the importance of the regular season (which is a huge strength for college football).
Last year it was very obvious what should be done, USC vs. Texas for the title. An "and 1" would have been ridiculous, and a playoff that didn't result in USC vs. Texas would have been a big letdown. 2 years ago a four team playoff would have been the way to go, and 3 years ago a round-robin between the top 3 teams would have been the fairest solution.
This year, I think the should just give Ohio St. the trophy now. They are the unanimous pick of all 242 voters in the 3 major polls. If they when their bowl game, everything's fine, but what if they lose? If, for instance, USC beats them, why should USC be the champion over another one loss team that has won their bowl game convincingly (and was never given the chance to play Ohio St.)?
And if we had a playoff this season and Ohio St. lost in it, why should the playoff winner who has also lost once (or more) and likely never played Ohio St. be the champion over them?
Technorati tags: College Football
posted by Freethinker at 4:52:00 PM
4 Comments:
I think that the current system isn't bad, but since we all know that it will eventually change, I think a AND 1 system would work the best. A playoff system would do like you said, completely destroy the excitement each regular season game has. About half of the time since the BCS began, a AND 1 would have helped. LSU and USC in 2003(?), Auburn and USC in 2004, for example. The negative is that the football season gets pushed significantly into January with another game... the title game this year is already on Jan 8.
The negative for me is what happens in years like last year, where we would get Texas vs. Penn St., which we be very anticlimatic. Actually we'd probably get a second Texas vs. USC game since I think USC was still number 2 after their loss to Texas.
And also years like this year, if Ohio St. wins their bowl game it seems rather pointless to make them play again.
here's another option... the more i think about it, the more I like it. A variation on the AND 1 plan:
The top-ranked team gets a "bye" while the number 2 and 3 teams play each other, with the winner playing the number 1 team. This would make it that the best team wouldn't have to play twice to win a championship, but it would also take care of the controversy of who get's to play the top team. If you can't make it into the top 3, you don't have any right to talk about being dissed. This year, that would mean that Michigan and Florida would play each other, with LSU, USC, and Louisville having no real ground to stand on to gripe about being passed up. The number 3 team would just feel lucky to get a chance at possibly playing for the title. Last year, Texas would have had to play Virginia Tech first before playing USC, but they would have killed Virginia Tech. The only time this system is somewhat iffy is when you have 2 and only 2 BCS conf. undefeated teams, like last year. But even then, it's not too bad.
Well if you're going to do that, it might be better to just have a four team playoff. With only four teams it won't dilute the importance of the regular season much.
I just think most years this would be more fair than one team getting a bye. Last year USC didn't earn a bye anymore than Texas did, and when there were 3 major undefeated teams 2 and 3 years ago it would have been tough to say who got the bye.
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