I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about how much the BCS sucks. I've spoken, myself, about it since its inception so many years ago, and I couldn't agree more with the negative opinions out there concerning this crap about crowning a "true national champion." The BCS knows it doesn't work, and so does the rest of the country. Especially Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah). Some (ok, almost all) of my previous blogs mention something one way or another about the BCS' flaws, but we can highlight a couple here to set the stage. The most obvious to me deals with the BCS' refusal to drop the AP and Harris human polls from its ranking "calculation," which of course causes the BCS to remain a largely human influenced poll; when the AP and Harris polls count for 2/3 of a team's ranking in the BCS, it cannot by any means claim to be mathematical or objective, let alone unbiased. The fact of the matter is that maintaining any sort of human opinion-based influence in the calculation of a team's ranking lends itself to a biased, opinionated, and thus necessarily flawed ranking.
Another glaring problem arises when we consider that the BCS is solely focused on conference schools in Division IA and Notre Dame. Calling this fair is like telling the Catholic Church to support abortion: it just isn't going to happen, folks. The fact is that the automatic BCS bowl berths are centrally and exclusively focused on the big name conferences and Notre Dame. Now, being a Notre Dame alumnus, it's always nice to know that even when my team sucked donkey doogan, we could (and would, simply and unfairly because of the revenue generation) get invited to a bowl game, however useless it may be (i.e., Hawaii last year). But all team loyalties aside, not even I can sit back in my Lazy Boy recliner on a January Saturday and think this is a fair situation. And the same goes for the other major conferences in college football. If the BCS was actually an objective system, it would either abolish the automatic conference berths, or include all Division IA conference winners in those automatic bowl berths. Neither occurs, and the system is flawed.
There are plenty of other injustices in the BCS system that we could discuss this morning, but the two points I just made lead to something that I think needs to be addressed. Too many of you out there are crying about how schools from certain Division IA conferences aren't getting a fair shake with the BCS. I agree. Your solutions to the problem primarily involve a three week, eight team playoff system following the season. I agree with that as well. My fellow blogger John Feinstein makes several fantastic points about this and the truth of the BCS in his recent post, "The BCS - There Is No Defending The Indefensible." But John falls into the same habit that most writers have lately: he's defending the idea that any undefeated team, regardless of schedule strength, regardless of any cookie cutter teams a school plays, should have a chance to play for a National Title.
I couldn't disagree more with this lunacy.
We've seen consistently, and I'm talking about for decades now, that high profile schools will schedule "warm-up" games at the beginning of the football season, and easily dismantle an extremely lesser talented team, thereby cushioning its "W" column with a couple cupcake victories. That automatically becomes an unfair advantage and instantly corrupts the system, which rewards the high profile team for its "win" and ignores the fact that there was never a chance for any real competition in the game to begin with. The problem has gotten worse in recent years when teams have simply played complete cupcake schedules. Why waste time with a couple easy games, when you can simply play all 12 easy games? This is an even bigger, more obvious corruption of the system; certain high profile schools are taking advantage of weaker football teams that - let's be fair and observant - stand little to no chance of ever winning those football games.
Where so many playoff system advocates have suddenly lost their senses of logic is when they ignore the factor of schedule strength in their bracketing methods, failing to recognize that indeed, certain schools play tougher schedules. Period. This is not an arguable point; it's a goddamn fact of the matter. And this is not a call to give privileges to certain conferences, or certain schools, or even to Notre Dame, as the BCS currently does. We've already seen the bias in that system. Rather, it's a call to recognize that, at the end of the year, we have the opportunity to review the records of a team's opponents, and make a logical calculation about how good or bad the 12-0 record of the team in question may be. And yes, there is such a thing as a weak 12-0 record (see Boise State, as if you didn't know that was coming). This is a call for an objective playoff system that incorporates the unarguable fact that certain teams are more deserving of a playoff berth based on their wins compared to their schedule strength. For example, this year clearly, Alabama plays a much tougher schedule than, say, TCU - and this observed fact has nothing to do with current rankings. It has everything to do with simply examining the records of Alabama's opponents, as compared with the records of TCU's opponents. It's pretty damn simple, folks.
What it comes down to fundamentally is a question of which type of football team is more deserving of the opportunity to play for a National Title: the competitive, hard working, victorious team that has proven itself to be good by consistenly competing against and beating other solid football teams; or the lazy, easy-way-out, unproven team that has truthfully accomplished nothing in purposefully, consistently competing against and beating overmatched teams. Are you willing to work for your trophy, or do you want someone to just hand it to you after you sat on your ass all season? Are you a nose-to-the-grindstone, blue-collar guy, or a wipe-my-ass-and-put-on-cartoons, trust fund baby?
Including strength of schedule into a bracketed playoff system would not only yield unbiased seeding -- we'd see for certain which teams are actually stronger -- but would also encourage schools to think twice before scheduling Western Michigan (way to go Notre Dame with the 2010 schedule), Delaware State (seriously Michigan?), or Chattanooga Southwestern Arts & Crafts School For The Underprivileged Little Sisters Of Northerneastern South America At El Paso (you've never heard of that traditionally steeped and storied CSACSULSNSAEP football program either?). The point is that factoring in strength of schedule is imperative to determining a team's actual playoff seeding in a system in which teams cannot play every other team in the system. It's not like the NFL, NHL, NBA, or MLB when a team has the opportunity to play every other team in the league. Because of this natural deficiency in college football, which is something that's impossible to remedy given the length of a season, schedule strength must be included as a seeding factor to eliminate teams from posting a top tier ranking with a 12-0 record as a result of a cupcake schedule. We simply must keep the system unbiased and objective and recognize which teams are winning competitive football games, and which teams are winning Easy Bake Oven Pajama Party Tickle Fights.
At the end of the season, the playoff system would make schedule strength quite clear, whether it's factored in or not. Teams like Boise State, for example, or TCU, would find themselves on the tummy ache side of the slaughterings they'd been handing out all season to the cupcake schools they "compete" against to compile their foundationless undefeated records. But if schedule strength were factored into the playoff equation, and we honestly and objectively recognized the merit in playing a competitive schedule during the season, teams like 12-0 Boise State or TCU would be seeded extremely low, if at all, thus generating a pure playoff system of truly proven teams.
I have nothing personal against Boise State or TCU, but they're two of the most obvious examples this season of high ranked teams that don't deserve to be there, based on their schedules. You can review my other blogs to find out why, if you're really too stupid to figure it out already for yourself.
I'll say it again and again until something manifests and the system is objective and unbiased. Play a uniformly consistent 12 game schedule. At the end of the season, compare every team's record with their strength of schedule (therein examining their opponents' records and their opponents' opponents' records). Calculate their playoff seeding as a result of their overall win-loss record versus their strength of schedule. Seed the top eight teams into four bowl games: the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls for example, in a 1 vs 8, etc system. The remaining teams can all go duke it out in the remaining bowls sponsored by god knows what kind of corporate feces. A week later, we do it again in round two, with four teams left, the same highest seeding vs lowest seeding, etc, in two more bowls. The third week will then see the remaining two teams playing each other in the remaining bowl game, at a predetermined site, for the National Title.
I'm not sure why this is such a difficult idea for anyone to grasp.
It maintains the same length of the college football season. It increases the number of bowls played, and therefore also the revenue generated from them. It increases the opportunity for corporate sponsorship. It increases the revenue for schools and conferences; the more a team wins, the further it advances, the bigger the corporate sponsor payout. It increases fan support and participation in the sport as it is accepted as an objective and true system. And -- imagine this -- a true, bonafide, undisputed, actual winner emerges at the end of the season.
Silly me. My alarm clock just went off. Time to wake up and get out of bed.
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