~Anthony Constantino
For years there has been an increasing amount of people clamoring for a playoff in college football. Since the inception of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system in NCAA Division-I Football the public, coaches, and various college officials have expressed their desire for a new system. Each year there is an elite team that seems so deserving of a shot at the championship, left out of the national championship game.
My question is simple: how can you pick the right two teams when there are usually around five elite teams in a given season? Is that even possible? Well don't worry, the NCAA has been listening and they have a proposal. Largely due to popular demand (and the desire to rake in more money), the idea of a four team playoff has been tossed around by conference commissioners and NCAA officials. Under this plan, the BCS would still be used for rankings and the normal bowl games.
If this new plan is approved, we will now have an argument over the fifth best team instead of arguing about the third best team. A four team playoff does nothing more than create another game that would generate money and determine very little. When boiled down, what does a four team playoff solve? I would say nothing.
Most would agree that something needs to be done with the current format. We can look back at countless seasons where great teams were left out of the national title picture. The Auburn Tigers of 2004 come to mind as the most famous unbeaten team to not play for a national championship. The BCS ranking of 2003 was another tough situation, with no unbeaten teams and a top twelve that all had ten wins or more. Who can forget the undefeated teams that have been overlooked as title contenders since the inception of the BCS? Utah, Boise St., Hawaii, and TCU have all had undefeated teams that received about as much respect as the late Rodney Dangerfield. None of these programs have seen a title game at the height of their power.
So what can be done to better determine a national champion? Here is one radical proposal I guarantee you have never heard.
I would like you to think of the FIFA World Cup format. There are three years of qualifying to determine which countries make the tournament from each section of the world. The fourth year is the FIFA World Cup year. In that year (the most recent being in 2010), there is a 32 team tournament held in one host nation for one month. There is a group stage where eight groups of four teams face off. The top two teams advance to the knockout stage where the remaining teams play it out in a standard playoff format of win or go home. The field thins out until one team is declared a winner. I would argue that if this model was tweaked slightly, it would be a much better option for college football.
The first problem that would need to be addressed is the frequency of a championship. It would not be very fair for a freshmen to sit on the bench during a championship season, and graduate as a senior one year prior to his chance to shine in the tournament. Therefore every four years is likely too infrequent. I suggest that every other year a champion is determined. That way every player gets multiple chances to compete for a national championship.
The second issue is playing sites. Obviously there would not be a host school as that would be too chaotic, so that concept would not translate to the college game. The easiest way to handle this is to have higher seeded teams in the field play in front of their home crowd, a logical reward for regular season success.
According to every advertisement, "Every game matters" under the current BCS format. It is common knowledge that this is false. If every game mattered, Alabama would not have had their second chance to play LSU in the title game last season. If every game mattered, a team from a weaker conference could run the table and actually have a chance to be called the national champion. The college basketball regular season matters more than the college football regular season. At least if you win your conference in college basketball you receive an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. In Division-1 college football several teams can be counted out at the start of the season, because they play in a "mid-major" conference. Clearly very few games matter in a college football season when there is an uneven playing field from the start. What's the point of being a Division-1 football team if you have no chance to be named champion of Division-1?
With my format every team makes the playoffs.
Now before you go crazy and say, "That's not rational!" or "How does that make the regular season matter?!" hear me out.
The NCAA tournament for college basketball lasts about one month. There are 64 teams and each round eliminates half of the remaining field (64 to 32 to 16 etc...). There are currently 120 Division-1 football programs. As of 2013, this number will grow to 124 with the addition of four schools: University of South Alabama, University of Texas State- San Marcos, University of Texas at San Antonio, and University of Massachusetts Amherst. Two more schools have announced future plans to join Division-1. If the total number of schools can reach 128, there would be enough teams for an even playoff bracket. That would eliminate bye weeks, thus leveling the playing field. No team would have extra rest.
The regular season is used for seeding with strength of schedule as the primary tiebreaker. A full 12 game season occurs in non-playoff years. During championship seasons, an abbreviated schedule can be played so as to continue playing traditional rivalry games and so on. That gives roughly 17 games to play your way into your seed for the tournament, when that time comes.
Since football is extremely physical there can only be one game played per week in the playoffs. This would mean that the playoffs would last seven weeks. If championship seasons had five regular season games and seven weeks of playoff games, no additional games are added to the college football schedule. This means no added stress will stem from the new format. Once teams are eliminated from the playoffs they can schedule exhibitions with other eliminated teams if they desire to continue playing. Another option would be a slightly longer regular season. Instead of five games perhaps seven would be acceptable.
One major problem is the loss of conference championships. These championships would not be played anymore, which potentially eliminates revenue for conferences that play poorly in the playoff. This would also eliminate meaningless bowl games.
Many people argue that bowl games are a treat for the athletes after a long season of hard work. However, I would find very little reward as a player to enroll and play at a school in Florida, only to head to Idaho to play in the MPCcomputers.com Bowl following the regular season. Likewise, nothing would make a four year starter at USC feel better about themselves than topping off a disappointing 7-5 season in the PAC-12 with a trip to Louisville, KY for the Papajohns.com Bowl. My instant respone to bowl games is that they are an artificial pat on the back for teams that did not accomplish their goals. Some bowl games matter, but most of them change names more than one can keep track. Bowl games are discontinued while new ones are created.
This system could not only provide a more accurate national champion, but it could become the most intriguing tournament in the country. Many conference commissioners would oppose this move because it makes their job obselete. Conferences would not matter all that much anymore under this new format. College football would no doubt generate more revenue with a radical change to their playoff format such as this one. With that said, the NCAA has to decide how badly a playoff is needed. All the statistics show that people watch the bowl games; all of them. So fans can complain as much as they want. The only way a legitimate playoff format happens is if the ratings drop substantially. Until that happens we will be arguing over third place or fifth place, so get ready!
No comments:
Post a Comment