Barack Obama has his finger on the pulse of American public opinion. So when the president-elect came out in support of an 8 team college football playoff to replace the current BCS-selected match-up of the top two teams, he was endorsing a view held by 97.4% of all football fans. This stat comes from the same source that found that 73.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
I, however, am among the 2.6% that prefers the current BCS method. Why? — because an 8 team playoff solves virtually none of the supposed injustices of a BCS-selected championship game and because playoffs create significant, new problems.
The main injustice that a playoff is supposed to prevent is the exclusion of worthy teams from competing in the post-season for the national championship. The current system uses a formula combining coach and journalist rankings of teams with computer models of team performance given the difficulty of their schedules to identify the top two teams in the country. Those two teams then play for the national championship.
“But what about the third ranked team?” opponents of this system ask. Shouldn’t they have a chance to compete for the championship also? This concern for injustice is compounded by disputes over whether the top two teams identified by the BCS really are the two best teams. People become particularly passionate about this if their team is the one ranked 3rd (or even 4th, 5th, etc…). And the fact that computer models have a hand in selecting the top two teams only fuels the technophobe football fan rage. The intensity of opposition to BCS ratings is almost always inversely related to a person’s ability to do algebra (or even compute simple sums).
Moving to an 8 team playoff doesn’t really solve this perceived injustice. Instead of arguing over whether the 3rd ranked team was unjustly excluded from competing in the post-season for the national championship, we’ll just argue about whether the 9th ranked team was unjustly excluded. You have to draw the line somewhere.
In addition, there has to be some method for selecting the 8 teams. If you don’t like relying on computer models and polls, try to describe a system that would more accurately identify the best teams. Some have suggested providing guaranteed spots to the winners of 6 of the most competitive conferences with two additional teams selected at-large. But it’s not hard to imagine the injustices that would flow from such a system. Who gets to pick the 6 conferences? Why shouldn’t the 7th conference have a guaranteed spot? What if there are two top-notch teams in a conference? How will we select the two at-large teams? The bar arguments will never end no matter how we select teams.
The virtue of the BCS method of ranking is that it combines multiple reasonable methods into a single rating. It incorporates the subjective judgment of experts as well as the dispassionate computer assessment of team schedules. Sure, the BCS, like any rating system, will be imperfect. But its methodology is reasonable and the rules are clearly stated in advance.
The only question remaining is why only have 2 teams in the post-season instead of 4 or 8 (or 16 for that matter). I’ve already argued that drawing the line anywhere is somewhat arbitrary and would produce disputes and claims of injustice. But others might respond that it is better to have more teams included in the post-season than fewer.
The problem with expanding the post-season to include more teams in the national championship race is that it would require more games to be played. You cannot add games to college football without a price. Other than among advocates of the ginormous financial bailout, everyone understands that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Extra college games come at a cost.
If we simply add two more games to the post-season to have an 8 team playoff, we are requiring players to have longer seasons with greater opportunities for injuries. Remember that college football players are uncompensated young students (and free tuition hardly qualifies as fair compensation given how much revenue they generate). If we make them play longer seasons, they run a significantly higher risk of suffering debilitating injuries that could ruin any hopes for a professional football career and/or turn them into life-long cripples. Barack Obama and 97.4% of all football fans may not care about exploiting unpaid college kids for our entertainment, but I think there have to be limits.
I suppose we could instead shorten the regular season by two games to avoid making players extend their season. But if we do that we will reduce the information from the regular season for determining who deserves to be in the playoffs. We’ll also deprive the vast majority of college football programs and their fans of two games and the revenue those games produce. Again, there is no free lunch.
People wonder why college football is the only major sport without a playoff. But college football is different from other sports. Football is so brutal that it can only be played once a week and even then the probability of serious injury increases dramatically with each additional game. We can expect the pros to play longer and run those risks because, well, their pros. They are paid (although not nearly enough — but that is a story for another day), while college athletes are virtually unpaid (and that is an injustice that should also be corrected — but that is also a story for another day). I’d rather have a bunch of bar arguments over whether the 3rd ranked team was unjustly excluded from the championship game than significantly increase the exploitation of college football players.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Jay,
I think that the algebra (or the statistics and probability) works against you on this. The reason to move to an 8 team playoff rather than a 2 team championship is obvious – you want to ensure you don’t exclude the best team.
With the present BCS, the #3 team in the formula is left out – but there is a very high probability that such a team is actually better than the top two teams. For instance an undefeated Auburn a few years ago or an undefeated Utah this year has a strong claim that they are deserving of a shot at the national title.
In an eight team playoff, you may not necessarily get the best 8 teams, and the #9 team may feel they were better than one or more of the 8 teams in the playoff. But the probability that the #9 team is the best team in the country is highly unlikely. You may not have the best 8 teams, but you are much more likely to have the best team, and less likely to not exclude a deserving champion.
It is the same case as with the Men’s NCAA basketball. You can quibble over who are the best 64 (65 now), as many pundits do. But the system is set up to include all conference champions, because they have at least a reasonable case that they deserve a shot at the national title. The #66 team (i.e. the best team left out) can reasonably argue that they are better than many teams in the field, but it is highly unlikely that they are the best team in the nation.
The purpose of a playoff is to ensure that the best team wins – or at least get the chance to win – on the field.
Your other arguments are bunk. First, every other division of college football has a playoff (I-AA, II, III, NAIA) – somehow that is ok.
Second, colleges have been adding to the number of games – most teams play 12 in a season now, plus many have a conference championship game, and then a bowl game. Dropping one regular season game and replacing the bowl game with a playoff (for the top 8) means that 4 teams will play one fewer game, 2 will play the same number, and the final 2 will play one more game than under the present system.
Finally, if your concern is exploitation, just pay the players.
I’m waiting for Matt to shout out about the injustices within the Big 12.
Nathan,
I’m with you about paying college football players, as I indicated. And if we do that, I see no problem with adding games for a playoff. But that isn’t going to happen, so we shouldn’t worry about it.
Your point that the 3rd ranked team could make a stronger case about being the best than the 9th ranked team is a fair one. But it is also the case that expanding the pool of teams in the post-season increases the odds that an undeserving team with a clearly inferior record during the regular season will win the national championship in a fluke. This is especially true if the best team suffers from injuries caused by an extended season. You may say that at least they settled it “on the field” but the regular season has a field too. Would you want a team with two losses, including a loss to the #1 or 2 team, slipping into the national championship by beating an injured top 1 or 2 team in the post-season?
I’m with Jay, but I don’t know why he stops there. I don’t see why we need any games at all. We could simply put the various players through a multitude of (safe) tests in order to record their speed, ability to catch, ability to throw and kick accurately. and then we can feed that into a computer and see which team is the best. Heck, if we can get early commitments, we might be able to mathematically project the future national champions years in advance.
But I think such an exercise misses the point. What people want isn’t the utmost in confidence that the best team will be victorious, but a series of exciting games with a an exciting and decisive mechanism for determining the winner–the final score in head-to-head matchups.
Jay,
Interesting rebuttal. Certainly increasing the number of teams would increase the likelihood of a fluke winner – last year’s New York Giants would be a great example. It comes down to whether you care more about Type I error or Type II error – do you want to risk excluding the best team, or risk a “undeserving” champion. From the fans perspective, it is clear – we love surprise champions.
As for the “on the field” deciding it – yes, there is the possibility that a two loss team, with a loss to other teams in the playoff, could win the title due to a fluke. But it is more likely that voters exclude a team with no losses (see Utah, Boise State, Ball State) for the simple reason that they weren’t ranked highly in the preseason. In politics, I prefer rule of law to arbitrary decision-making. In football, I prefer playing games to polling sportswriters.
There was an interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend about how the college polls were originally started not to settle controversy over which team was best, but to create controversy – it quoted the creator of the AP poll saying that the purpose of the poll was to start arguments in order to “keep the pot boiling” during the off season.
Brian’s plan sounds great. I’ve heard Hari Seldon at the Foundation has started work on it. : )
And I agree with Nathan that fans just want more games — especially high stakes playoff games. I’m just saying that there is a price in the exploitation of unpaid college athletes. And as to the Utahs and Boise States of the world, they should seek more competitive schedules if they want to compete for the national championship. The BCS mostly hurts them because of strength of schedule, not pre-season expectations. They might want to play more SEC and Big 12 teams for their non-conference games to improve the strength of schedule.
It’s time for the BCS to go. I can forgive the computers, but good grief, which part of a double digit win on a neutral field do the Coaches and Harris voters not understand?
While I support paying the players too, exploitation is a pretty loaded term to describe someone who is getting a free college education. No one forces anyone to take a football scholarship.
Probably the double digit 34 point stomping of a team that beat Texas…
^_^
The BCS just says which team looks better to a population of both people and computers. The Big XII says that this will be the tiebreaker (the ONLY tiebraker) in the event of a three-way tie. The SEC drops the team ranked last and then uses head-to-head on the remaining two teams (assuming one team didn’t beat both other teams and lose to random unlisted third team). Which conference rules would you prefer at the moment?
I’d have to say that the SEC system makes a great deal more sense.
There are still 4 scenarios for Texas to win a title, all of them unlikely.
1. Mizzou beats the land thieves.
2. Land thieves look bad beating Mizzou, coaches and Harris voters regain their sanity after being fooled by the shiny bauble of OU’s offense, vote Texas over land thieves.
3. Florida beats Bama but doesn’t overtake UT for the number two spot. SEC fans with wounded pride riot across the South, destroying all in their path, unable to admit to themselves that the SEC was really down this year. Horns thrash land thieves yet again.
4. Florida beats Bama, plays OU for the title. OU beats Florida, Texas wins Fiesta Bowl. The AP poll currently has Texas number 3 behind Bama and Florida and ahead of OU. AP voters, who have retained their sanity and relish the opportunity to stick it to the BCS rube-goldberg monster, rank Texas #1. Land-thieves, having suffered a double digit loss to Texas on a neutral field, can go pound sand- they got a trophy from the BCS and Texas is the national champion.
None of these are likely to happen. Florida clobbering OU seems like the most likely outcome. OU’s defense isn’t great, and their special teams have been bad this year.
The problem here lies mostly with the conference leaders. Once teams from every conference get screwed over, these leaders will forsake tradition (Apologies to Rose Bowl participants) in order to create a fairer system.
While I appreciate Jay’s concerns, the addition of a +1 system in the BCS (a Final Four system incorporating the top 4 bcs teams, with the two winners of semifinal games going on to play in the Title Game). would be financially viable without adding too much of a strain to these students lives. The end result would likely be one team (a maximum of 2, depending on whether or not the Big 10 or Pac 10 would have a representative in the title game) playing a 15th game. However, this would also represent a massive financial gain through marketing tie-ins, television deals, etc. Since BCS funds are divided within participating conferences, each team would stand to make at least an additional $200K just by consenting to this program.
So the money is there, but the fear is that this +1 system would eventually create a slippery slope to a playoff system, as well as affect the current system, which rewards good teams in weak BCS conferences (see Penn State, USC, who feasibly could have met for the title this year if not for fluke losses despite neither one being considered a top 4 team). Until the coaches/conferences change their minds, the system won’t change. The coaches/conferences won’t change their minds until enough of them get screwed by the BCS. Therefore, the BCS’s failure is a key element of the improvement of college football’s postseason program.