Everyone is upset with the BCS, again. Instead of posting a rant (thanks Mike!), I wanted to break it down and provide my suggestions for fixing ALL of college football's problems, not just the BCS. First, let's look at why it is ridiculous that Oklahoma is going to the Big 12 Championship.
1. The obvious - Texas beat Oklahoma
2. Texas was ranked ahead of Oklahoma last week - They both won this week, so why is Oklahoma now better than Texas?
3. Oklahoma has choked in BCS Bowls - If the Big 10 is going to be penalized by OSU's back-to-back choke jobs (Penn State only has 1 loss but is not included in any national championship discussion), why isn't Oklahoma? They've lost 4 straight BCS games, including 2 National Championships, by an average score of 42-26.
4. The BCS is not intended to decide conference championship teams - The BCS standings was the final tiebreaker between Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech to represent the Big 12 South in the Big 12 Championship game. However, according to the official BCS website, the 3 purposes of the BCS standings are: 1. Selecting the teams that will participate in the national championship game, 2. Determining any other automatic qualifiers (to the BCS games), 3. Establishing the pool of eligible teams for at-large selection.
What will make things REALLY interesting would be if Oklahoma somehow loses to Missouri. Of course they would send Texas, but how can they justify sending yet another team to the National Championship game that didn't win their own conference??
The BCS is philosophically flawed - last week, MSU was ranked 19th. They didn't play a game and 4 teams ranked higher than us lost. Where are we this week? Two spots lower (19 to 21). How did we get worse? While I recognize the change in ranking is meaningless to us, it is more proof that the rankings don't make sense.
The Big 10 has a competitive disadvantage because we don't have a conference championship game (and therefore end the season earlier). On the flip side, it's not fair that in some stronger conferences, like the SEC and Big 12, have 12 teams fighting for one, possibly two, spots while the very weak Big East has 8 teams fighting for one guaranteed spot. This year, Cincinnati and Boston College/Virginia Tech will have BCS games while Texas Tech won't. Neither will Boise St and Ball St because they play in the wrong conference. So here's what we need to do to solve all of the issues.
1. Missouri is added to the Big 10, which can now have a conference championship game.
Missouri would fit in as a mid-upper tier football team and a mid-lower tier basketball team. I would arrange the two divisions as such:
Big 10 North
Michigan
Michigan State
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Illinois
Northwestern
Big 10 South
Ohio State
Penn State
Purdue
Indiana
Missouri
Iowa
2. Boise St is added to the Big 12 to replace Missouri.
They have demonstrated year after year that they can compete. Instead of listening them whine about not having a chance at a national championship, lets put them in a real conference and see how they perform. Their crazy offenive plays bring a lot of excitement to the Big 12 - remember the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma?
3. Utah and Hawaii are added to the Pac 10 to make it a 12 team conference so a championship game is created.
4. Notre Dame is forced to join the Big East, like it is in basketball.
5. Temple is moved to the Big East, leaving the MAC East with the proper number of 6 teams.
6. Two other random teams are added to the Big East so they have 12 teams and a conference championship game as well.
7. FBS (Division I-A) teams are no longer allowed to play FCS (Division I-AA) teams.
8. Each team plays the other 5 teams in their division, 3 other teams in their conference, 3 non-conference games, and 1 bye week. If we followed this system this year, conference championships could have taken place the weekend of Nov 22nd.
9. BCS rankings are no longer released until the end of the regular season.
10. An 8 team playoff system, consisting of the top 8 ranked teams at the end of the season, is created. Since each conference would have a Championship game, the conference champions would receive a natural boost in the rankings since they won a game after the regular season ended. They would not be guaranteed a playoff spot, however. Under this plan, Big East Champion Cincinnati would not be in the playoffs and they don't deserve to be. If this was in place this year, the first round would have been Thanksgiving weekend. The second round could either be this weekend or on January 1st. The championship game would remain where it is.
Now here's why they would never agree to this. And I promise the real answer has NOTHING to do with their players' academic schedules.
a. While no fan would miss a game versus the directional schools, the universities would miss out on a lot of revenue.
b. Under any kind of playoff system, they will lose sponsorship revenue. How could FedEx/Citi/AllState/Tostitos sponsor individual playoff games with the same effectiveness as the BCS games? Lost sponsorship revenue equals lost revenue for the universities in those games.
c. Right now they have over a month to sell upwards of 70,000 expensive tickets to fans and alumni for one bowl game. A playoff system makes it more difficult to mobilize fans, unless the playoff games take place at one of the universities. If that's the case, good luck coordinating a game in Columbus or Ann Arbor in December/January. Plus, the cities that host the BCS games would lobby hard to keep the games and the tourism boost that comes with it.
d. There's still the issue of getting the television network that owns the rights to the BCS games to switch to a playoff system. For them, the system isn't broke because the ratings are great. So why would they want to risk changing that?
e. Finally, people who are anti-playoff will always argue that no matter how many teams you include, there will be controversy over who was left out of the playoff.
As you can tell, I believe it's all about the money. The people in charge of the system are making a great deal off of the BCS games, so until someone can convince them that they can make more money from a playoff system, it's not going to change. I just don't want to be around when we're the team that gets shorted.
(Side note: keep in mind, Division 1-A, or FBS, is the only NCAA sport without a playoff system and is the only one, therefore, where an "NCAA Championship" is not awarded. It's the "BCS National Championship" with the ugly, crystal, insert-some-company-name-trophy.)
8 comments:
I actually like the plan you have proposed, but you still don't address the issues I put forth in my rant. What about the polls? In your proposed plan, will they actually be taken seriously? Meaning, as noted in your 4th paragraph, will MSU not fall 2 spots after not playing and having 4 ranked teams above them lose?
That's what gets me the most. You could say it really grinds my gears...
Yes, I would keep the polls. You have to use something to determine playoff teams - basketball uses a committee. The MSU issue would be solved because each team would play their last game the same weekend, except for the two teams in each conference championship game.
I would improve the poll system by not releasing them until after the end of the regular season - that way teams aren't needing "style points" to improve their position. Also, we wouldn't run into the LSU situation where people voted them to the national championship even though there were many teams ahead of them the week before.
The poll is part of the issue and needs changed, but there are other things that affect the poll in a negative way that need changed as well (i.e. only some conferences have championship games, some conferences end earlier than others)
So no polls until the end of the year? Hmmm...that would probably be the best. Not just BCS, but every poll. Of course people would go crazy without something to rank the teams, but in theory, that is the best idea. Then at least I couldn't get upset for one team jumping another without the top team first losing.
You're proposal definitely eliminates a lot of poll issues, like with conference championships for all, which is why I'm definitely all for it.
Well thought out, sir.
And I'm glad you like your Crabtree shirt. All three of us have one now =).
In your 12 team Big 10, (Which needs a name change by the way. How about the Gigantic Dozen? Just a thought...)Michigan would be in the north and Ohio state would be in the south.
Does this mean that Michigan will not play Ohio State every year?
The Big 10 does need a conference championship game, but there has to be some way to keep all of the rivalry and "trophy" games.
As for the BCS, I am all in favor of a playoff system, but I agree with you that the money issues will prevent it from actually happening.
Each team has 3 open conference slots, so we could reserve one of Michigan's slots for OSU. As it stands right now, each Big 10 team avoids 2 others each year (we didn't play Minnesota or Illinois this year). Under the new system, they would avoid 3 teams - not too big of a deal.
What do you guys think about bringing Missouri over specifically? I don't feel like they have a ton of Big 12 rivalries, they have played Illinois 4 times in the past 7 years, and I could see them having a decent rivalry with Iowa (they both used to be in the same conference).
Missouri is good choice. But I would rather see forcing Notre Dame into the Big 10 rather than the Big East.
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