BCS Myths

Unfortunately, the season did not end with as many undefeated teams as I had hoped. Only Alabama and Boise State ended with zero losses. However, of the teams that did not get a shot at the title (i.e. other than Florida and Texas), we had two that ended with one loss (TCU, Cincinnati) and five that ended with two losses (Central Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa, Penn State, BYU) . That’s seven teams that should have had a shot at the title. Why include teams with two losses? The 2007/2008 season clearly showed that you are eligible for the championship even with two losses as LSU who was ranked fifth going into the end of the season was vaulted up to the championship game.

Perhaps I should keep a tally of how many teams each year never get a legitimate shot at the title despite similar records to other teams in the same year.

As is obvious to anyone that is not a university president or athletic director, the BCS is rigged. We all know it. It is geared towards getting money to a small number of conferences and schools at the cost of determining its champion in an equitable fashion. I did not think it was possible have more controversy than Utah's unbeaten 2008 season but this year will top that in spades.

Going into the bowl season, we are going to end up with five undefeated teams: Florida or Alabama, Texas, TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State. It is inescapable that the current system is arbitrary. Texas will get into the national championship game simply because it was sexier to pollsters at the outset of the season and never lost. Of course, a number of other teams have also not lost and therein lays the problem. Only a playoff can solve this problem. Only when teams actually playing each other can we know which team is the best.

Furthermore, this year finally put to rest any claims to Myth #4 "The regular season is just like a playoff." In a playoff, if you win every game, you win the title. However, we are going to potentially end the year with three to four teams (after the bowls) with unbeaten records. So much for that idea.

Frank DeFord of Sports Illustrated has written a good article about the systemic unfairness of the BCS. It is amazing how the defenders of the BCS do not recognize it as the cartel that it is. One would think that any argument along the lines of "well, team [Fill-in a non-BCS school] couldn't play with the likes of [Fill-in a BCS school]" would be thoroughly trounced by now by the likes of Boise State, BYU and Utah. The ONLY fair and logical way to determine a champion is with play on the field.

In the category of debunking the "greatest regular season in sports" let's look at some of the gems in the first week of the 2009 season:

North Dakota State v Iowa State
South Carolina at North Carolina State
Troy at Bowling Green
Villanova at Temple
Coast Carolina at Kent State
North Texas at Ball State
Eastern Kentucky at Indiana
Utah State at Utah
Oregon at Boise State

Beyond Oregon-Boise State and perhaps Utah-Utah State does anyone care about any of these games? Remember, it's the "greatest" regular season in sports so obviously all of these teams have a shot right?

Wrong. Even if Iowa State were to go undefeated and win the Big 12, their chances of playing for the national title are zero. The same is true with all of these teams. We already know what happened to Utah after they went undefeated. Compare that to any sport where there is a playoff where EVERY team at the outset of the season has a shot at playing for the title. Knowing that your team has absolutely no chance of even playing for the title regardless of how many games is not fun.

I've mentioned on previous occassions that a playoff would make more money than the bowls. Jim Wheeler agrees as he proposed a playoff for $300 million to the NCAA back in 1999. Some have suggested that one of the elements pushing against a playoff is that the NCAA bylaws explicitly state that the season is over after the last bowl game and that changing it would require a vote by its members. However, this ignores other possible solutions including a two week playoff in December after the regular season and before the bowls.

An excellent article by Stewart Mandel at Sports Illustrated nicely illuminates additional holes in this myth. In short, the ratings for the BCS bowls are down with the exception of the Rose Bowl. It should be noted that the Rose Bowl is the core impediment to a playoff so unfortunately the fans are not doing a better job of dragging down those ratings. As many people I know echoed, 2005 will the high water mark for the BCS. That means that the ratings, overall, in the bowls will continue to decline until a playoff is put into place.

Beyond the mountain of evidence, do we need any more proof than the 2008 Utah Utes? They went 13-0 and smoked Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. Are they the National Champion? No. Why? Because the Beauty Contest System will not let non-BCS schools consistently take money from the BCS conferences. Just letting them play in a BCS bowl is the best bone they'll get thrown. Congratulations Utah! You have provided more evidence that the BCS is a farce.

Flaw: Better does not equate to good, reasonable or logical.

 "We used to have a hot poker jammed up our behind but now we don't heat the poker. It's much better." The BCS and whatever you wish to call the system before the BCS are systemically flawed for the same reason: both systems assume that humans can guess as to the two best teams without the top teams playing each other (sometimes despite the fact that the teams played each other as in 2008 when Oklahoma went over Texas even though Texas won when the two teams played each other). If humans were able to accurately determine which of two teams was superior, Vegas sports books would close overnight.

Flaw: Depends greatly on how one defines "right". Ignores teams with an early loss that may have improved near the end of the year.

What exactly is meant by "right"? If "right" means avoiding another public relations disaster, then they have only ever gotten it "right" once (2005). That year, it required having two teams put up about 50 points on every opponent they met.

The entire argument against the BCS is that there is no way to throw darts at a board and determine the two best teams. It cannot be done. The fundamental flaw in the BCS is that it assumes that sportscasters and coaches can guess as to the two best teams. 

 

 

Flaws: Ignores solutions to the contrary, Hypocritical, Could simply move the games back
  
A four team playoff could be created by adding a single game for four teams. If done in the first week in December, the season would not be extended at all. Even better would be an eight team playoff in the first two weeks of December. Teams would need to move their games back so that they could account for the possibility of a playoff spot but is that really that much to ask?

The reason this argument is hypocritical is that the NCAA recently extended the season to 12 games. You cannot argue that the season is too long and then turn around and extend it.

If making the season extend into December

Flaw:  Counting the hits and not the misses.

Let's look at Week 14 for 2008. We have the following games:

Ball State v Western Michigan
Navy v Northern Illinois
Texas v Texas A&M
Pittsburgh v West Virginia
Eastern Michigan v Central Michigan
Mississippi v Mississippi State
Ohio v Miami (OH)
East Carolina v UTEP
Temple v Akron
Kent State v Buffalo
Arkansas v LSU
Nebraska v Colorado
Bowling Green v Toledo
Boise State v Fresno State
Arizona State v UCLA
Georgia Tech v Georgia
Cincinnati v Syracuse
North Carolina State v Miami (FL)
Clemson v South Carolina
Virginia Tech v Virginia
Kansas v Missouri
UAB v UCF
Arkansas State v North Texas
Nevada v Louisiana Tech
Utah State v New Mexico State
Southern Miss v Southern Methodist
Alabama v Auburn
Florida v Florida State
Texas Tech v Baylor
Boston College v Maryland
North Carolina v Duke
Memphis v Tulane
Rice v Houston
Tulsa v Marshall
Florida Atlantic v Florida International
Tennessee v Kentucky
Oregon v Oregon State
Wake Forest v Vanderbilt
Oklahoma v Oklahoma State
USC v Notre Dame
Hawaii v Washington State

Of those 26 games, only four had any possible bearing on the 2008 national championship (Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida). Even if we are generous and include #5 USC, that still means that only 20% of the games had any meaning. More specifically, over 80% had absolutely no bearing on determining the champion.

In week 14 of the NFL, of the 16 games played, 14 of those games either had some bearing on one of the teams making the playoffs or on home field advantage in the playoffs.That translates to 87.5% of the games late in the season still affecting the championship.

Generally, when someone makes the asinine argument about college football's regular season, they are only counting most of the games for the teams in the top five. I say most, because there are still ridiculous matchups like #4 Florida's 70-19 pasting of Citadel in week 13 of 2008. The people that make this argument ignore teams like Temple, Western Kentucky, and Washington State. After one loss for a less prestigious school, they have no shot at winning the title even if they win every other game.