thirtyoneblog

OK, now that the season is all but over (and a sad exit it was for my team, for sure!), I can get into what has been brewing in my head for some time…College football playoffs.

In a word (or a few words) – I’m not in favor of it. Well, I take that back. I’m not against the theory, but since no one has figured out a way to make it happen that’s better than the current BCS system, I’m thinking that what we’ve got is better than what we used to have.

We used to rely solely on polls and sure as shooting, two (or more) teams would seem equally deserving and we’d have a national emergency on our hands over who really won the national championship. Currently, at the very least the #1 and #2 teams play each other, which is a step up from the pre-BCS days.

Everyone wants to cry and moan about how the BCS stinks, but nobody has a solution. And there are plenty of reasons there is no solution. Some of them, like the fact that it would unreasonably lengthen the season and the fact that the bowl system is a cash cow no one can politically touch with a pole, are good but not very meaningful to me. The biggest reason, to me, is that just like the imperfect BCS system, deserving teams would get the shaft and lesser teams would jump ahead of them and get a chance.

Some say that’s good and preserves the “Cinderella” aspect that’s always present in basketball playoffs. While I can appreciate that argument, it doesn’t trump the simple logic that if a playoff is supposed to determine the best team, shouldn’t the best teams be part of the playoff?

While the BCS relies on statistics, it includes a lot of factors that are meaningful in a team’s overall season. I’d rather see a team ranked high who lost a game or two but had strength of schedule, than an undefeated team who didn’t play anybody. And I’ve certainly seen enough decrying of successful teams’ records who had no strength of schedule, to know that I’m not the only person who cares about the issue.

And honestly, so much of the objection to the BCS is by those who considered themselves shafted through their own personal bias. Hey, I’m not knocking bias – we’ve all got it and I do too. But I really do think that if I hear “45-35″ from a Longhorn one more time, I might go postal on someone. Yes, Texas beat OU. But Tech beat Texas. But OU beat Tech. But……And on we go. I really don’t see the logic in the argument that Texas deserved a shot at the Big XII championship by virtue of the fact that they won the head to head against OU. Because head to head doesn’t mean a hill of beans in a 3 way tie. That’s what “3 way tie” means.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Big XII championship game at all. This year, there was a lot of moaning over how Missouri played for the conference title, but the fact was that Tech, OU and Texas beat every North division team they played, so the same situation would have presented itself regardless of who ultimately won the North or what kind of tiebreaker was used in the South.

If someone presents a truly workable playoff solution, one that doesn’t take a whole other semester and includes deserving teams while leaving out lesser ones (including champions of inferior conferences who despite winning locally, can’t compete on a national level), then I’d love to hear about it. Until then, I’ll respect that the BCS makes at least some level of sense and is the best solution the power that be have been able to implement thus far.