11/27/2004
THE BCS WORKS
Two of my favorite bloggers, Bryan and Steven, are up in arms over the BCS, since whoever wins this year’s automatic bid from the Big East conference will have at least four losses, while the once-defeated Texas Longhorns are probably going to get shut out of the BCS.
First of all, gentlemen, we can certainly agree on this: If Texas had beaten Oklahoma, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, right? Well, that’s my point: if you play in a BCS conference, your whole conference season is bascially a playoff. (If you play in a non-BCS conference, your entire season is a playoff, since no undefeated non-BCS team is likely to qualify for an automatic bid.) You might still make the BCS if you don’t win your conference/division, but that’s not a guarantee. The BCS bylaws allow for non-BCS teams to claim one of the two at-large bids under certain circumstances, which Utah did and Boise State just might be able to do. So the net result is that, in fact, that loss to OU costs more than pride. (If you’re a Cal fan, then it’s the USC loss that ruined you, but the reasoning is still the same.)
So I don’t think that complaining about Syracuse or Pitt getting the automatic bid is fair. The Big East gets an automatic bid no matter what. If Texas or Cal had gone 8-3 but still finished second in their conferences, nobody would be complaining much about the Big East. You could complain that it’s not right for Utah to get a bid and leave Texas (or Cal) at home . . . but that’s how the BCS rules are written and, after all, Utah won all their games, and you didn’t.
The obvious solution, of course, is to fire Mack Brown. Don’t laugh–John Cooper could beat everybody but Michigan, that conference rival that kept the Buckeyes out of the Rose Bowl every year, and people wondered why OSU would do such a foolish thing.
The next year, they beat Michigan–and won the national title.
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The BCS does work, sayeth the Auburn alum. In that, the point of the silly thing is to generate revenue, newsprint and watercooler talk for ABC.
At best, this is an ABC family of networks national title. At least until Fox gets the rights. And then, it will be a Murdoch family of networks title.
But its no national title.
Any of the five unbeatens at the end of bowl season would tell you that.
Comment by Kenny — 11/27/2004 @ 10:40 pm
A good post, but I take exception to your opening statement. If Texas had beaten the Oklahoma, we would still have the discussion with the Sooners, instead of the Longhorns, complaining about how “unfair” the BCS is. Likewise, if Cal had beaten USC.
Personally, I think that we need to go to a sixteen team playoff, with the conference champions from the 11 Div 1-A conferences and five at large spots chosen from the highest ranking, non-conference champion or independent teams.
Comment by Scott — 11/27/2004 @ 11:32 pm
I disagree with the idea that if Texas had beaten Oklahoma we would not have the discussion that Texas belongs in the BCS. We would still have the discussion only with the Sooners as the “aggrieved” party instead of the Longhorns (or USC instead of Cal, if Cal had beaten USC). Also, it shouldn’t be overlooked that if Auburn beats TN, and USC beats UCLA and OK beats COLO., Auburn will have the biggest and most legitimate gripe of all. Esspecially if they win their bowl game which will most likely produce another split MNC.
That being said, this Longhorn agrees with the gist of your argument. I still wish, and have for a long a time, that we could incorporate some sort of playoff system into the college football postseason. A sixteen team postseason incorporating the 11 conference champions and 5 at-large spots chosen from the highest ranked remaining teams seems about right.
Comment by Scott — 11/27/2004 @ 11:49 pm
Gtranted, as I said in an earlier post on this subject: if Texas would just beat OU, then Texas would have nothing to gripe about. Still, if we can’t have a playoff, at a minimum it would nice if the Big Bad BCS Bowls at least featured the best teams in college.
I understand that this is the way the BCS is set up, but really: the idea that 6-5 Syracuse is going to get to go to a BCS Bowl and a number of superior teams (inluding Texas) will be shut out.
It is a poor system designed only to guarantee that #1 plays #2 and nothing more. Granted: that is an improvement over the old system, but it has also had the effect of increasing the significance of some bowls and diminishing the importance of others.
Comment by Steven Taylor — 11/28/2004 @ 9:29 am
Oh, and Cal will get into a BCS Bowl, so Cal has less to gripe about.
Comment by Steven Taylor — 11/28/2004 @ 9:29 am
And another thing…:)
I don’t buy the fire Mack Brown argument. I don’t see starting from scratch because of 5 losses to OU for a coach who has only loss 6 other games over 6 years.
Comment by Steven Taylor — 11/28/2004 @ 9:31 am
And one mroe thing: where’s OSU now?
Comment by Steven Taylor — 11/28/2004 @ 10:12 am
With the BCS, we’ve gone from a 1-team playoff to a 2-team playoff. There’s nothing wrong with that - if you exclude last year, in the history of the BCS, the team that won the whole deal was clearly the #1 team. In other words, the best team in football was one of the two selected - which is good enough for me.
Last year, it didn’t work. This year, we’ll have to wait and see. If there is a problem, it would be hard to justify expanding the playoff to more than four teams. After all, with the top four BCS-ranked teams in the championship race, can you really argue that #5 might actually be the best team in the country?
Comment by Dave — 11/29/2004 @ 2:32 am
I am not arguing that Texas has a shot at the title. I am arguing that the BCS system has created an upper-tier of bowls that teams fight to get into. I would prefer that the BCS Bowls feature the 8 best teams in the country. I think that would be more interesting than what we currently get.
Comment by Steven Taylor — 11/29/2004 @ 11:11 am
This won’t happen of course, but the statisticians would ensure it shows up as at least a probablity:
Colorado beats Oklahoma.
Tennessee beats Auburn.
Then Pitt, Colorado and UT are all in the BCS. Utah State, Louisville, Boise State, all still out.
That, friends, is how the BCS most decidely does not work.
Comment by Kenny — 11/30/2004 @ 8:52 pm
How much says exactly one of OU or Auburn loses, thus “fixing” the problem? Fate, somehow, tends to play out that way.
Comment by Dave — 12/1/2004 @ 3:24 pm