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Raging at the BCS (Part II)
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I've had it. Enough is enough. It's time to throw the BS flag on the BCS and all the associated pollsters that have a hand in the BCS slapstick comedy that we are treated to each autumn.
It seems that every year, we see the same teams in the pre-season top ten. I can even name them off of the top of my head.....
Ohio State, USC, LSU, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas
It seems that every year, we see the same teams in the pre-season top ten. I can even name them off of the top of my head.....
Ohio State, USC, LSU, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas
Here is a link showing how Sports Illustrated and CNN have the teams the teams ranked. Keep in mind that this is before they even show up for two a days.
Note that four of the teams that I mentioned off of the top of my head are in the top four slots.
Throw in the odd ducks to round out the pre-season top ten and you've essentially singled out six teams every year and given them the best possible chance to play for all the marbles. It doesn't matter what happened last year with these teams. It doesn't matter that as a team, they haven't played a single game. All that matters is that on paper, they have "better" athletes than anyone else. These teams start at the top of the heap and it’s up to them to prove the pollsters wrong.
The way that the system currently works favors the teams that are highly ranked at the outset of the season. Did you catch that???
The way that the system currently works favors the teams that are highly ranked at the outset of the season. Did you catch that???
If you are highly ranked before you ever play a game, you have a better chance to play in the "National Championship" game with one loss than a team that was unranked at the beginning of the season and goes undefeated.
Should we even bother playing the season this year?
Let's just crown the Gators now and concentrate on the NFL.
Even when teams that are highly ranked in the pre-season polls do lose a game, they either drop to a lower slot in the top ten or to the eleventh or twelfth spot in the top twenty-five. It doesn't even matter whether the team that they lost to was ranked or not.
This ensures that when teams that have worked their way into the top ten via on-field performance, instead of being selected for the pre-season top ten by the “experts” and the coaches lose a game, that the original preseason picks make their way back into the mix.
Just ask last year’s Utah team, which handed Alabama, (another team that was not in last year’s preseason top ten), its hat in the Sugar Bowl, or the 2006 Boise State squad that housed Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl how this experiment in self fulfilling prophecy works. I'm sure that they'll be more than happy to give you their sentiments on the subject.
Don't ask these guys their opinions about the BCS, you might have to hear them.
I am not saying that Utah or Boise State can compete with the big boys on a year in, year out basis. What I am saying is that when a team goes undefeated, they should have the chance to play for the big crystal football without the interference of regionally biased pollsters and a computer system that can only calculate hard data, which is entered at the discretion of the software programmer.
Any computer programmer will tell you that you can set up parameters on a program to get preconceived results. Garbage In equals Garbage Out. I do not hold the folks that write the software responsible for this particular facet of the BCS system. The folks that write the software are strapped by the parameters that the BCS has given them to work with.
Which brings me to another issue with the current system; it completely discounts the heart and character of a team in favor of measurable statistics. Take a look at last year’s preseason rankings.
Which brings me to another issue with the current system; it completely discounts the heart and character of a team in favor of measurable statistics. Take a look at last year’s preseason rankings.
You'll notice that every team that was ranked in last year’s pre-season top ten lost at least one game. Auburn lost seven times last year….seven losses for a team that was supposed to be one of the best in the nation. Clemson lost six times last year. WVU lost four times. These were your pre-season number eight, nine and ten teams.
Clemson and a couple of other preseason top ten teams didn't have too much to celebrate last year.
Ohio State lost twice and was still able to go to yet another major bowl game….where they lost for the third consecutive year, but still ended up ranked ninth in the final poll, ahead of Boise State and Texas Tech, who had one and two losses respectively.
Last year’s preseason number one team…Georgia lost three times and LSU lost five times.
Only USC, Oklahoma and Florida were truly able to live up to the lofty expectations that were placed on them at the outset of the season.
Having the coolest mid-field shouldn't ensure a spot in the pre-season polls
Three out of ten teams is not a very good average.
I have yet to find a person that can explain to me why Florida and Oklahoma, both with one loss were playing for the National Championship when Utah, who went undefeated, was left out in the cold.
Oh yeah, that’s right…..Utah doesn’t play in a BCS conference. The Utes play in the Mountain West. It’s really kind of funny that two teams from the Mountain West ended up in the final BCS top ten poll, (Utah at number two and TCU at number seven), when neither team was seriously considered for the national championship game.
Boise State, from the Western Athletic Conference went 12-1, but was ranked number eleven, behind two three loss teams and four two loss teams.
TCU and Boise were denied invitations due the BCS’s rules that state that only one team from a non-BCS conference can be invited to a BCS bowl game each year. Apparently, in order to get the best teams into the BCS bowl games the moon has to be in the seventh house and Jupiter should lie with Mars and peace should guide the planets and love should steer the stars….sorry, got off on a little 5th Dimension moment there.
Here are the BCS bowl eligibility rules governing Non-BCS conference teams:
-The highest ranked champion of a non BCS conference will receive an automatic berth IF:
-They are ranked in the top twelve, or
-They are ranked in the top 16 and ranked higher than at least one BCS conference champion.
-No more than one such team from the Mountain West, C-USA, MAC, Sun Belt or WAC shall earn an automatic berth in any given year.
It’s almost pathetic. I cannot even believe that this was the best solution that could have been arrived at. To me, it smacks of consiracy. It looks like the big boys got together and decided to blatantly keep the brass ring out of reach of the little guy. I see no other way to interpret this set of rules. The logic here is so skewed that it will take a 20 mule team of anti-trust lawyers to figure it out.
While I'm on the subject of skewed logic....how does Oklahoma jump over Texas in the final BCS rankings last year??? Texas beat OU head to head, yet OU was made the defacto Big 12 South champion due to the fact that they had “more impressive wins” over common opponents, thus they went on to the Big 12 championship game and subsequently the NCG.
Excuse me??? The last that I checked…a win is a win. Nothing goes in the “W” column with an asterisk that says, “only won by two”.
And how is it that Florida gets into the NCG, when they lost to an unranked team at home during the regular season??? UF barely even dropped out of the top ten after losing to Ole Miss, (yes, I know that Ole Miss ended up being a better team than anyone expected, but at the time, they were unranked…this just supports my position on preseason rankings as they pertain to the BCS).
I'll tell you how. It is because the current system is ridiculously twisted and it seems that voters will go to any lengths to validate their own preconceived notions, rather than looking at the body of work in front of them.
As of the writing of this column, it looks like as far as this coming football season goes, you are not going to be able to knock Oklahoma, USC, Texas and Florida out of the top ten for long, unless they lose twice in a row. They start at the top and they’ll finish at the top.
Hell, I'm starting to wonder what Ohio State did to the pollsters to be neglected and not even listed in this year’s pre-season top five. Usually, you can depend on Captain Sweater Vest and his crew of “Big Ten Studs” to be near the top in the pre-season polls.
You can also depend on them to play as soft of schedule as they can and to lose bowl games, especially if there is an SEC team involved. Yes, I know that Ohio State plays USC again this year, but their other out of conference games are Toledo, New Mexico State and Navy. Please don’t get me started with my opinions about the Big 10, by saying that OSU plays a tough conference schedule.
There has been a proposed solution of a play-off for the last few years. I am one hundred percent in favor of a play-off system in which the top eight or sixteen teams in the nation at the end of the year are seeded like the NCAA basketball tourney bracket and the games are paired the same way, ie: number one plays number sixteen, number two plays number fifteen, etc.
There has been a proposed solution of a play-off for the last few years. I am one hundred percent in favor of a play-off system in which the top eight or sixteen teams in the nation at the end of the year are seeded like the NCAA basketball tourney bracket and the games are paired the same way, ie: number one plays number sixteen, number two plays number fifteen, etc.
This would only add three or four weeks to the season, (we wait up to six weeks for the National Championship Game now), and at the end of the day, we would have a true national champion.
The caveat to this would be that there would be absolutely no rankings until the season was over. After regular season play was finished, the NCAA could convene a selection committee and look at the "bodies of work" for each team that might deserve a shot at the big prize. You could even hold the playoff games at the sites of the Big Four BCS Bowls.
The rest of the bowls, which mean absolutely nothing to begin with, could have their pick of the remaining teams. They could even hold bowl invitations until after the playoffs were underway and invite the losers from the first two rounds. That way, everyone still shares in the revenue and college football and the public that watches college football would have a real, no debates champion.
Whatever happens, I'm begging....please take this whole evolution out of the hands of coaches, sports writers, and computers, (why the hell we let computers get involved in this particularly human evolution to begin with is beyond me), and let it fall to an unbiased body of judges.
At the very least, ban official rankings until the end of the season, so that we can actually get a feel for who's who out there without the distraction of polls. Polls skew the prism through which we view college football so horribly, that by the end of the season, trying to figure out who the best teams might actually be is futile at best and ridiculous at worst.
Whatever happens, I'm begging....please take this whole evolution out of the hands of coaches, sports writers, and computers, (why the hell we let computers get involved in this particularly human evolution to begin with is beyond me), and let it fall to an unbiased body of judges.
At the very least, ban official rankings until the end of the season, so that we can actually get a feel for who's who out there without the distraction of polls. Polls skew the prism through which we view college football so horribly, that by the end of the season, trying to figure out who the best teams might actually be is futile at best and ridiculous at worst.
Let’s have a playoff and let the players decide who the best team in the land is.
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