I know everyone hates the BCS, but allowing a playoff at the end of the year in a current situation would kill pure college football National Champions. Take last year, Ohio State won 13 games. Although they might not have been able to beat every single team out there, no one beat them. Plain and simple. If you throw 3 or even 4 more weeks of football in there, you are still going to have to make the cut somewhere. Right now with 1 loss every game our season is on the line. It's like every Saturday is a playoff game, with emotional highs and lows to go with it. When I watch my favorite pro team play in any sport I justify a loss as inconsequential, and that I'll care more around playoff time. Then playoff time comes around and I get up for it for what, one or 2 games? Then it's going to happen, you'll have a 2, 3, or even 4 loss team win a conference, get in the playoff, and miracle their butts to the top. It happens in the pros with 6 loss teams. Do we really need a playoff to tell us who the best team is in a season? Even if a 3 loss team is crowned national champions are they the best team that year? NO, because at least three other teams beat them. The Vikings went 15-1 in the late 90s, they were the best team of the year, but they lost one more game in the Championship because they had a bad day. They still were the best team that year. And I can't even remember who won the Super Bowl that year because it didn't matter, The Vikes were the best. It takes away from the National Championships award itself and takes away from the game.
By that logic, you'd have to be opposed to any playoff. What about the NCAA basketball tournament? Do you think the ABSOLUTE best team in college basketball wins every year?
The Vikings were not the best team because they lost a playoff game. In both college and pro football the best team is the team that is playing the best at the end of the year. A team that loses a couple of early season games because of injuries or having young players who haven't yet jelled as a team might easily be the best football team in the NCAA by the end of the year and if they were to earn a playoff berth they deserve a chance to prove it on the field. In 2001 LSU deserved their low top 25 rating because they were not a great football team in the early to the middle portion of the season. Due to his injuries in previous seasons Rohan Davey hadn't gained the experience he needed as a senior to be a great college quarterback. After the Ole Miss loss LSU gelled as a team and got better and better each week and by the end of the SECCG they were at that time one of the best 4 or 5 teams in the nation. Certainly better than Nebraska who only got into the Rose Bowl NCCG because of the quirkiness of the BCS system and luck. The LSU team that destroyed Illinois in the Sugar Bowl was not the same LSU team that lost to Ole Miss. I personally feel that the LSU team that was the end result of the season was at that time no worse than the second best team in America behind Miami. Could they have beaten Miami? We'll never know. They were denied a chance to work their way up through a playoff and prove it on the field. Right now Georgia is not the same Georgia team that lost to LSU and blew Tennessee off the field because of injuries to key players. If these players recover from their injuries Georgia will be a much better team than they are right now and probably better than they were when they lost to LSU, but even though LSU has BCS points for a quality win LSU will lose those points if Georgia loses to Florida even though the Georgia team LSU beat was deserving of their ranking at the time and even if they are not as good right now as they were when LSU beat them the fact is that LSU beat a team that was very good on the day that LSU beat them. The way the quality win points work a team loses the points they have already earned by beating a good team if the team that was a good team at that time becomes a worse team later on in the season. Texas was a top 15 team at the time they played Oklahoma. If Oklahoma had beaten Texas in a close game Texas wouldn't have dropped out of the top 15 and Oklahoma would have gotten points for beating a quality opponent. Since OU was good enough to beat Texas 65-13 instead of barely ekeing out a win they were responsible for Texas dropping down into the lower edges of the top 25. Thus, OU was penalized by the BCS for being too good. Auburn was ranked 17th on the day LSU beat them so whether the game is a blowout or a one point game LSU wouldn't have gotten any quality win points. But, if LSU had beaten Auburn in a close game Auburn wouldn't have dropped as far as the did in the polls. The fact that LSU blew them off the field dropped Auburn down far enough that even if Auburn win all the rest of their games it will be a lot harder for them to regain top 15 status and thus retroactively qualify as a quality win for LSU, so LSU is penalized by the BCS for being a lot better than Auburn rather than just a little bit better than Auburn on a day that LSU wouldn't have gotten quality points for the win at the time but might retroactively receive quality points for if they hadn't made it much harder for Auburn to work their way back up to quality win status by beating the crap out of them. Does this make any sense at all? It is actually possible for a team to hurt their own BCS status by being too much better than an opponent. The BCS has taken the margin of victory out of the equation but they use the polls as part of their criteria and the poll voters a still influenced by margin of victory not only in moving a team up in the polls but also in moving a team down in the polls. The number of spots in the polls a team can move up after a win is usually a lot few upward movement spots than the losing teams downward poll movement. For example say the #6 and #7 ranked teams play each other. The 6th rated team wins a close game and depending on what the teams ranked ahead of them do moves up to #4 or #5 or stays at 6th. Having lost a close game the poll voters still consider the losing team to be worthy of a decent ranking and drop them to 11th or 12th and the winning team gets quality points that it may or may not keep depending on what the losing team does in future games that the winning team has no control of. In scenario #2 the #6 team beats the #7 team by 40 points. Again, depending upon how the teams ranked ahead of them have fared that weekend #6 moves up to #4 or #5 or stays at #6 but the losing #7 team drops to 19th in the polls. The winning #6 team then gets no quality points at that time but may be retroactively awarded quality points works its way back up the ladder but by beating the now #19 team the #6 team has made it a more difficult climb back up the ladder to quality status than if the team formerly known as #7 only drops to #11 or #12. 9th ranked LSU beat 7th ranked Georgia back on October 4th. Georgia has climbed back up the ladder to #4 giving LSU quality points for beating a top 10 team. Lets say Georgia beats Florida and USC and/or Miami loses on Shakedown Saturday Number 2. Georgia moves up to #2 in the polls and the quality points LSU earned on Oct. 4th increase in value even though LSU had nothing to do with how good Georgia is on Nov. 1st. Then lets say David Greene, David Pollock and other key Georgia player get injured in the Florida game and in the next weeks practice and are out for the year. Georgia goes into a tailspin and loses their next three games. LSU then loses the quality points they earned by beating a good team because the team that Georgia has become is not then as good as the Georgia team on Oct 4th. Its time for the NCAA to end this madness and let the teams that would qualify for a playoff by winning their conference championships or being good enough to qualify for a wildcard spot settle it on the field. If the "student athletes" in Division 1AA, DII and DIII can extend their seasons by 3 or 4 games to play for their divisions championships I can't see where any argument against the D1 teams doing the same thing holds any water. Some people prefer a 4 or an 8 team playoff. I personally favor a 16 team playoff but whatever they would do is far superior to the way it is now. By the way last year both Tampa Bay and Oakland had 4 regular season losses each but they were the two best teams at the end of the year. They proved that the old fashioned way. They earned it. This was before the BCS but in 1984 BYU played their usual patsys in their 4th rate conference and finished the regular season undefeated. Then they beat a Michigan team with 4 losses not in the Sugar, Orange, Rose or Fiesta Bowl but in the Holiday Bowl that had a tie in with BYUs 4th rate conference. Since none of the teams that really were good like Nebraska or Penn State were undefeated the idiot poll voters actually awarded the national championship to BYU. If anybody believes that BYU was the best college football team in America in 1984 I have a deal for you on some worthless swamp land. I would love to see the season end up with 7 of the current contenders with one loss each and nobody undefeated. 5 very good football teams would be screwed while the arbitrary BCS system selects 2 of them for the Sugar Bowl . It could happen. Nebraska wins out and beats Oklahoma in the Big12 CG. Miami loses to V Tech and V Tech wins out. LSU, USC and Florida State all win out. LSU, Florida State, Miami, V Tech, USC, Nebraska and Oklahoma all have one loss at the end of the season. Buy some good ear plugs if you don't want to hear the coast to coast howling from the left out teams coaches, fans, athletic directors and each teams local media outlets. The left out teams would be paired off in the other BCS Bowls. Just to make it interesting lets say that Conference USA champ TCU is undefeated and matched with one of the "also rans" in a BCS bowl. The AP poll is obligated to vote the Sugar Bowl winner as the national champ but the coaches poll is free to vote for whomever they choose. We end up with an official BCS Champion, another mythical National Champion voted #1 in the coaches poll and two one loss BCS bowl winners with no NC trophy at all. Or in the unlikely event that TCU won their bowl game an undefeated BCS bowl winner with no NC. If anybody knows the email addresses of the BCS officials send this scenario to them. They won't sleep for months. EDIT: I just realized that my fantasy BCS projection has no Big 10 team and the Big 10 champ is guaranteed a BCS bowl spot. Make that a one loss Michigan State or Ohio State and it gets even better. Since there are two Big 12 teams and two Big East teams in the mix and Nebraska having beat Oklahoma and V Tech having beat Miami would mean that the 3 remaining at large spots some bowl's officials would have to make the choice between non conference champions Oklahoma, Miami or decide whether to include TCU and leave out either OU or Miami and risk a lawsuit by TCU claiming the Big Boys conspired to screw them out of the $13 million that each BCS bowl participant gets.
What's PURE about having 2 teams claiming they are the national champions like so many times in years past? What's PURE about Div 1-A college football being the only sport on the planet that don't have a true system to determine a champion? It's PURELY asinine ... and LSU may very well be a victim of this system after the SECCG!
It's all relative. The team with the best record taking their SOS schedule into consideration should be the NC.
Here's a really well thought-out proposal for a playoff system: http://cf16.org/initiative.asp It would be a 16 team playoff, and here is how the 16 teams would be chosen:
Re: Re: No 4 loss team should ever be a NC That is perhaps the longest statement I've ever seen on this board, good stuff though
If you like the playoff system, pro football is your sport. But if you like rankings and bowls, then college football is for you. I agree with the thread starter here, I enjoy the feeling of a playoff atmosphere every week of the college football season, no other sport comes close to comparing to it. The playoffs would water down the season, and it would become less interesting. You can't compare college football to college basketball, b/c college basketball gives out 64 spots for it's playoff. With 117 teams in major college football, there is no way to have a fair playoff system. No one is wrong here, it is purely personal choice. I enjoy pro and college football seperately. Personally I could care less about the pro football season, it is boring. College football is different, each game is interesting, has it's own built in drama. Other than watching LSU each week, I catch a few Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 games, and even CUSA games. Once the college game adopts the pro system, it will be less interesting to me. But it will probably bring in more casual fans like pro football has done over the years, so I'm in the minority.
