I am not as big a fan of playoffs as everyone else here seems to be. I see some value in the bowl system. However, this year particularly I think Pete Carroll and his university have acted like total *sses because they agreed to a system by which the national champions would be determined and then reneged when it didn't go their way. That having been said, here's an interesting article from this morning's Wall Street Journal on the history of the college football championship and some of the reasons why it might be ok for there to be genuine differences of opinion every year on who is best. Don't Fix It; It's Not Broken Who says college football should have just one No. 1 team? BY ALLEN BARRA Wednesday, January 7, 2004 12:00 a.m. EST The methods for deciding the No. 1 team in college football go back at least to Walter Camp in the late 1880s, when Yale, Princeton and Harvard dominated the game. For some fans, all the systems, up to and including the Bowl Championship Series games (which this year saw Southern Cal defeat Michigan 28-14 in the Rose Bowl and LSU beat Oklahoma 21-14 in the Sugar Bowl), have had one thing in common: They don't work. There was scarcely a season when the fans of at least one team didn't think it was cheated by the so-called opinion polls. Of course, there was a redeeming flip side: The followers of several different colleges often ended the season claiming that their school was the best. The 1966 season ended in perhaps the most famous of all college-football-poll debates. With two weeks left in the season, Notre Dame was ranked first, Michigan State second, and defending national champion Alabama third. The Fighting Irish and the Spartans played to a hugely publicized tie; Alabama finished the season unbeaten and untied yet still wound up third, at least according to the Associated Press poll of sportswriters and the United Press International poll of college coaches. Alabama fans printed bumper stickers that read "To Hell with AP and UPI--'Bama is Number One." The controversy had the happy effect of keeping college football alive in the off-season. "To say that people argued about the 1966 championship for months is an understatement," says Paul Finebaum, a Birmingham-based sportswriter and radio personality. "In Alabama, you can work up a hot argument today by mentioning the '66 polls, often with people who weren't even born till years later." The 1973 season was another banner year for "Who's No. 1?" aficionados. Notre Dame finished first in the AP poll, while Alabama topped UPI's. Both teams claimed the then-mythical national championship. So did Penn State, which finished the season with a perfect record. Its coach, Joe Paterno, had championship rings made for his players. "Whose poll did you win?" asked a sportswriter. "The Paterno poll!" the coach fired back. More than 200 teams have claimed some sort of major college-football championship at one time or another. Because of the number of teams involved and the shortness of the season, no satisfactory playoff system has ever been agreed on. Nor did many in college football think one was needed. The late Southern Cal coach John McKay summed up their attitude: "We've got an ideal situation with lots of teams in all parts of the country happy and plenty of glory to go around. Why do we have to have just one big winner?" Why indeed? The simplest explanation is offered by Bill Curry, the former Georgia Tech and Alabama coach and current ESPN analyst, who comments: "Like so many things in college football, there's a pull in the direction of the pro game. The NFL has a Super Bowl, so some media people think college football has to have one, too." Given the impracticality of a major college football playoff, the Bowl Championship Series was supposed to be a compromise, combining the old "opinion" polls with the newer computer rankings in order to pit the two best teams in the country in a winner-takes-all bowl game. But as with so many compromises, the BCS (which was born in 1998 when 63 teams in six of the biggest conferences pooled their influence in an attempt to create an "official" national champion) has caused more controversy than the system it replaced. In the words of the University of Alabama in Birmingham's George Ignatin, whose computer, Mad Max, ranked teams for The Wall Street Journal for several years, "The BCS plan preserves all the flaws of the opinion polls and compounds them with logical absurdities." If opinion polls are subjective, thinks Prof. Ignatin, "why not toss them out altogether? And if computer rankings are more accurate, why not let the programmers make their own selections instead of the BCS limiting them with predetermined guidelines?" (This year, the BCS told its analysts not to consider margin of victory when ranking teams.) Adjusting the system to pick better teams, however, isn't necessarily the point. "The more you build up the BCS championship game," says Prof. Ignatin, "the less interest you'll find in the other bowl games. This year, through a fluke, the BCS lucked out: The Rose Bowl attracted some additional interest when it gained some national championship implications, as most analysts regard Southern Cal as the best team in the country. So fans interested in the national championship race probably watched both the Rose and Sugar Bowls. But then, before the BCS you used to have a situation like that almost every year." Most traditionalists would agree on one thing--the whole problem began with trying to fix something that wasn't broken in the first place.
I have yet to read one intelligent argument as to why Div 1-A college football should be the only sport on earth not to have a system to crown its champion. Curry says it would "pull in the direction of the pro game" ... does he not realize that high school football has a playoff system as well as most organized youth sports? If a playoff system is so bad, then why do we insist on having one for Div 1-AA, II and III? Let's set up bowl games for these schools as well! Let's eliminate all college playoff systems ... let the AP and Coaches Poll hand their basketball trophy to Duke, Kentucky or North Carolina every year. And since LSU baseball is king, just UPS our trophy to us right now ... no need for regionals, super regionals, College World Series. Afterall, we don't want college sports to become like the pro game!
here's a possible reason I am not positively opposed to some modified sort of playoff, such as (in this year, for instance) a game this week between LSU and USC. I do think, however, that football is very different from basketball for sure and perhaps even baseball in that the "work" during the season should be taken into account somewhat in determining who is "best". More than anything I think that since football is important in the psyche of the colleges all fall--so much more important than any other sport is--and the bowl system sort of caters to that and helps people feel good about the huge effort they put in during the regular season. I wouldn't want the regular season to be totally discounted and for there to be two seasons in the sense there are in the NBA and even in the NFL. That's all I'm saying. I DO see a difference between college football and some other sports.
Notre Dame has no right to the title in 1966. In the game of the century vs. MSU for the last game of the season--back then ND did not go to bowls and MSU couldn't go to the Rose Bowl due to the big ten's no repeat and rose bowl only rule, that game was for the nationalchampionship and Ara Parasegian played for a tie. ESPN classic recently replayed the game of the century and Ara himself admits to playing for a tie. The biggest wuss out in the history of college football. If you talk to any ND fans tell them that ND won't ever win another title since you can't play for ties anymore. Never let ND fans forget that shameful moment in their history.
Any "traditionalist" that defends a pre-BCS system that, among other atrocities, denied a National Championship TWICE IN A ROW to 11-0 Penn State teams is either (a) full of sh**, (b) an idiot, (c) insane or (d) all of the above. These were Penn State teams (1968-1969) that won 22 games in a row by an average score of 31-10. Insane.
What you fail to mention is that, back then, Penn State fattened up by feasting upon Eastern schools who were not nearly as consistently good as they are today. They played Syracuse, Rutgers, Pittsburgh (aside from the Dorsett years they always sucked) and BC. Their 11-0 seasons were akin to Tulane's 12-0 a few years back.
You are exactly right. Parsegian knew that he'd be undefeated with the tie and he also knew that the pollsters, given a choice, would always pick Notre Dame. With one loss they would have been forced to go with Bama. ND had the ball with plenty of time to move the ball down the field and he sat on it. Three years later, much to the glee of Cotton Bowl officials, Notre Dame rescinded their "No Bowl" rule AFTER the season was over and a 9-1 LSU team whose defense gave up 39 points IN 10 GAMES got screwed. ND went on to get creamed by Texas and finished 8-3-1 and still finished ahead of LSU. The human polls will NEVER give LSU a fair shake.
AAAARRRRRRRRRGGH!!!! Read my post in the "Can the AP Answer These Questions" thread! How did Pete Carroll and his university renege??? How have they acted like total *sses??? Should they have ordered the AP voters to vote them #2, not #1? Sould they not be claiming a share of the MNC? I don't get it. Can you tell me, honestly, that you would not act the same way had the roles been reversed? I seriously, seriously, doubt it. Had LSU missed out on the BCS championship game by just a small fraction because of how opponents' opponents did, would you not still think that your team, LSU, was still the best in all the land? And, if the AP voters happened to agree with you, simply because LSU's loss occurred earlier than USC's loss, and/or because the media thought LSU should be ranked higher than USC in the preseason, would you now be saying that USC is the "true" champion because that's what the system in place came up with? I don't think so! I think you would be screaming at the top of your lungs and fingertips that LSU deserves half of the championship and that LSU would have beaten either Oklahoma or USC, if given the opportunity. I would like every one of you who are posting stuff like above to consider what I just wrote and respond as to how you would view it. Perhaps someone would be willing to post a poll question. I don't have the ability (or the knowledge) to make a poll here. Would someone here do that who has the ability? The questioncould be something like: Had the LSU and USC roles been exactly reversed, what would your feelings or opinion be? - I would feel and claim loudly that LSU deserves its share of the National Championship - I would allow that USC deserves to be the undisputed national champions and should not have to split it with LSU - I wouldn't have any opinion, because I would have slit my wrists when the final BCS standings came out and LSU got denied the opportunity to play in the Sugar Bowl for the BCS championship!
If MSU would have won that game they would have finished No. 1 not Alabama. Going into the game ND and MSU were 1 and 2.
Re: Re: Wall St. Journal on Split Championships You are right. I mean should USC refuse the AP National Championship Trophy? That poll voted them MNC. I don't understand this, "LSU is being screwed over" talk since USC according to the AP has won a national championship. There is no Yankee-East Coast-Hollywood Liberal- plot to discredit LSU. Unless there is a NCAA Division 1-A Playoff we will have MNCs. There is no officially recognized D1-A championship. In 1-AA, II, and III there are. Just enjoy the national championship won by LSU in the sugar bowl. You know there isn't any type of cosmic thing going around which states that if an USC fan celebrates a national championship it takes away from a LSU fan's celebration of a national championship.
