College Football, Sport, Such Things...

Hello all. It has been much too long since I've graced you with my presence, and for that I apologize. I wish I had a good excuse, but sadly, I've anything but. So here I am, an official lawyer and everything, yet still unemployed. Lets just say I didn't envision my life at 26 consisting of living with mom and dad in Fotown... but something tells me things are looking up.

Anyway, here we are, I'm here to talk about how to fix what's wrong with and how to fix college football. Everyone (well, ESPN talking heads mostly) rants on and on about a playoff like a playoff is a panacea. Look around sports... what does a playoff truly accomplish? I don't see how a "true champion" argument can be made, because all a playoff proves is that a certain team can get hot and win over a two-week period. When you institute a playoff, the controversy then becomes who gets in said playoff. Look at the NFL. Last year you had 8-8 San Diego and 9-7 Arizona in the playoffs while 11-5 New England watched from home. The same thing happens every year in the NBA and MLB as well. You're just trading one controversy for another... the controversy over who's in the playoffs for the controversy of who's playing for the national title. Any number chosen for the playoff would be completely arbitrary, and the Xth team that is the last team not to make it would have a legitimate gripe. So if you ask me, a playoff doesn't give you a "true" champion, it gives you someone who's playing well at the right time of year. Look at last year's 9-7 Arizona Cardinals. They lost by 40 points to the Patriots (who didn't make the playoffs at 11-5) in December, but then played well in the playoffs and came within a score of winning the championship. Playoffs don't determine champions better than any other way of determining championships, they reward mediocrity by making more teams' fans happy and allowing them to hold out hope for a longer period of time. Look at the ultimate playoff, the NCAA men's college basketball tournament. The lowest seed to ever win a national championship was #8 seed Villanova in 1985. This means that if you're seeded 9-16 you have no hope of winning and are only there to make your fans happy and try to ruin someone else's tournament. Well, college football already has a means in place to reward the fan bases of lesser teams, and that's the rest of the bowls that are outside of the BCS system. Couple this fact with the primary benefit of the College football system, that the regular season actually counts, and instead of a flawed system, you have perhaps the best system in all of sports. In the NFL, NBA and MLB, teams actually bench players at the end of the season in order to rest for the playoffs. College football is the only sport anywhere where every single game counts as much as every other game, because even a single loss in most years all but eliminates you from national title contention. There's something to be said for this and the atmosphere it creates around big games. For instance, the OSU/USC game this year, or the Texas/TTech game last year. The excitement both games created among even disinterested parties was palpable, and no NFL regular season game comes anywhere near it. So it's a trade-off. Do you trade the atmosphere of the regular season for the excitement of a several week tournament? I say no. I don't see how the pros outweigh the cons. Are there problems with the current system? Absolutely, however, I don't see how there is anything wrong with the BCS structurally, the problems lie elsewhere.

Problem #1: Preseason rankings. There's no problem with the system structurally. The problem is that the system relies upon rankings that are supposed to be compiled based on the play on the field. Unfortunately, these rankings are often wed to the expectations of the media and observers before the season begins. What are these expectations often based on? The prestige of the program and how the team did the previous season and little else. What do these things have to do with how a team is going to do in the upcoming season? Very little. Now I understand why preseason rankings exist, the networks and powers that be like to hype early season matchups (see OSU/USC) by saying "#5 vs. #7" or whatever, when really no one has any idea if any team is any good. So what I'm saying is that there should be no rankings until week 5, after everyone's non-conference schedule. This gives extra incentive to teams to schedule quality opponents out of conference, in order to distinguish yourself. This would also modify the current silly situation, where a team like Cincinnati (or Iowa prior to their first loss), which has accomplished everything they possibly could given their schedule (beat now-ranked Oregon State and Rutgers on the road, beat then-ranked WVU), is ranked significantly below the other undefeated BCS schools, because they entered the season unranked, while Florida, Alabama and Texas were all ranked in the preseason top 5. Removing preseason rankings would mean that your in-season rankings are completely dependent on your in-season performance, rather than any popularity contest or half-assed projection. This would ensure that every team is ranked according to what they've done on the field, and bring about a much more realistic depiction of who is actually good. The present situation takes until halfway through the season (sometimes later) to sort itself does, and oftentimes leaves certain schools on the outside looking in due to no fault of their own (see: Auburn, 2004, who went undefeated but was left out of the national title because they were unranked in the preseason)

Problem #2: The non-BCS schools. The other glaring problem in the BCS is that certain schools are almost completely left out of the party because of their conference affiliation (and not that this is completely undeserved, due to the lack of quality of these conferences), which occasionally leaves quality teams on the outside looking in. While non-BCS teams have gotten in (Boise, Utah) and accomplished something on the highest stage, I believe there will never be a non-BCS school as a legitimate national title contender, and don't believe there should be. These schools simply do not compete on a high level week in and week out. Yes Utah beat Alabama last year, and yes Boise beat Oregon this year, but any team can get up for one week. What really matters is playing quality opponents week after week and being able to sustain an entire season rather than 2 or 3 big games and a bunch of stinkers (Boise plays UC Davis, Idaho and La Tech in conference, TCU plays the likes of New Mexico, Air Force, San Diego State and UNLV). So there must be some sort of system in place that allows these lesser teams to prove themselves on a higher level. This is accomplished simply, by implementing a system that allows for ease of movement between conferences for football only. If Boise or TCU or Utah wants to prove that they deserve a shot at a national title, join an actual conference and play someone instead of getting up for your three actual games a year and coasting the rest of the way. In big conferences, anyone can beat anyone, see OSU losing to Purdue this year, USC losing to random teams every year, or Ole Miss beating Florida last year. It simply is not that way in the MAC, Mountain West, WAC or other mid-major conferences. Boise and Idaho could play 100 times, and Boise would win 100 times. If Boise wants to be taken seriously, they should join the Pac-10 and prove that they are deserving of big time recognition. The way this is accomplished is simple - each BCS conference pairs up with a corresponding mid-major conference, and the winner of each mid-major conference then competes in the BCS conference the next year, like the way English Premier league soccer memberships are fluid. This gives mid-major schools a seat at the table, while simultaneously forcing them to prove themselves at a high level, rather than just handing them an opportunity.

I promise you that the implementation of these two things would result in a purer, fairer, more competitive college football atmosphere, and keep what a lot of people love about college football in place while improving the already amazing product that's on the field.