BCS + Congress = Poor Logic
by Year2 on May 2, 2009 11:22 AM EDT
in SEC Football
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Print"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -Mark Twain
For the first time ever, I programmed by DVR to record something on C-SPAN, and the BCS hearing did not disappoint. The cognitive dissonance coming out of current BCS chairman and ACC commissioner John Swofford was almost palpable, the grandstanding from the Congressmen was as grand as ever, and you could practically see the desperation oozing from every pore on Alamo Bowl president Derrick Fox.
Meanwhile MWC commissioner Craig Thompson and Boise State athletics director Gene Bleymaier were all business, ruthlessly on point and landing blow after blow against the BCS system. Bleymaier's "How many times must we go undefeated before we can play for a national championship?" line was especially poignant.
Swofford and Fox were doing plenty to dig the BCS's grave on Capitol Hill. However, the guys from Congress who showed up unfortunately undermined their anti-BCS cause by being overtly ridiculous in their pandering and being caught repeatedly by the cameras either chatting side conversations or trying not to fall asleep.
Swofford was the wrong guy to go, really. He teamed up with SEC commissioner Mike Slive to propose a plus one system just last year. I agree with Andy Staples that the lion of the BCS Jim Delaney should have been there. Although, there's always the possibility he could have undermined his cause by being too transparent in the fact that he only cares about helping out the Big Ten and not college football at large.
Anyway, there was plenty wrong with Swofford's and Fox's cases. All that was missing was Jarvis Moss swatting their weak stuff back in their faces.
John Swofford
As I said, Swofford was the wrong guy to be there. He's the president of a basketball conference and doesn't even believe in the current system himself. Regardless, he's the one who was there, so his words are the ones that must be skewered.
He began his opening remarks by announcing the BCS's goals and proclaiming that all of them were a success. One problem: none of the goals was "be fair to everyone." I mean, one of Microsoft's goals was once to crush Netscape through anti competitive practices. It was successful, but it ended up making the company a convicted monopolist in antitrust court. A successful goal means nothing.
He also banged the drum about the bowl system being composed of fund raising events for communities run by non profits that contribute to charities. Then, when asked about the patently unfair distribution of BCS voting rights and payouts, he said it was because of market forces. Technically those both can be true, but it's awfully weaselly.
Derrick Fox
Derrick Fox wants you to know that bowls are events, not games. Events, not games. You might think they're games, but you're wrong. They're events. EVENTS.
Basically, his entire testimony was in support of bowls in general. It's not so much that he's a fan of the BCS, but that he's afraid that a playoff would kill off the non-major bowls.
I don't think anyone would shed a tear if the Emerald Bowl, Papajohns.com Bowl, or San Diego County Credit Unions Poinsettia Bowl disappeared. They are to the bowls what Coca-Cola Santa is to Christmas: the corporate lampreys attached to a meaningful tradition.
It also doesn't help that at this point, many teams don't even make money off of bowl games. Boise State's Bleymaier also pointed out that he's involved with Boise's Humanitarian Bowl, and that event is not profitable. Bowls are good for civic pride, but the market that Swofford spoke of is going to snuff some of them out in the next decade if they don't get into the black.
Besides, his central argument was that a playoff would kill bowls. He actually said that if you had a group of games set apart from and given greater importance than the normal bowls that they'd suck up all the sponsor money and destroy all the other bowls.
The concept of having set-apart, more meaningful postseason games in college football sounds awfully familiar. Three letters are coming to mind. BSC? SBC? Something like along those lines...
Rep. Gene Greene brought up this point, but Fox didn't acknowledge that the BCS is just as separated from the rest of the bowls as playoff games would be. He also brought up a point about conference title games not selling out and specifically the 2007 Missouri-Oklahoma Big 12 title game in San Antonio. What both he and Swofford didn't mention, which I doubted they would, is that the SEC is the only conference that actually does the conference title game right. But, details details...
Thompson and Bleymaier
Thompson and Bleymaier did a very good job to make their cases. Their arguments sell themselves to the audience they were in front of, so all they had to do was recite their talking points and not screw them up. On that front, they did well. As an added bonus, each appeared to be sharp as a tack, which only helped their cause.
One thing they did not bring up unfortunately was the dollar value of winning a championship. They can complain all day about not being able to win a national title, but Congress should not, and I believe will not, be involved in bestowing symbolic titles like "champion."
However, if you attach a dollar value to winning a championship, then you've got an issue that Congress can act on. There's plenty of money involved to calculate too: merchandise, a bump in applications, TV revenue in the future, and an increase in donations are a start. I'm sure the data is out there to come up with a ball park figure.
Talking about the unfair payout schedule of BCS games is all well and good, but the payout of the national title game is the same as the other BCS bowls. From a contractual standpoint, there is nothing that sets the national title game apart.
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I hate to tell you, but
Jarvis Moss hasn’t been doing any kind of swatting in a long, long time. He’s a little out of practice. ;-)
/bitter Broncos fan
Ok, THAT I'll go with.
As far as Cutler goes; I think the Broncos mishandled that far more than the Denver fanbase is letting on. The story of events from the front offices just doesn’t add up and sounds more like spin doctoring than actual recollection.
I hope Cutler has a great career in Chicago, no matter how the Broncos do. It’s actually pretty cool that he’ll be a lot closer to his hometown as well.
Well, the last two have actually had a chance to play, but neither have stuck.
Bennett can’t figure out the playbook, and Hillenmeyer’s been… well… Hillenmeyer.
Get yer grimy mitts off my game!
I’m surely not the only person who finds their enthusiasm for a playoff diminished by Congress’ grandstanding intervention. If anyone can muck things up worse than they are…
The worst thing was seeing Barton stumping for a 64-team playoff using all of the bowl sites. Never mind that some bowl sites host multiple events, or that there were 34 bowl games last year and that number would barely cover the first round of such a monstrosity. Then he said the regular season should be cut back to 10 games as it was when he was in college to make room.
I know what you’re thinking, but no, he then did not tell the four witnesses to get off his lawn.
I personally think a playoff of some sort is inevitable and that the first step in that direction is a plus one, but we need knowledgeable guys like Rece Davis and Matt Hinton (a.k.a. Dr. Saturday) asking the questions. These jamokes in Congress are threatening to set the cause back a couple decades.
With friends like these, eh?
At this point, I’d be satisfied with a plus-one – but to work you have to get the initial matchups right (ie, de facto semifinals.) Last year there were five teams (six if you include undefeated Boise State) that could make some kind of case. Those six teams played in five different
Madre de dios, hit post by accident. Anyhow, to continue – those six teams played in five different games, the only ‘knockout’ match being between Florida and Oklahoma (who wouldn’t have met ordinarily.) Adding more material for team-to-team comparison is obviously useful, but you really have to eliminate contenders in the first go-round. And that will be difficult to do without jiggering the system somehow, given that conference champs are mostly locked into bowls; Florida, Oklahoma and USC would not have been able to play each other, and you can figure that the Orange and whatever fifth bowl is added (assuming one is to maintain the big-money auto slot for the little guys) would have wanted to pick up Texas or Utah (especially Texas), and not be fobbed off with something like VaTech v Ohio State.
From what I’ve heard, there is no support whatsoever for a seeded plus one. It’s more likely we’d see an unseeded plus one, where after the BCS games, they’d run the formula again and take the top two teams to play for it all.
I’ve seen where someone ran the BCS formula after last year’s bowls, and substituting the AP for the Harris (which doesn’t release a post-bowls poll), it would have been No. 1 Utah versus No. 2 Florida.
I suppose it will be an improvement, but it certainly isn’t going to tamp down the controversy most years (last season we’d have had the same snarling and moaning as after UF-OU, just louder, because it would have actually meant something.)
And what about seasons like 2005? What would have happened if Texas and USC had gone to the Fiesta and Rose and been upset? Having a plus-one would have actually complicated matters by introducing more potential contenders.
The thing is, your last paragraph applies to playoffs as well.
If we get playoffs, irony would be having two undefeated teams and a whole pile of 2-loss teams behind them where a 1-2 game would be incredibly clear-cut. Then have one or both of the undefeateds upset in a playoff system.
Even better would be having both final teams from the same conference for several years in a row. Or if the playoff only allows for 1 team per conference, have a conference end the season with 2 teams in the top 2-4 every year.
Loads of fun.
I don’t think the first scenario has ever happened, and getting two and only two undefeated BCS conference teams at the end doesn’t happen all that often. It’s happened six times in the last 20 years, but only twice in the last ten. The regularity of the occurrence is dropping.
As for the second scenario, it wouldn’t be outlandish to think 2006’s plus one would be Florida and LSU and 2007’s plus one would be LSU and Georgia. That’s a lot more likely.
It’s certainly true that playoffs could muddy the situation by having two obvious favourites knocked out one step short; but at least everyone would understand that it’s a win-or-go-home situation… with a plus-one they might simply be dragged back to the pack.
The two situations that are particularly troublesome – and this applies regardless of how the system is structured – are having two contenders that are well ahead of everyone else (2005), and having more than four contenders (2008.) In the first case, a plus-one (or semi-final round) might be unnecessary, and could introduce more confusion than it solves; in the second, it will be difficult if not impossible to knock out enough teams to have a clear-cut title matchup.
Actually, precisely three contenders is tricky too – in a playoff one team gets an easier path to the championship; in a plus-one, again either there’s an easy and a hard path, or there’s the chance all three could win and the situation won’t be any clearer than before. Really, the only “clean” situations are precisely two contenders or precisely four – any other scenario creates an unforunate asymmetry.
This is emblematic of my biggest problem with a playoff scenario
You actually increase the chance that an outlying result screws things up. The more rounds you add, the more you increase the odds that someone who would win nine times out of ten instead loses — which produces not a true champion, but a beneficiary of fate toting around the crystal football.
Could that and does it happen under the BCS? Absolutely. But playoff advocates are being dishonest when they pretend that a playoff automatically equals a more deserving champion. It actually increases the odds of a less deserving one.
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
A Contrarian Perspective
I didn’t have the opportunity to watch the C-Span coverage, but based on your summary, it’s not hard for me to believe Thompson and Bleymaier wiped the floor with Swofford and Fox. The reason is because Thompson and Bleymaier were arguing the moral case, “Fairness!”, but the only way you can defend the BCS is on economic grounds, namely “Profit!” As long as Swofford and Fox attempt to defend it on semi-moral grounds, they, and all other BCS proponents, will fail. This playoff debate is essentially an intersection of the eternal economic debate of fairness versus efficiency. It’s for this reason that I’m going to go out on a limb here and state that a playoff is a lot further away than anybody thinks.
CFB is most definitely a business and that is the first, second, and third thing you need to remember. To give credit where it’s due, most of what I’m about to argue/point out is cribbed from MJ’s arguments in the comments of this posting
Each Big Six conference gets about $17.5 million to split for placing a team in the BCS. If they place two teams, that figure jumps by $4.5 million. Not every conference distributes it evenly, but the fact is the BCS, win-or-lose, offers an enormous payout. This payout is vital to the continued success of college football. The reason is that most athletic departments can only operate as a result of the revenue generated by their football programs. At Southern Cal, football was the only sport to turn a profit. Not even basketball was in the black, though it’s close. Check up on your favorite school at the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool website. Click “Get data for one institution,” and then get to work.
This means that unless your goal is to pick a champion while driving college football athletic departments across the country into insolvency, any playoff has to match or exceed the payout the conferences will get by participating in the BCS. If only one team, from the Pac-10 or Big East say, is included within the playoff, that means that a quarterfinal or semi-final game has to be worth $17.5 million, adjusted for inflation.
To return to the fairness argument made by the MWC and Boise St., my initial reaction is just to shrug. It most certainly is not fair that the MWC, WAC, or anyone else gets less than the Big Six teams. On the other hand, it is only by virtue of the existence of the BCS that any of these teams would have a shot at those payouts to begin with. Does anyone honestly believe that the Fiesta or Sugar bowls would invite Utah, BSU, or TCU last year before Oregon, Ohio St., or Texas Tech if they had any choice in the matter? The payouts aren’t great compared to the amounts Big Six teams receive, but I’m sure that Utah preferred that to whatever TCU and Boise St earned in the Poinsettia Bowl. The BCS is the creation of the Big Six conferences. The right of the creator means that they certainly have the prerogative to set unequal levels of compensation for the participating teams. It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s just business.
One other thing
I should add that I’m not necessarily opposed to a playoff system for determining the champion. Dr. Saturday’s proposal highlighting the Australian rules version, where there are strong incentives to finish in the Top 4 as well as the Top 8, is definitely something I would support. It’s just that the regular season of CFB matters far more to me than being certain we’ve crowned the right team with the MNC.
One thing that the BCS has done is paired great teams together. USC vs. Texas 2005. Oklahoma vs. Boise St. 2006. Texas vs. Michigan 2004. West Virginia vs. UGA 2006. All these games were the result of the BCS, and I don’t think any of them would have happened without it.
I have two diplomas from Florida’s school of business, so believe me, I understand the market forces going on. If you take a look at some of the quotes in Stewart Mandel’s Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls, you will find that plenty of people believe that a playoff would bring in a lot more sponsorship money than the current BCS does, and that includes people close to the TV networks. The risk of insolvency of athletics departments comes from out of control spending, not from a playoff.
The issue with Congress is not really that there’s an overclass and underclass in college football. That’s always been the case. The problem is that the overclass has erected significant barriers to entry over the years, with the BCS being the largest and most visible of them. When a school is ready to make the leap from underclass to overclass, as Utah and Boise State appear to be, there’s no way to do it because none of the power conferences will let them in.
When you’ve got a ruling class that has erected such barriers, it’s basically becomes a cartel scenario. Since there are monetary benefits associated with being in the overclass that you can’t get in the underclass and the overclass is acting like a cartel, it becomes Congress’ responsibility to at least take a look at what’s going on.
As for your last point about those games, it’s true the BCS gave us those. But, the BCS also deprived us of games such as Florida-Utah or Texas-USC last year, LSU-Georgia in 2007, and Florida-Boise State in 2006 which could have happened with a playoffs scenario. When it comes to the deprivation of good games, being with the BCS is decidedly the wrong side of that one.
Interesting
I’ve not read Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls so I will have to take your word for it. I assume that Mandel advocates for one type of playoff over the other, in spite of his paean to bowl games describing his experiences during Northwestern’s once in a generation trip to the Rose Bowl. On the other hand, as I pointed out originally, it’s not just how big the pie is, but how it’s cut. While I can easily believe that the overall payout of a playoff series would be higher than the five game BCS – in fact, with an 8 team playoff there are three more games, so it had better be higher – the first round payout would not be the same. If you are a Big Six conference, would you willingly forgo the $1.75 million current payout per team in the hopes of grabbing a much larger ring? Maybe. But one in the hand is worth more than two in bush. Moreover, if the scale of the payout is too inequitable – if the SEC puts two teams in the semi-finals while the Pac-10 only puts one in the quarters and there is greater than a $4.5 million difference in what the two conferences bring home – no Big Six member in their right mind would agree to that.
The problem is that the overclass has erected significant barriers to entry over the years, with the BCS being the largest and most visible of them. When a school is ready to make the leap from underclass to overclass, as Utah and Boise State appear to be, there’s no way to do it because none of the power conferences will let them in.
Has the BCS erected significant barriers? Or, now that the automatic qualifier provision has been instituted, has it lowered them? Before the BCS existed, how many Sugar, Orange, Rose, or Fiesta bowls had Utah played in? Boise St? TCU? BYU? The answer, collectively respectively (i.e. among all four bowls in order of the teams mentioned): 0, 0, 3 (Sugar: 1936,1939; Orange: 1942, somewhat misleading as they used to be part of the SWC), and 1 (Fiesta: 1974). I suppose you could argue that I’m forgetting SMU, but considering they were playing in the same conference as Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Arkansas, and Baylor for most of their history, I think it’s a fair omission. Anyway, the point is, beginning in 2004, three of those teams have crashed the gates three times. If you take out TCU, that is a whopping 1 bowl (2 if you’re generous and throw in BYU’s 1997 Cotton Bowl appearance), even though BYU actually won the MNC one year.
Again, I’m not arguing that the current situation is necessarily favorable toward the MWC or WAC, but I think it’s probably an improvement over the pre-BCS, pre-Bowl Alliance system of assigning bowl berths for those teams. I would not dispute that the BCS conferences act as a cartel, but an oligopoly is generally regarded as more favorable than a monopoly, which is what the NCAA had until the Oklahoma Board of Regents case.
I certainly wasn’t accusing you of ignorance, merely seeking to intrude with some practical and economic realities to prevent the romance of a tournament from overpowering all our logical faculties.
My final question to you, and it is an honest one, is assume that no loss in revenue to the athletic departments and conferences would exist. How, and I mean details here, would you structure the playoff? Where would you host it? There are enormous logistical issues, some as basic as who owns the rights to broadcast, that need to be ironed out prior to any sort of playoff being implemented. For that reason, and I could go into a lot more hypothetical detail, I still believe playoffs are a long ways removed from actually appearing.
That's not entirely true
There is a moral case to be made if not for the BCS than against a playoff, which is: What you do during the regular season should matter, and a team shouldn’t be allowed to have one good month and either get a chance at (hello, Arizona Cardinals!) or win (hello, 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers!) the championship.
Team Speed Kills. All SEC, all the time.
Good point
I neglected to mention explicitly the ‘hot streak’ phenomenon that the NFL playoffs have introduced with the wild card, though the Cardinals, unbelievably, were division winners. That is what I meant when I described why the regular season was more important to me. One reason it is feasible for the NFL to have such an expanded playoffs is because the NFL has the ability to negotiate the broadcast rights while the NCAA does not.
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