The Super Bowl is Not an Argument Against Playoffs
by Year2 on Feb 6, 2012 2:02 PM EST
in SEC Football
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PrintFor the second time in five years team that went 9-7 in the NFL regular season made the Super Bowl. This time, that 9-7 team actually won the thing. It's enough to make a die hard college football fan scoff at the pro league's standards for who gets to be called champion.
Before going further, it's worth noting that the NFL is fundamentally different than the college game when it comes to scheduling. NFL teams play 16 regular season games instead of 12, so they have more opportunities to pick up losses. Plus, they don't get to stack a third or a fourth of their schedules with cupcakes who are outclassed in every conceivable way. If college football had 16 regular season games and only competition between the top 32 teams, there would not be too many zero- or one-loss champions there either.
That said, there's no reason to blindly accept a team with a .563 winning percentage as a rightful "champion" unless you're a Chan Gailey enthusiast. Rejecting that premise does not mean, however, that you reject the concept of a playoff. It just means that the NFL's playoffs are too large.
On that level, 12 of the 32 teams make the postseason every year. That comes out to 37.5% of all the league's teams. If college football did a bracket of an equivalent size, it would have 45 teams in it. Cut the field down to just the current 67 in BCS conferences plus Notre Dame and you still get a field of 25. Not even the status quo-hating Dan Wetzel and friends who wrote Death to the BCS are promoting a playoff that large.
I want to see a playoff in college football, but I don't want to see a 7-6 team or 8-4 team in it. If they keep the bracket at a reasonable (i.e. smaller than the NFL) size, we never will see such a team in it. In fact, look through the archive of BCS standings. Not that the BCS formula is perfect, but you'll notice a pattern that there is generally a big gap between either No. 7 and No. 8 or No. 8 and No. 9.
Once you get past the top seven or eight teams, you find that teams don't really have realistic claims towards being a championship candidate. On purely competitive grounds, capping the playoff at eight teams (or less) shouldn't be controversial. It, of course, will always be controversial who gets a shot at the title and who doesn't, but that's a cut off point that should be able to find a consensus. Expanding beyond eight is difficult anyway because teams can only play one game per week.
I think ultimately though, this all boils down to a fairly fundamental argument. Is college football its own sport that should only be concerned about its own competitively purity, or is it a fundraiser that subsidizes nearly every other sport that schools sponsor? While in practice it is both, I fear that more and more, the powers that be see it solely as the latter.
It's too late for men's college basketball; its tournament accounts for roughly 95% of the NCAA's income. It's no wonder they floated a plan to go to 96 teams two years ago. Increasing March Madness revenue is far and away the easiest way to increase the NCAA's operating budget, something that's important in this day and age when investigations are getting longer, more numerous, and more expensive by the year. The schools could all chip in some more dues money, or they could fabricate a "First Four" to try to wring out a few more dollars.
The BCS is happy to act like the cartel it is, and even the staunchly anti-playoff Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany doesn't believe the current system maximizes profits. However, in this weak economy with state and federal education budgets in jeopardy, many programs can't afford to leave postseason money on the table while leeching money from their general university budgets anymore.
Starting up a playoff would generate more money. If those in charge then look at it as nothing more than a piggy bank, then we'll never be safe from bracket creep. Hopefully the advent of other revenue streams like conference networks and online streaming deals can stave off that temptation and keep the field small.
It will never feel right to crown an 8-4 team as champion anymore than it feels right to see a 9-7 team take home the Lombardi Trophy.
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Yea, I guess I just disagree with your basic premise
that it’s wrong to have a 9-7 champion. I mean after all the Giants defeated:
10-6 ATL
15-1 GB
13-3 SF
13-3 NE
in order to win that championship, so you would have a hard time convincing me that they didn’t earn it. Looking at the most recent season, some would suggest that LSU had a better season than Bama, even after the title, but Bama is still the champion. While I understand that 11-1 Bama is hardly the same as 9-7 NYG, the fact that the champion didn’t have clearly the best season remains.
After the conference championship games, KSU at 10-3 was 8th in the BCS standings. I don’t think comparing a 10-3 KSU to the 9-7 NFC East winning Giants is a terrible comparison. If KSU had matched the Giants feat and knocked off LSU, Stanford, and Bama, would it really be that different than the supposedly no chance having Giants winning the Super Bowl? I don’t think it would be.
contributing author - Alligator Army
The Giants also lost to some mediocre teams like Dallas and Philly and some bad ones like Buffalo and Washington twice. K-State didn’t have anything like that (and it was 10-2; its third loss came to Arkansas in the bowl). The only team that did have a loss similarly as bad, really, was Oklahoma State, who lost to 6-6 Iowa State on the road in overtime.
I prefer to give playoff spots to teams that sustain success over the whole season. The Giants were a high variance team: sometimes really good, sometimes really bad. That’s nice, but I’d rather crown a team that’s good week in and week out.
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It's the NFL
There’s less variance in talent between the first and last place team in the NFL than between the first and seventh-place team in the SEC.
Well part of this comes down to the dramatic difference in parity in these two
A loss to Buffalo or Washington (twice ugh) is certainly not a good loss, but at this point do you believe that there is a team in the NFL that is clearly better than the 9-7 Giants?
contributing author - Alligator Army
The most damning indictment
of the Giants’ “championship” run is that they were outscored during the regular season.
As to the teams they had to beat to get there, I think it fair to point out that their wins over Green Bay, San Francisco and even the Patriots were almost certainly influenced by a very improbable collection of tragedy, distraction, and simple fumble luck. During the regular season they went 1-2 versus that same collection of teams.
And they only lost those games by a combined 10 points
7 to SF and 3 to Green Bay, while having a crap ton of injuries. The 49ers lost to the Cardinals, and Green Bay lost to Kansas City. The Saints lost to the RAMS (who had a grand total of 2 wins), and the Patriots lost to the Bills. The Giants did not win by “luck” they won by being the better team on every given Sunday.
by mypisceannature on Feb 8, 2012 7:17 AM EST up reply actions
Note that the SEC....
Is closer to the Lombardi trophy than any other conference this week.
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2012/02/raymond-berry-heart-necktie/
It all comes back to
The BCS wanting to match up the two best teams, while every other sport wants to crown a champion. But I would say that the best teams are able to play at a consistently superior level to average and are able to play their best when it matters most.
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Well
having a tournament is certainly one way of determining a championship. It’s not the only way, and not the best way, but it is one way. I certainly wish that the tourney’philes would admit that it isn’t the only way, that’s all. I get so tired of the whole “A tournament is the only sane way of determining a championship” meme year after year after year.
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by NJBammer on Feb 6, 2012 7:31 PM EST reply actions 1 recs
+1
The people that are pro-playoff hate the idea that there isn’t some sort of defined method for winning the championship where it’s as cut and dry as you win your conference and three games in a tournament and BOOM, you’re the champ (FWIW, the BCS is a two-team tournament).
However those same people dismiss the statistical possibilities cited by many against a playoff that the tournament doesn’t necessarily reward the best team since it’s such a limited sample size. Many people pointed to the Oakland A’s continued failures in the first round as an example of Moneyball not working without acknowledging that anything is possible in a five game sample size as opposed to the excellence they displayed every year over the 162 game sample size.
The playoff supporters are so blinded by their obsession with fairness/exclusion that they ignore the statistical reality that a team that was outscored over its entire season and finished a hair below .600 for the year can be considered the “champion” because there is a greater importance placed on a four game tournament than a 16 game regular season. I’ll take my chances on the 16 game season providing enough evidence of who is truly the best versus the four game tournament. Your mileage may vary, of course.
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Make the BCS teams only play teams of equivalent talent
and you’d see a lot of 8-4 champions, I’d imagine. The only reason that college football champions go 12/13/14-0 frequently is because they usually only play 3-4 games each season that are evenly matched.
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by Chekhov's Spread Gun Option on Feb 6, 2012 8:55 PM EST reply actions
I would say that LSU pretty much did that
Conferences are composed of your peer programs, and LSU’s non-conference was pretty tough. I would say that the overall distribution of what LSU had to face wasn’t too dissimilar to what NFL teams face.
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Year 2
Some valid points, but I still think that you brush off “bracket creep” too quickly. Name one major sport that has a playoff that doesn’t allow too many teams in.
Let’s face it, the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB all let mediocre teams in and have playoffs that are too big. I believe MLB is even considering another expansion of the playoffs. So while ‘no one is pitching a 25 team playoff’ sounds well & good, if the establishment, whether it is the NCAA, the BCS, ESPN, Delaney or whoever, feels they can make more money by adding a few teams into the mix, they will expand.
Of course, you will always have team #9 (or #11 or #17) that argues we should be in the mix.
I am not saying the current system is without flaws, but moving to a playoff doesn’t solve all the problems. If you really want to do that, then you need to:
1. Reduce the number of Div1 teams.
2. Put everyone into uniform conferences with verifiable champions (either thru complete round-robin or title game)
3. Only allow conference champs to play in the tourney.
The likelihood of that happening is about nil.
Please no Conf Champ Auto Bids
If it’s 8 teams then take the top 8 in the BCS. Take the top 4 for a plus one. The BCS poll itself is on the right track (maybe remove the coaches poll and insert another “legends” type poll though). The question is only how many teams do we take in a playoff.
More specifically, how many spots down do you have to go to guarantee that the best team is in the mix?
I think it’s important to preserve the idea that the D1A FB champ is a SEASON champ and not a POST SEASON champ.
by Alex P in Smyrna G on Feb 7, 2012 1:25 PM EST up reply actions
Bama fan?
Seriously, though. I didn’t get into the details, but you would have to totally revamp the conferences. Clearing out the Sun Belt and most of the MAC and WAC/Mtn West to create stronger, more balanced conferences. That, paired with a situation where every conference team plays each other or we have conference championship game would strengthen the validity of conference champs only.
If it's only 4 teams, then number 1 and number 2 should get in regardless of conference championship.
Then the other two should be conference champions. This year that would be LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma State and Oregon.
If it is 8 teams, I don’t think I would want to require a conference championship. Then you might end up with a team with 3-4 losses but a conference champion playing in the playoffs for the MNC. And that would really undermine the weight of the regular season. If you’re ranked number 1 and number 2 at the end of the year, I think you’ve shown enough to validate your position. Whether there is an LSU/Bama thing in the future or SoCal/Oregon or OU/Oklahoma State.
- FOW
the World Cup is pretty good.
only one or two truly mediocre teams make it each year by benefit of playing in mediocre conferences. Oh, and they are quickly disposed of.
If ever there was a place a playoff was needed it is college football...
because of the large number of teams, and vastly different schedules. One team goes undefeated against inferior competition, while another may survive a much harsher schedule with two close losses. They both deserve the benefit of the doubt. Even if we had a 16-team playoff it would still be the smallest percentage of team making the playoffs of any NCAA sport (16 of soon to be 124 = 12.9%). I used to have a page from the NCAA that showed the percentages of all the NCAA sports, but I can’t locate it on the web, but I probably have it at home. 8-teams would make it ridiculously smaller, but would still be a huge improvement over the current 2-team playoff! I do think SOS has to play a big part in thinning the field, You can’t just line them up at 0 losses on down to decide who gets in. Too much incentive to dumb down your schedule without it.
Fair Points, But...
I agree with fotodog! The other plays didn’t start out as the bloated behemoths they are today: college football started at two (the BCS), will soon move to four (the Plus-One) and playoff proponents are already pushing for eight (like you). There are others who have publicly asked for more, and I have no doubt that we’ll eventually get there. The dollars have a powerful pull and it’s tough to make a stand on a slippery slope.
The Giants championship makes a mockery of the NFL; someday soon playoffs will do the same for college football. Why not work within the existing system? How about this: compel all participating conferences to enact a championship game, play the bowl games with their traditional match-ups, THEN run the BCS again and pluck out the top two teams. Something like that would please everyone, I think. Oh, and pull the coaches poll out of the formula, maybe go back to 50/50 comp and humans or something like that.
Erras.
OK, I do disagree with you on this
I do agree that even with a 8 team playoff, no 8-4 team would make it, but I think you are missing something very crucial in this analysis. The problem is that the distribution in ability in CF is massively larger than the distribution in the NFL. I would claim that the difference between the worst team in NFL and the best team is akin to the difference between Kansas State and Bama/LSU. And by no means am I taking a potshot at KSU, I freely admit that KSU was a superior team to my huskers, but still, I would say that Bama would probably defeat KSU by 4 to 5 touchdowns, similar to what, say, Green Bay would beat Indy. So I would claim that the absurdity of a 9-7 Giants team winning the Superbowl would be equivalent to a two loss Michigan team winning the NC.
That is why I think the 4 team playoff is perfect. For the vast majority of the time, no two loss team will have a chance (and eliminating many one loss teams as well, which I think is good, with one loss, they really don’t deserve a chance anyway, just some will get lucky), it will capture the undefeated teams that did deserve a shot (Auburn, Boise, TCU, and Utah in the previous 10 years), and it protects the dominate teams like LSU this year from having to play multiple games. For instance, for what LSU did during the regular season, there is no reason that they should have to play 3 to 4 additional games to win the NC. That has to be rewarded much more than just simply having home games.
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