Two days after the Bowl Championship Series announced the pairings, and well, sports writers have a lot to talk about.
Why did Arizona State and Missouri get left out? Why did Illinois and Kansas get in? Are the most deserving teams really playing for the national championship, come on, Ohio State-LSU?
SI.com’s Stewart Mandel writes that an unappealing BCS slate should prompt change. ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski writes that chaos doesn't legitimize the stupidity of flawed BCS system. CBS Sportline columnist Ray Ratto writes the BCS system hides the fact that nothing could solve this season, or sort out the best four, eight or even 16 teams.
In 2005, I argued in a For Pete’s Sake column that it was crazy that Division I college football was the only sport that didn’t have a playoff. The BCS was too inconsistent in picking the top two teams for a one-game championship year-after-year.
In 2006, I changed my opinion (partly to play devil’s advocate) and said a playoff system would harm the student-athletes especially in light of the physically brutal Auburn-LSU game that Auburn won 7-3. For weeks following that game neither team looked like they’d fully recovered.
A two-game playoff would be the best of both worlds. Here’s my idea on how you fix the BCS, because the series will not go away.
The BCS needs to shake up its schedule and add a sixth bowl game; the Cotton or Gator Bowl would both be adequate. The sixth game ensures that mid-major schools (Hawaii, Utah, Boise State, etc.) have continued access to compete.
But the national championship would take the top four teams and have them play the first round of a plus-one playoff around eight to 10 days before the championship game. The Rose Bowl can keep its traditional match-up on Jan. 1, but host the title game in a five-year cycle. Universities can keep the 12-game season, to earn their extra money, and conferences can keep their precious title games, for their extra bucks.
If the plus-one system were in play this year would see No. 1 Ohio State play No. 4 Oklahoma in say the Fiesta Bowl and No. 2 LSU play No. 3 Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 28, the two winners would play each other in New Orleans on Jan. 7.
This is probably too simple, but an eight or 16 team is never going to happen; there are $15 million pay-offs at stake.
BIGGEST BCS BEEF: LSU, Oklahoma and Virginia Tech all had compelling cases to play in the national championship game, but Missouri got snubbed the most this year. After being ranked No. 1 in the BCS with one week to go the Tigers were trounced by Oklahoma, fell to No. 6 in the final standings and were left out of all BCS bowls. Missouri’s body of work is better than conference rival Kansas, whom they defeated on a neutral field. But the Jayhawks will be playing in the Orange Bowl. It’s all the about the green and Kansas fans will travel.
3 comments:
Interesting solution. It seems like you sat down and sketched this one out for a while before writing about it.
I remember when you wrote both your previous BCS columns in FPS. Do you think the 7 day layover between bowl games and a national championship game would be enough time for the teams to heal? Or does it even matter?
I like the plus one model as a short term solution, but I'd like to see the game go to at least an 8 team playoff. I agree that it would be nearly impossible to more or less scrap the current BCS system and implement a full FCS-style playoff arrangement.
Until then we should creep toward an actual merit based national championship winner by way of your +1 solution. Once the media crowned heir apparent to the national championship throne falls a few times to the #4 team in the land the pressure to move toward an even wider field of participants will be too hard to ignore.
More importantly, there's more money in a 12 or 16 team playoff system than the NCAA could possibly imagine. The problem is that university presidents are, by and large, too short minded and business ignorant to see something like this through. I'd love to believe that they actually care about their student athletes, but we all know their lack of movement on this issue has nothing to do with a concern for their students and everything to do with their unwillingness to tinker with a dependable (at least for most schools) source of income.
I want to start by going back to Oct. 24, 2006 when I received an e-mail from an enraged reader…
“After reading the article “Imperfect BCS better than college playoff,” [a FPS column authored by me] I came to the conclusion that the author does not actively watch football on a consistent basis, particularly college football. With that being said, let me defend the demand for a playoff system and shine some light on this “violent” sport that you obviously don’t understand.” – from senior J. James, Whitworth College
To his dismay, I watch college football all too much. That’s why I think my suggested solution to “fix” the BCS with an adapted plus-one system is a decent proposal. Most importantly, it gives fans a merit-based championship game.
If the plus-one system were in place this year the first round games should be played on Dec. 27. That gives the winners 12 days to recover and the media 12 days to hype the title bout. Plus playing in late December might help the quality of the championship game; teams won’t be idle for 50 days. From an injury standpoint, 12-days is probably enough time for most players to recover. If teams play an Auburn-LSU type game, it might not be enough. However, no amount of time will help if you lose a star like Miami did when Willis McGahee shredded his knee.
There may ultimately be more money in a playoff, but why will presidents give up a sure thing? I’m being a skeptic here, but the bowls aren’t going to cede their power easily either. A 16-team playoff would mean at least the first round games, maybe the second round, would need to be played a the higher seeded home stadium (like I-AA). Fans won’t travel to neutral cites thousands of miles away for four consecutive weeks. We’ll see what happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
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