The BCS has established there will be a four team playoff of some sort coming soon. One idea out there is that they will take the four highest ranked conference champions. Of course, there is the argument from the other side about wanting the four best teams, period.
But this is where, as fans, we also need to realize that there is a difference between "champions" and the "best team". Were the Giants really the best NFL team in 2011? Of course not, but they won the Super Bowl, so they are champions.
Meanwhile, the Big 10 commish is talking about division winners only. But here's the thing -- the conference championship games are pretty much going to be de facto round 1 playoffs.
Right now, we can divide the conferences into two groups - those with championship games, and those without. For the championship conferences, determining the champion is easy - match up two division winners, and the winner takes the conference title.
I feel that in most cases, it is easier to determine a champ from the championship conferences. Sticking with what I know, I'll use the ACC and Virginia Tech as an example. VT has to play the 5 other teams in its division, along with 3 from the other side. Therefore, there are 3 teams in the conference that they don't play in a given season. If VT is the Coastal division champ, they will play the Atlantic division champ, who they may be one of the three teams they did not play. Even if it is one of those three, it is a team that has worked its way to the top of the division. Every team in either division has a fair shot at playing in the title game.
Do we always get the two best teams in the conference title game? Of course not, because one division could be better than the other. Look at the Pac-12 in 2011. UCLA was in the title game with a 6-6 record, while Stanford sat out at 11-1, because their loss was to division rival Oregon. But Stanford had the chance to beat Oregon earlier in the season.
And I suppose the 2011 SEC was another obvious example of the two best teams not being the two in the title game, considering it was two SEC West teams in the National Championship.
Switching over to the non-championship conferences, it becomes a little harder to pick a clear champion sometimes. A few years ago, before the Big Ten got it's 12th team, picking a champion was not so easy. Since there were more teams than conference game slots, you could potentially have two teams end the season with the same record, but not play each other, and have a tie for first place.
Now, most (if not all) of the non-championship conferences are small enough right now that they play everyone else in the conference. So, everyone has the chance to beat everyone else. You still run into the potential problem of a multi-way tie for first place that is usually settled in some arbitrary way.
Hypothetical question: What if we allowed someone who didn't win their conference from a conference without a title game into the playoff?
Hypothetical answer: Why would we create a double standard? Then we would have conferences trying to shed teams so they would get rid of their conference title game.
We're still in the aftermath of a divisional rematch in the National Championship. So I ask, with only four teams in a playoff, why would we still waste our opportunity on rematches?
The top four teams in the BCS last year before the bowls were LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma State, and Stanford. As mentioned above, Alabama and Stanford didn't even win their division, so they didn't even play for their conference title. Moving down to the next two, we get Oregon and Arkansas. Again, Arkansas didn't win it's division or conference either. We're down to #7 Boise State - who lost to TCU during the season, losing their shot at a conference title. The next three teams are Kansas State (not a conference champ), South Carolina (lost in SEC title game), and Wisconsin (won Big Ten title game). Hey, we found the fourth team at #10!
So, our playoff would have been Wisconsin vs. LSU and Oregon vs. Oklahoma State.
This post so far has been working on the assumption that any team arguing to be included without winning their conference would be the second team selected from their conference. (i.e. Arkansas and LSU.) What if we had a case of a team that did not win their conference getting in over their conference champ?
Let's turn to the ACC for that example. At the end of the season, Clemson was #15, while Virginia Tech was #11. Over the course of two games, Clemson outscored VT by 48 points. As a result, Clemson won the conference title. If I were a Clemson fan, I would be pretty pissed if somehow VT got into a playoff over my team, considering the two rather large cans of whoop-ass that were opened on VT's butt during the season. Even though VT had a better conference and overall record, how could you ever consider putting VT in a playoff over Clemson? **
My conclusion is that only having conference champions in the playoffs is a matter of keeping the game fair. This also keeps as much of the decision on the field as possible. As the playoffs expand to include more teams, then I would be open to wildcard teams.
**Sidebar: This situation does create an interesting debate in the "best team" vs. "champion" argument. By records, VT appears to be the "best team", while Clemson is the "champion". But, considering Clemson completely dominated VT twice, you have to say Clemson is the "best team" . . . except for when you see that they lost more games than VT, including a rather embarassing bowl game loss to West Virginia.
Addendum:
ReplyDeleteMaybe we meet somewhere in the middle. Instead of the four highest ranked conference champions, we go with the four highest teams, but only one team per conference would be allowed? (After all, the BCS only allows two teams per conference in the current bowls.) Then we would have LSU, Oklahoma State, Oregon, and Boise State as the four playoff teams.
Now, you can run into some problems with that scenario as well. What if the ACC teams were ranked a little higher and within the range that would get one of those teams into the playoffs? Should it go to Virginia Tech (11-2, both losses to the same team) or Clemson (10-3, conference champs with two wins against the same team, both blowouts)?
Taking things to an extreme on the other end, what if we had three of the top four ranked teams from the same conference. That was a distinct possibility going into the final week of the 2011 regular season, with LSU, Alabama, and Arkansas. I don't think anyone wants to see a loaded playoff like that. Obviously, you would have fans from the other conferences that aren't interested. But then, in you are a fan of one of those three schools, you might have a reaction of "them again?"
Basically, my biggest problem with the result of the 2011 football season was that ESPN influenced the outcome. They wanted LSU vs. Alabama, and they influenced the polls to get that result. They campaigned for it. I want to see a system that can minimize that bias and influence.