College football needs a playoff more than ever
11/13/2007
Stalter Home / Sports Channel / Bullz-Eye Home
Quick, name the best team in college football. Quick, quick, quick! Do it! Gun to your head right now, who is the best team in college football?
LSU? What about their loss to Kentucky and their narrow escapes against Florida, Auburn and Alabama? You’re going to put your life on the line defending them? Take away two last-second touchdowns against Florida and Alabama, and the Tigers are sniffing a three-loss season and nowhere close to a #1 ranking.
Oregon? Sure, their wins at Michigan and against USC and Arizona State were impressive, but didn’t they lose to California? The Bears were one win away from being ranked second in the nation, then lost four of their next five games. You’re saying the Ducks are the clear cut, number-one team in college football and they lost to a Cal program that has fallen off the face of the Earth?
Kansas? Who have they played? Kansas State, Texas A&M and Nebraska were arguably the Jayhawks’ toughest opponents, and they barely squeaked by two of those teams.
Okalahoma? Lost to unranked Colorado.
Missouri? Lost to Okalahoma.
West Virginia? Weak schedule and lost to South Florida.
Ohio State? Lost to Illinois at home.
Arizona State? Lost to Oregon.
Georgia? Virginia Tech? Both are two-loss programs. USC? Now you’re just being silly.
And on and on and on it goes.
If there were any time for a playoff system in college football, it would be this year. With the amount of parity we’ve seen this season, college football has been exciting every week. Appalachian State goes into Ann Arbor and beats Michigan. A 38-point underdog Stanford beats USC. Colorado upsets Okalahoma. Illinois beats Ohio State in Columbus. Navy and Air Force beat Notre Dame in South Bend (which is a bigger deal than most think).
This is what college football is all about; every single game has meaning. With that said, all bowl games should have meaning as well, which for all intents and purposes, they don’t. I don’t care about Georgia vs. Hawaii if all it’s going to mean is that the winner is the Allstate Sugar Bowl champion.
Whoop-dee-do.
In a season as exciting as 2007 has been, the NCAA owes it to college football fans to determine a true champion by running them through a playoff gauntlet. We deserve to see what Kansas’ offense can do against LSU’s defense. We deserve to see Dennis Dixon of Oregon run an option against Oklahoma, which coincidently has one of the fastest defenses in college football as well as the weapons to defend a good option attack. We deserve to see if Pat White, Steve Slaton and the rest of the Mountaineers can hang with a team like Ohio State and Georgia, or if they’d just get exposed as frauds.
We deserve more.
Other than Boise State going undefeated and not getting a true national championship look, everything worked out for the BCS last year. USC lost to UCLA during the final weeks of the season, the top teams in the Big East beat up on each other, LSU lost to Florida, which made a one loss Gators team an easy choice for #2, and Ohio State beat Michigan to stay undefeated on the year.
It’s not always going to work out that way, however, and it certainly hasn’t in the past. The best and most recent example of that point came in 2004. USC, Oklahoma and Auburn all finished undefeated. That meant one team (Auburn) was the odd man out. The Trojans rolled over the Sooners in the national championship while the Tigers snuck past Virginia Tech in the Who Cares, It Doesn’t Really Matter In The End Bowl. Now Auburn and their fans will always wonder, “What if?”
The difference between that 2004 season and this one, however, is that there was some disparity between the top three programs and the rest of the rankings. USC (#1), Auburn (#2) and Oklahoma (#3) were much better than Utah (#4), Texas (#5) and Louisville (#6). This year, if you don’t think ninth-ranked Georgia can go into Eugene and beat #2 Oregon, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.
Things are just too even this season, and that’s not a complaint. It’s fun to see which team will be knocked off next and watch the collective heads of BCS voters blow up with every upset. However, there’s just that little problem of determining which team actually deserves to be ranked number one.
If LSU and Oregon win the rest of their games, do they both deserve to play for the national championship? Most would say yes. However, let’s throw Kansas into the mix. If the Jayhawks get past Iowa State, #5 Missouri and #4 Oklahoma in the Big 12 Championship, how can voters leave them out? If Mizzo and Oklahoma remain in the top five and Kansas beats them, how can anyone say they don’t deserve to play LSU or Oregon? The same scenario can be said for Oklahoma and Missouri as well.
For those in favor of a playoff system, parity was the best thing to happen to college football. The difference between a #1 LSU team and a #4 Oklahoma program isn’t that big, but even if we don’t get to see that match up played out on the gridiron, BCS enthusiasts will continue preaching that the system works.
The problem is, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t tell us that LSU is better than Oklahoma if they don’t play, or that West Virginia is better than Ohio State. Not this year anyway, not in a year filled with as much parity as college football has ever seen. The NCAA can’t definitively tell us which team is the best without some sort of system.
Hmm, I wonder if there’s a current system already in place that helps resolve parity in sports? There has to be one league that has the right system established to determine which teams are better than others. Wait, doesn’t the NFL have a system like that? Is there any question about which team is the best at the end of the NFL season? Of course not.
I don’t fault the NCAA for not implementing a playoff system to resolve their little parity issue, because it’s not like the NFL is a huge success or anything. It’s not like the NFL is bringing in butt loads of money, which is about the only thing the NCAA really cares about. I can see why the NCAA would stick to what they’re doing, because heck, it’s not like the NFL is loved by millions of people in this country.
This column isn’t a proposal for a playoff system – it’s a demand for one. It’s ridiculous to think that the current BCS system is the best way to determine the top team in college football. Some people may argue that the current system works, but what if the NCAA strived for more? What if they not only line their pockets, but also satisfy their fans at the same time?
Questions or comments? Send them to astalter@bullz-eye.com.