College football ramblings

As we await the bowls that are actually meaningful, a few thoughts on the college football season...

Division I college football will crown its champion when the Ohio State Buckeyes square off against the Louisiana State Tigers in New Orleans on January 7, 2008. And that annoys the mess out of me.

It's been discussed to death on sports TV and radio, and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of words have been written about it on various sports websites--the BCS does not work:

* for the first time in history, there's a very real chance that a team with two losses will become Divison I-A's college football champion. In fact, considering that Ohio State had a LOT of trouble with a speedy SEC team just last year in the title game AND that LSU will essentially be playing a home game, I predict that's exactly what will happen. But that doesn't really bother me.

* Missouri, a school that this season lost only to Big XII champion Oklahoma, won a division title and had a Heisman finalist at quarterback was left out of the BCS mix in favor of both Kansas and Illinois, two teams that it beat. But that doesn't really bother me either.

* Hawaii, the only undefeated team left in Division 1-A will have no shot be be named champs. That kind of bother me.

The reason that the first point doesn't bother me is because I think it's stupid that we've historically decided that more than one loss automatically eliminates a team from contention. That is putting way too much emphasis on one variable at the expense of many others (more on this later).

The second doesn't bother me because the national championship game is the only bowl that matters. All other bowl games are just exhibition matches that pretty much mean nothing.

The third bothers me because there is nothing more that Hawaii could have done for a shot at the title game. They won all their games. Their critics say that their schedule was too soft. I say, uh...Kansas? Ohio State? How exactly were their schedules so much stronger? And both of those schools lost a game.

This is the 10th year of the BCS so it's a perfect time to review it. Has the BCS proven to be a worthwhile system? Let's see:

* 1998: Kansas State finishes third in the BCS but is passed over for a BCS bowl by Ohio State (4th) and Florida (8th). Rules are changed after the season to prevent this from happening again.

* 2000: Oklahoma finishes undefeated and three teams finish with one loss. To make it even more interesting, two of those losses came against another one loss team. Florida State's one loss came against Miami, whose one loss came against one loss Washington. The BCS determines that Florida State is the best of those three teams and the Seminoles go on to lose to the Sooners in the Orange Bowl. Meanwhile, Miami wins the Sugar Bowl and Washington wins the Rose Bowl. Rules are tweaked in the off-season to provide a "quality win" bonus for defeating a top-10 team.

* 2001: One loss Nebraska is selected for the title game despite not winning the Big XII or even the Big XII North division. They go on to lose in the Rose Bowl against Miami. Meanwhile, one loss Oregon beats Big XII champ Colorado (who gave Nebraska its lone loss) in the Fiesta Bowl.

* 2003: Six schools finish with one loss (USC, Oklahoma, LSU, Boise State, TCU and Miami of Ohio). Oklahoma, ranked number one by the AP, Coaches and the BCS loses the Big XII title game. This causes them to fall out of the number one spot in the human polls but they retain the top spot with the computers because they do not take into account the time of loss. USC rises to number one in the human polls but the computer rankings are enough to keep OU in the title game. The Sooners go on to lose in the BCS title game and the coaches are obligated to award LSU the number one spot, despite the fact that USC had been number one heading into bowl season and won its bowl game. AP writers, under no such obligation, keep USC at the number one spot, causing a split national championship...the very thing the BCS was supposed to prevent.

* 2004: Five teams finish undefeated (USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah and Boise State). USC and OU are placed in the title game, where the Trojans win. Both Auburn and Utah also win their BCS bowl games, leaving three undefeated seasons after the bowl season. Additionally, two teams (California and Texas) finish the regular season with only one loss apiece to the title game contenders. Prior to the final polls, Cal is ranked ahead of the Longhorns. However, Texas is jumped ahead of the Golden Bears in the final poll, possibly due to lobbying by Texas coach Mack Brown. This places Texas in a BCS bowl, while Cal is left out.

* 2006: Ohio State and Boise State are both unbeaten at the end of the season, with four one-loss teams (Michigan, Florida, Louisville and Wisconsin). Florida is selected to play against Ohio State in the BCS title game. The Gators go on to win and are named the national champions. A week earlier, Boise State had defeated Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl and ends up as the nation's sole undefeated team. Despite this, they finish the season ranked fifth in the AP poll and sixth in the coaches.

So to sum this up: in 10 years of history, the BCS has ended in controversy SEVEN times (due to how this season has played out, there will be controversy regardless of the final outcome). And although I haven't documented them all, the BCS had to change rules in almost all of those seasons to prevent that particular mishap from occurring again...only to have a different one appear (this season, the BCS was forced to change rules in the middle of the season by expanding the candidate pool from 14 to 18 teams due to the possibility that not enough teams would meet the criteria). Can you imagine having a job where you do not fulfill your job expectations 70% of the time and still somehow are able to remain gainfully employed? Does that make ANY sense whatsoever?

Before the final week of the regular season, Missouri and West Virginia were ranked #1 and #2 by the BCS and were on a collision course to meet for the national championship. If you've read this far then you are a college football fan and know that they both lost and were knocked out of contention. Had this been any other week during the college football season, the voters would have done the logical thing and moved up the third and fourth place teams (Ohio State and Georgia, respectively). However, because this was the final week of the season, many voters changed their voting method and instead voted on which team they thought should play for the title. This allowed LSU to jump not one, not two but five places to the number two spot. There is no way whatsoever that such a scenario would have ever occurred during any other weekend during the season, which is troublesome for me. If voters are changing how they vote during different parts of the season, isn't that inherently reducing what little objectivity there is to the whole process? Either vote during that last weekend the same way you do during the rest of the season or during the earlier part of the season use the same method that you plan on using during that last weekend. I realize that you can't be completely methodical about it because by the end of the season you have a larger body of work at your disposal. But is it really that difficult to say each week, "If the season ended today, this is the order I would vote teams to play in the title game?"

There's a chance that, by the end of the bowl season, we will have nine (nine!) teams with two losses and 11 or 12 wins. And then we could have 13 more that finish with 10-11 wins and no more than three losses. Let me repeat that: at the end of the season, it is entirely possible that we could have 22 teams that finish with a record of no worse than 10-3 and no better than 12-2. How in the world is it possible to definitively state that one of those teams is the best? The answer is that we simply cannot.

As I said earlier, the BCS has historically ignored teams that had two or more losses. I think that's stupid. Look at Ohio State. They played the system perfectly this year. The Buckeyes are in the the title game because the voters determined that they were the best one-loss team in the nation. Never mind that they played exactly two teams that finished in the top 25 and only managed to win one. Or that out of 12 games they left the state of Ohio four times. Apparently that's good enough. Except that Kansas has a similar resume but was given no shot at the title game. The difference being that the Jayhawks didn't win their conference. Evidently there's an unwritten rule that that is a prerequisite for being good enough to play for the national championship. Never mind the fact that the Indianapolis Colts, the San Antonio Spurs and the Boston Red Sox are the defending NFL, NBA and MLB champs despite NOT having won their respective conference or league. But they were still given a shot. If anything, I think LSU is more deserving of a shot at the title than Ohio State is. Their two losses both came in triple overtime and they played a much more difficult schedule. But even in saying that, I have to remember that many of the Tigers wins were close as well. So can I say that I know that they are better than Oklahoma, USC, Hawaii or Georgia? Nope.

That's the real problem with the whole BCS. When we start using human bias to help determine the winner, it is no longer really a sport but a beauty contest. Right now, college football is in the same category as diving, gymnastics and synchronized swimming because the winner is not objectively determined. Twice within the past five years, college football experts were ready to anoint teams as being among the best ever, using pretty much the same process that AP, Harris and coaches use. The 2003 OU Sooners and the 2005 USC Trojans had people ready to put them on the pedestals at the end of each of those respective seasons. Neither one of those teams won the title game that year.

To me it's extremely evident that some other process that allows for objectivity has to be put into place. A NFL-style playoff is not the answer because this is college football and it needs to retain its own identity. But there has to be some way to use the BCS to determine the best eight or 10 or 12 teams and then have them play for the title. Sure the ninth (or 11th or 13th) place team will complain but that's a whole heck of a lot better than not having any distinguishing features between all the teams between first and sixth place (I'm sure the 66th place basketball team complains every March but it's much less controversial, isn't it?). A lot of people would complain that it devalues the regular season. Yes, it would. But is that worth finding the true undisputed champion? I say yes.


A couple of other points:

Tim Tebow deserved the Heisman. He was the most outstaning player in college football this season. Compare his season to that of the best season by the best dual-threat quarterback in I-A history (Tebow's numbers are projected out to the Capital One Bowl):

Vince Young (2005)
CMP 212
ATT 325
YDS 3036
CMP% 65.2
YPA 9.34
LNG 75
TD 26
INT 10
SACK 13
RAT 163.95


Tim Tebow (2007)
CMP 235
ATT 343
YDS 3393
CMP% 68.5
YPA 9.88
LNG 66
TD 31
INT 7
SACK 13
RAT 177.85


Not too shabby, I say. When you watch Tebow play, you notice that his spiral isn't quite as tight as Young's, he's not as fluid an athlete, and yes, many of his rushing touchdowns were on carries that were less than five yards out but to hold those things against him is the epitome of nitpicking. He WAS the Gators offense this season. The Heisman isn't for the prettiest player or the one with the NFL potential. It's not even for the Most Valuable (which is why I didn't disagree when Reggie Bush won it over Young). It goes to the Most Outstanding. Tebow was that. Although I really would like to jump into the "What If?" machine and see how voting would have turned out had Dennis Dixon not gotten injured with three games remaining.


Finally, I find it interesting that Michigan had such a hard time hiring a new coach. When you combine that with Notre Dame not getting their first choice in Urban Meyer three seasons ago, it goes to show how the landscape of college football has changed. The two schools with the most wins in history (and thus ostensibly the most prestigious) had trouble landing coaches. It shows that coaches are thinking a lot more. Why go to a school with unreasonable expectations and trouble attracting the athletic players necessary to compete in the modern game? Bravo to those coaches who think things through.

That does not apply to Bobby Petrino. He's a snake.