Yesterday, I spoke about college football players making personal decisions on how to end their playing careers. Some leave before their senior season. Some play their senior season but then skip the postseason. Some play out every game, no matter how their season ends. Since college football went to its current playoff system five years ago, this matter has become more and more popular to talk about, and Alabama head coach Nick Saban weighed in on it earlier this week.
First, let's remember that Saban is looking at this from the perspective of a coach who has had his team in the playoffs every year, so his point of view is certainly different from a lot of other coaches. However, he does deserve a whole lot of credit for leading his team to the playoffs every year, so maybe you could say that his point of view is actually the one that should be most respected in this discussion.
Saban said that he initially was not even in favor of instituting a playoff system, and that he preferred the previous BCS format, where only two teams were chosen to play for the national championship. For decades, college football never even had a formal national championship game, and a series of polls decided who was crowned as the top team in the country. The problem with that was, since there were multiple polls that were voted on by people in different positions with different points of view, many times they did not all agree on who the best team in the country was. As recently as 2003, there were co-champions, and there were even some years with three teams declared as tied at the top. In 1919, there were actually four teams that were labeled as national champions thanks to the voting in six different polls.
The point of sports is to decide the individual or team that is the best in a fair manner. There might be ties in regular season games in some sports, but at the end of a competition or season, we want there to be one winner left standing alone. So obviously, having multiple teams declared as champions after a given season did not give anyone a true feeling of clarity. The inception of the BCS system in 1998 seemingly would give us that clarity each and every year. It did that, except for a controversial 2003 season when the team that won what was supposed to be the championship game (LSU), was still only declared as a co-champion, thanks to the AP poll at the end of the season declaring someone else (USC) as champion.
The BCS system was initially disliked by many, but eventually fans, players, and coaches all seemed to accept it more and more, and looking back on it now, I think it did a pretty good job of giving us a true champion every year. However, since much of the BCS selection process was based upon computers and not human judgements, it did receive criticism, and I think rightfully so. A computer could not take things like injuries or other abnormalities into account when ranking teams, and the football world felt like the lack of that did not fully satisfy our appetites. Also, in many cases, it seemed unfair to only select two teams to compete for a national championship. In every other sport we have, more teams are able to compete in the postseason, because usually every year more than two teams in any given sport could be given legitimate odds to win a championship. That is especially true in college football, where the fact that there are so many teams really makes it impossible to judge everyone fairly. In a sport with 130 teams, is it really even possible to choose two to play for a title when most teams only play 12 or 13 games? Obviously, the answer is no.
So, that brought us to the current playoff format we have. A committee of actual people and not a room of computers decides who they believe are the four best teams in the country. With the BCS format, it is likely that the third ranked team could have beaten one of the teams ranked ahead of them, but those games never happened. Now, that third ranked team can prove themselves on the field, and not have to worry about proving themselves to a computer. It seemed like this was an improvement, but as is the case with pretty much everything in the sports world, and the world in general, people chose to point out the negatives more than the positives.
Instead of now the third ranked team being felt as though they were unjustly denied the chance to compete for a championship they could legitimately win, now the fifth ranked team in the country can make that claim. Oklahoma was ranked fourth by the committee this year, and they will play top-ranked Alabama tonight. Alabama finished the regular season 13-0, while Oklahoma finished 12-1. However, Ohio State finished the year with an identical 12-1 record, but they were ranked sixth. The committee explained that this was the case because Oklahoma's loss to Texas, by a score of 48-45, was "better" than Ohio State's only loss, a 49-20 drubbing to Purdue.
Realistically, I agree with that decision, but then why was Ohio State ranked sixth, with a 12-1 record, behind Georgia, who had an inferior 11-2 record? This is where we begin to see and understand the flaws in the system we have. Add in the Central Florida factor here, as they have been undefeated for the past two seasons in what most would consider a weaker conference, and it seems like we have an even bigger mess than we had when the BCS was used to decide the national champion.
I spoke yesterday about Deandre Baker choosing to leave Georgia now and not play in their bowl game, and the final straw that pushed him to make that decision was most likely Georgia's ranking and their being left out of the playoffs. If the field were expanded, as many people have called for, Georgia might be playing for a chance at a national championship today, and if that were happening, I would bet that Baker would be on the field. At the same time, Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray might not be playing tonight if we still used the BCS format, because only Alabama and Clemson would have the chance to win the national championship.
One reason I think college football seems to always be a target for criticisms like this is the fact that they are in many ways competing with college basketball. March Madness is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting things in all of sports. 68 teams have an equal chance to win a title, and because of that, we get chaos every year, and we love it. However, when you think about it realistically, you could actually claim that college basketball decides its champion in the most inefficient and random way, and often times, the best team does not win. If you played the NCAA Tournament out in any given year two separate times, the results would likely be totally different. The single game elimination component is what makes it so exciting, but it is also what makes it so inefficient. Add in the fact that the field is so big, and the randomness and inefficiency just grows and grows.
The same can be said for the NFL playoffs. While the standards for postseason qualification in the NFL are much higher than in college basketball, the fact that it is still a single game elimination format does bring in a lot of chaos and uncertainty. In the NBA and NHL, the series factor plays a large role in helping to truly crown the team that is legitimately the best in the league. A lot of teams do make the playoffs in those sports, but because a seven-game series format is used, that usually leads to the best team prevailing in the end.
Out of all our major sports, Major League Baseball could probably be the one where the champion each year is "most legitimate" of all. Since the playoff field is so small, and they use series to decide the winners, you really usually get the truly best teams playing at the end. All of these systems can be viewed from different perspectives, and you can find faults in any of them if you really want to.
People who oppose the college football playoff format can say that with only four teams vying for a title, too many legitimate contenders are unjustly denied a chance that could rightfully be theirs. Those people would likely point to the NCAA basketball format as much more reasonable and fair.
However, supporters of the college football format as it now stands would cite the fact that the playoffs in college football actually happen every week of the regular season, and because the standards for qualification at the end of the year are so high, each team needs to play each and every game as if it were for the national championship or else you might end up like Ohio State, with one sleepy Saturday against Purdue being the reason you are not playing tonight. I tend to fall more into this corner when it comes to this, because I do like the fact that every game does matter in the college football regular season. March Madness is ultra-exciting, but because of it, most people do not even pay attention to college basketball until the tournament starts, because you could actually be a below .500 team in the regular season, win your conference tournament, and have a chance to win it all. Therefore, it seemingly completely negates everything that happened during the regular season.
To get back on subject here, I think that for the most part, football fans do like the playoff format, and it has been a success since its inception. I also do believe that we have seen some issues arise because of it, and that is going to bring about some sort of change in the future.
The biggest issue I think is that people believe a four team format is not big enough. There are usually more than four teams in any given season that could win a championship, and when you add in the Central Florida factor and a team goes undefeated in consecutive years but does not get a chance to play for a title, it will likely mean playoff expansion. Also, I think that this new tendency of players from good teams choosing not to play in their bowl games has many people believing the only way to get more kids to play out the entire year is to make every game in not just the regular season, but every game in the postseason matter as well.
Exactly 100 years ago, Harvard, Illinois, Notre Dame, and Texas A&M were somehow all national champions. Looking back on that now, it seems ludicrous. One hundred years from now, in 2119, the college football world will probably look at what we currently accept as ludicrous as well thanks to some different format that is used to crown the champion in a sport with over 100 teams.
One thing we should all be able to agree on though, is the fact that we have gotten to witness some epic and historic games over the past few years to decide our national champions, with two of the games literally being decided on the final play. I understand the gripes of some teams and fans who feel as though they have been treated unfairly. If you are a fan of Central Florida or Ohio State, you can rightfully claim that your team was robbed in one way or another.
The calls of those people were heard when we moved on from the BCS format, and they will probably be heard loud enough to bring about a playoff expansion some time within the next decade. Until that happens though, let's sit back and enjoy the games tonight and then the national championship game on January 7th, because if they end up even being half as good as what they were the past two seasons, we are going to be talking about them in 2119, even if the format we used to get there seems crazy and outdated when that year comes.
Daily Giants Update: Thanks to the NFL Red Zone channel, I will be able to watch all of the games with serious playoff implications tomorrow while also watching the Giants finish off the regular season. While I don't think this is the case, it is actually possible that tomorrow will be Eli Manning's last game ever as a New York Giant, which is sad to even think about.
Daily Rangers Update: The Rangers were off yesterday, but will be in Nashville tonight to play a very good Predators team. It will mark the beginning of a stretch of five of the next six games being on the road against Western Conference foes, and for a team from the east coast traveling across the country, that is never easy, no matter how good you are or how good the teams you are playing are.
Daily NBA Update: There were some big individual performances last night, as well as some nice wins for teams out west, including the Thunder, Clippers, and Nuggets, all of whom have been pleasant surprises near the top of the conference this season.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: I will write about the supremely disappointing offseason of this team some time before spring training begins, because I have very strong feelings about what has happened to the Diamondbacks over the past few months.
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