I said some time ago that I wouldn't bother ripping apart the new playoff ideas until they'd settled on a final one - no point in getting worked up over what were obviously leaks of less than half the info. More economical to blow my stack over something that exists, instead of repeatedly blowing my stack over what might exist.
So they've finally decided on the format and it's so milquetoast I don't really even have a chance to blow my stack. So I saved a lot of effort, really. Proud of myself. And that's saying something coming from me, Mr. GTFO-And-Off-My-Lawn, you rotten kids and your playoffs. So we have a committee, and they'll play the semifinals at like the Orange Bowl and the Sugar Bowl or something, and then sell the championship game to the highest bidder, and the participants will be decided by a committee just as with most other sports. Just please say you'll play both the semis on New Year's Day or thereabouts and I'll be a little more placated. As it is I hate playing the championship on like January 9. Whose dumbass idea was it to play the game on a Monday?
Things I don't like:
-- That it looks like the Rose Bowl, which will be one of the rotating hosts, will slip further into the future and away from tradition. This is coming from a guy who thinks that Miami and Oklahoma winning the game in successive years was an unforgivable besmirchment of the game and tradition in general, so maybe you don't care as much.
-- Not enough emphasis on conference champions. There is a mushy requirement for the committee to give preference to conference champions, but the shitstorm that will ensue when an SEC runner up is picked over a one-loss conference champ is highly predictable, and is the likeliest route to playoff expansion.
This latter point is not because of my getoffmylawnitude - rather, it's because it doesn't do enough to drive Notre Dame into a conference. And when I say "into a conference" I mean "into the ACC." Notre Dame's AD Jack Swarbrick got an equal seat at the table in the discussions - 11 conference commissioners and Swarbrick. (And do you think anyone was really listening to the WAC?) That in itself is a legit reason to harbor a small distrust of the process, and ensured that Notre Dame will likely get to continue having its cake and eating it too. Latest on them is that the Big 12 is actually their most likely destination, because the Big 12 will happily let them stay football-independent on the condition that they schedule a bunch of Big 12 teams each year. If the ACC wants to lure Notre Dame they will have to emphasize the cultural fit - and worse, likely have to kowtow on the revenue-sharing issue, and create some kind of uneven distribution, which as the Big 12 proved creates its own set of problems.
So I'd have to say that the idea of Notre Dame to the ACC is more or less on life support. The conference is not going to waver on its stand of being in for everything or nothing, and it shouldn't. Uneven revenue sharing is dicey. I mean, you offer it to ND as their carrot and you know Florida State is gonna want that action too. With the uproar over FSU and Clemson basically settled down, it looks like the ACC is a 14-team conference for the near and even medium future.
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-- This weekend it broke that LB Caleb Taylor will transfer to ODU. In case you're thinking it opens up another spot in the class of '13, it doesn't - it's just part of the attrition that's going to happen in order to free up the spots we're already filling.
-- Tomorrow appears to be D-Day as far as the Teresa Sullivan presidency is concerned. Prediction: the BOV votes 8-7 to reinstate Sullivan, and we have to wait until Governor McDonnell makes public his decision on Helen Dragas's reappointment before we know whether Sullivan will come back. As usual, this stuff is like the Supreme Court: anyone who claims to know anything is probably lying.
If reinstated, Sullivan will essentially be bulletproof, but I also think this incident decreases the likelihood her contract will be renewed when it's actually up, which I think is three years from now.
-- It has been a huge weekend for commitments, both to us and to other schools. There are now 14 commitments, which means the class is close to being closed out. On Wednesday there will be the standard update, but also an assessment of the remainder of the recruiting season.
Showing posts with label DOWN WITH PLAYOFFS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DOWN WITH PLAYOFFS. Show all posts
Monday, June 25, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
weekend review
Talk about your eventful weekends. In fact, that's what I plan to do.
Starting with lacrosse, where the Hoos played a game that's Exhibit A in the case of "why UVA will be considered the bottom of the ACC barrel next year until they prove otherwise." The good guys looked sloppy, and were bailed out by the mighty power of Steele Stanwick. Stanwick scored six goals and added an assist to push his PPG average over five. This dude is something else, and could do no wrong on Friday. Even his "post up a guy then fake-flip the ball to a teammate" trick, which never works, finally worked.
The rest of the team? Well, I'll exempt Chris Clements for now, who did a very admirable job. Clements picked up a short stick again (which is how he started off his career) and filled in at SSDM for Chris LaPierre, who sat the game with a shoulder injury. I don't think LaPierre was desperately missed (though he will be against better teams) except in the the realm of ground balls. Ayyy. There was no sense of urgency in picking up ground balls, not until the fourth quarter. One Penn goal came about four seconds after a defenseman - Scott McWilliams, I believe - just left a ball sitting on the turf and chased a Penn attackman instead. Pretty sure he thought that guy had the ball himself. No excuse for not knowing where the ball is, though.
Even when we had the ball in our possession, we didn't seem too interested in keeping it that way. Shot selection was lame. Chris Bocklet is the main culprit that I remember, but he wasn't the only one. Made some poor decisions that sent harmless beach balls at Penn's goalie Brian Feeney. And it went both ways: Penn did everything but put up bright neon signs daring Mark Cockerton to shoot with his right hand, and he refused. Obviously he's not too keen on that side, but this summer would be a very good time to work on that. Heck, Friday would've been a very good time to work on that. Even as uncomfortable right-handed as he clearly is, I can't believe a D-I athlete's shot is that bad that he couldn't have potted a goal that way, as open as they left his right side.
Then you had about three or four clean interceptions, way too many. Rob Fortunato slinged a pass at a Penn rider that was so perfectly executed my only explanation is he brainfarted and forgot we were wearing blue uniforms. Of course the ball ended up behind him three seconds later.
So the break is coming at a good time - mentally, and because of LaPierre's shoulder bangup. And it seems clear that Stanwick isn't quite healthy either. Unless he just gets up slowly every time he's knocked to the ground because he wants to. All that's left is to take final exams and wait for the rest of the conference tourneys to play themselves out, and find out our first-round opponent this Sunday.
*****************************************************
However, while I was gnawing my fingernails over the lax team, the diamond nine was restoring my faith. Two very nice wins Saturday and Sunday have put the Hoos in position to potentially sweep Miami - at Miami.
On Saturday, Branden Kline had one of his effectively wild outings, walking five and striking out eight. A 40-some minute rain delay messed with both pitchers; Kline was pulled after 120 pitches in only five innings, and Miami starter Eric Erickson pitched one inning too long; the UVA bats opened up on him in the sixth.
On Sunday, for the second week in a row Shane Halley pitched six innings in relief of Scott Silverstein, leading to the obvious question of why don't we just start Halley if that's how the game is gonna turn out. Such a decision may be on the horizon, but I don't think Silverstein's time as a starter is quite done yet. At any rate, he gave up four runs in the second - half of which got on base via walk in the first place - and Halley took it from there, shutting down the Miami bats and giving ours a chance to pull back in the game. Which they did, in a big way. Our bats have struggled against good pitching and bombed everything else, so it's nice to see them tee off on good pitching now, too.
Let's not forget Miami's role in all this. I told you they were crummy fielders and they've upheld that statement beyond my wildest dreams, committing four errors on Saturday and five more on Sunday. UVA scored seven runs in each of the first two games and of that total of 14, only three are earned runs. That's amazing. Not to say we haven't been hitting, but we have been timing our hits well. Gotta put them together. (And let's not forget that baseball has nutty rules about what's an earned run; one error can taint the whole thing. If there are two outs and you commit an error and then give up a billion runs afterwards, they're all unearned on the theory that the inning would otherwise have been over.)
Still: nine errors in two games. That's a lot of help. Ain't complaining, though: win tonight and I'll revive my 18-wins goal. Even better: our RPI is 15th in the country. That puts us in the back end of the regional-hosting discussion. Do I think we will? Still nope. But the chance is there. And even if we don't we got a great shot at being that pain-in-the-ass two seed that nobody wants in their regional. I would not be surprised, for example, to see us trucked to Columbia, South Carolina. (Unless Tim Weiser is still calling the shots, in which case, Fullerton here we come.)
*****************************************************
-- Phillip Sims is coming to UVA. Doug Doubt-y says it ain't so, at least not yet, but I don't know why I even mention that because there's no reason to pay attention to it. We're past the point of no return with this one. This went from bullshit rumor to actual rumor to actual happening so fast that I barely had time to process it. People have different ideas of what a "done deal" actually is, anyway. This is what I call a done deal.
I'm the last Hoo blogger to mention this, but I've always said I'm in the business of commentary, not breaking news. (And not even "business", really, since that would imply I've ever made a cent off doing this.) I did write a significant chunk of commentary. It got to be too significant. It's now a separate post all its own - tomorrow's. I'm afraid you'll have to wait til then to read it. That's what we call a teaser.
-- Virginia Tech has a new basketball coach: James Johnson, the assistant who left for Clemson less than a month ago and who probably, in doing so, helped get Seth Greenberg fired in the first place. I spent a ton of time on VT basketball last week and I don't want to bother doing so again, so Streaking the Lawn's piece on Johnson is good enough for me. No sense in me rehashing it, which is all I'd have done anyway. Go read that.
-- Man, the WAC is completely falling apart. UTSA hasn't even played a down of I-A football in their lives and C-USA has already poached them. It's funny how there used to be this 16-team WAC, then it branched out into the MWC and the WAC, and then all the good teams left the MWC and now the MWC is basically the WAC again.
-- Playoff talk abounds. I'm gonna hold off most of my opinions til they actually settle on something and then I can poke holes in it. Half of me thinks its funny that we used to have basically a two-team playoffs and now they're adding to two teams to that and saying "look everyone, a playoff!" and everyone's going "yay! (or boo!) a playoff!" as if it's really all that different. The other half of me says it really is that different, because four teams leads to six and six leads to eight and eight leads to twelve and twelve leads to sixteen and this is the same organization that floated the idea of a 96-team basketball tournament so don't you dare doubt me.
I'll leave you with this thought: I've told you for a long time that most of the playoff advocates are gonna be awfully disappointed with the result, because the same people who bring you the BCS that you hate are the ones who'll bring you your playoff. So don't expect anything brilliant. In fact, expect stupidity. The proof is in the pudding, summed up here and in this one quote:
Starting with lacrosse, where the Hoos played a game that's Exhibit A in the case of "why UVA will be considered the bottom of the ACC barrel next year until they prove otherwise." The good guys looked sloppy, and were bailed out by the mighty power of Steele Stanwick. Stanwick scored six goals and added an assist to push his PPG average over five. This dude is something else, and could do no wrong on Friday. Even his "post up a guy then fake-flip the ball to a teammate" trick, which never works, finally worked.
The rest of the team? Well, I'll exempt Chris Clements for now, who did a very admirable job. Clements picked up a short stick again (which is how he started off his career) and filled in at SSDM for Chris LaPierre, who sat the game with a shoulder injury. I don't think LaPierre was desperately missed (though he will be against better teams) except in the the realm of ground balls. Ayyy. There was no sense of urgency in picking up ground balls, not until the fourth quarter. One Penn goal came about four seconds after a defenseman - Scott McWilliams, I believe - just left a ball sitting on the turf and chased a Penn attackman instead. Pretty sure he thought that guy had the ball himself. No excuse for not knowing where the ball is, though.
Even when we had the ball in our possession, we didn't seem too interested in keeping it that way. Shot selection was lame. Chris Bocklet is the main culprit that I remember, but he wasn't the only one. Made some poor decisions that sent harmless beach balls at Penn's goalie Brian Feeney. And it went both ways: Penn did everything but put up bright neon signs daring Mark Cockerton to shoot with his right hand, and he refused. Obviously he's not too keen on that side, but this summer would be a very good time to work on that. Heck, Friday would've been a very good time to work on that. Even as uncomfortable right-handed as he clearly is, I can't believe a D-I athlete's shot is that bad that he couldn't have potted a goal that way, as open as they left his right side.
Then you had about three or four clean interceptions, way too many. Rob Fortunato slinged a pass at a Penn rider that was so perfectly executed my only explanation is he brainfarted and forgot we were wearing blue uniforms. Of course the ball ended up behind him three seconds later.
So the break is coming at a good time - mentally, and because of LaPierre's shoulder bangup. And it seems clear that Stanwick isn't quite healthy either. Unless he just gets up slowly every time he's knocked to the ground because he wants to. All that's left is to take final exams and wait for the rest of the conference tourneys to play themselves out, and find out our first-round opponent this Sunday.
*****************************************************
However, while I was gnawing my fingernails over the lax team, the diamond nine was restoring my faith. Two very nice wins Saturday and Sunday have put the Hoos in position to potentially sweep Miami - at Miami.
On Saturday, Branden Kline had one of his effectively wild outings, walking five and striking out eight. A 40-some minute rain delay messed with both pitchers; Kline was pulled after 120 pitches in only five innings, and Miami starter Eric Erickson pitched one inning too long; the UVA bats opened up on him in the sixth.
On Sunday, for the second week in a row Shane Halley pitched six innings in relief of Scott Silverstein, leading to the obvious question of why don't we just start Halley if that's how the game is gonna turn out. Such a decision may be on the horizon, but I don't think Silverstein's time as a starter is quite done yet. At any rate, he gave up four runs in the second - half of which got on base via walk in the first place - and Halley took it from there, shutting down the Miami bats and giving ours a chance to pull back in the game. Which they did, in a big way. Our bats have struggled against good pitching and bombed everything else, so it's nice to see them tee off on good pitching now, too.
Let's not forget Miami's role in all this. I told you they were crummy fielders and they've upheld that statement beyond my wildest dreams, committing four errors on Saturday and five more on Sunday. UVA scored seven runs in each of the first two games and of that total of 14, only three are earned runs. That's amazing. Not to say we haven't been hitting, but we have been timing our hits well. Gotta put them together. (And let's not forget that baseball has nutty rules about what's an earned run; one error can taint the whole thing. If there are two outs and you commit an error and then give up a billion runs afterwards, they're all unearned on the theory that the inning would otherwise have been over.)
Still: nine errors in two games. That's a lot of help. Ain't complaining, though: win tonight and I'll revive my 18-wins goal. Even better: our RPI is 15th in the country. That puts us in the back end of the regional-hosting discussion. Do I think we will? Still nope. But the chance is there. And even if we don't we got a great shot at being that pain-in-the-ass two seed that nobody wants in their regional. I would not be surprised, for example, to see us trucked to Columbia, South Carolina. (Unless Tim Weiser is still calling the shots, in which case, Fullerton here we come.)
*****************************************************
-- Phillip Sims is coming to UVA. Doug Doubt-y says it ain't so, at least not yet, but I don't know why I even mention that because there's no reason to pay attention to it. We're past the point of no return with this one. This went from bullshit rumor to actual rumor to actual happening so fast that I barely had time to process it. People have different ideas of what a "done deal" actually is, anyway. This is what I call a done deal.
I'm the last Hoo blogger to mention this, but I've always said I'm in the business of commentary, not breaking news. (And not even "business", really, since that would imply I've ever made a cent off doing this.) I did write a significant chunk of commentary. It got to be too significant. It's now a separate post all its own - tomorrow's. I'm afraid you'll have to wait til then to read it. That's what we call a teaser.
-- Virginia Tech has a new basketball coach: James Johnson, the assistant who left for Clemson less than a month ago and who probably, in doing so, helped get Seth Greenberg fired in the first place. I spent a ton of time on VT basketball last week and I don't want to bother doing so again, so Streaking the Lawn's piece on Johnson is good enough for me. No sense in me rehashing it, which is all I'd have done anyway. Go read that.
-- Man, the WAC is completely falling apart. UTSA hasn't even played a down of I-A football in their lives and C-USA has already poached them. It's funny how there used to be this 16-team WAC, then it branched out into the MWC and the WAC, and then all the good teams left the MWC and now the MWC is basically the WAC again.
-- Playoff talk abounds. I'm gonna hold off most of my opinions til they actually settle on something and then I can poke holes in it. Half of me thinks its funny that we used to have basically a two-team playoffs and now they're adding to two teams to that and saying "look everyone, a playoff!" and everyone's going "yay! (or boo!) a playoff!" as if it's really all that different. The other half of me says it really is that different, because four teams leads to six and six leads to eight and eight leads to twelve and twelve leads to sixteen and this is the same organization that floated the idea of a 96-team basketball tournament so don't you dare doubt me.
I'll leave you with this thought: I've told you for a long time that most of the playoff advocates are gonna be awfully disappointed with the result, because the same people who bring you the BCS that you hate are the ones who'll bring you your playoff. So don't expect anything brilliant. In fact, expect stupidity. The proof is in the pudding, summed up here and in this one quote:
[BCS director] Bill Hancock wonders if college football stadiums have the infrastructure to host college football games.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
annual playoff gripe
If you know me at all, you know I don't want a college football playoff. Believe it or not I'm actually happy with the BCS. I don't like the BCS, at least, not enough to be some kind of staunch defender of it, as if it were the best possible system, but I think it's got its positives. And truth is, college football's three-month regular season is too great to be spoiled by a playoff. How much do you care about basketball's regular season? The only people for whom it really matters are the bubble teams, and even then only in retrospect (oh, if only we'd beaten so-and-so.)
I'm in the minority, of course, so in order to be in the majority I have my own idea for a playoff, since everyone does. You can read that here, and you probably should, or some of this might not make sense. (One thing: if you've read it in the past, you might notice a few changes this time. Normally I keep changes so it doesn't look like I'm covering up mistakes, but that's an important page and I don't want it to have a thousand words struck out, it would get cluttered. You'll get the gist.) Anyway, I don't want a playoff, no - but if we must, that'd be the one I'd want. Why is it better than everyone else's?
One, because of the way I went about constructing it. When people say, "gee, I'd really like to see this idea," they start with their own happyland wishes and go from there. Then when you point out problems and why it couldn't occur, they say, "well, we could change this and this and then it would work." These decisions are made by actual stakeholders with stuff at stake. Which they lose if they do it wrong. You have to try and get in their heads and figure out what they want, and go from there. This is what I've tried to do. To put this in quick and dirty terms, most people pick up their favorite-shaped square peg and try to change the hole. I have analyzed the hole and tried to find the best peg to fit it.
Two, because with my idea you can have your cake and eat it too. Right now football is like a five-year old's birthday party with delicious chocolate cake. Everyone likes cake. Some people like a different kind of cake, and complain that they want a different flavor, but they're gonna eat the cake anyway because it's irresistible. (Except for the one five-year old, screaming and throwing a huge temper tantrum in the corner.**)
Well, the FOV playoff lets you playoff lovers have your delicious cake of whatever flavor, and us bowl and regular season lovers have ours. Let me give you the very basics:
-- 16 teams, arranged in what we'll call the Big East Style (Biggie Style if you say it fast) because it's how the Big East arranges its basketball tournament. Double byes for the top four teams, single byes for 5 through 8.
-- Play the first three rounds in the first three weekends of December so that the losers can play in bowls. And play them at home sites.
-- Eight conference champions are autobidded, based on some kind of RPI-esque ranking system. Eight more teams are chosen by a competition committee from an at-large pool that consists of the three non-autobidded champions plus the top X number of teams in the RPI-esque system. Whatever you want X to be, I don't care.
It's that simple. Well, there are other details, but please click through to the playoff proposal post since I've already typed 'em up and I don't want to duplicate the effort. Since there's already the equivalent of a two-team playoff, it would only require one bowl's worth of teams extra - 12 playoff losers can go to a bowl, and only the Football Final Four would be held out of the bowl process. Bowl invites could get interesting. Clemson might well be ticketed again for the Orange Bowl, but what if they win out? Maybe the Orange Bowl then contracts to take the team they beat. Or - also intriguing - perhaps playoff performance helps determine bowl eligibility; bowls such as the Sugar and Orange might agree to take only those teams which got past the first round of the playoffs. Lots of possibilities.
If I were made king of college football, of course, there'd be other changes besides. No bowls after the first weekend in January, or January 3rd, whichever is earlier. No "Capital One Bowl." Fuck you and put your real name back on the game. Bowls will be played in ascending order of importance, except that the Rose Bowl will always be on New Year's Day. None of this Weedeater.com Bowl stuff on January 8. But don't confuse these for problems with the system. This is the fault of the idiots in charge of it.
Anyway, this post largely exists to give you a taste of what this could look like this year. I'm not going to list out all the bowls, either, but you'd still get them, of course. And because the first three rounds are all played at home, instead of traveling to, like, Colorado Springs or something like in the NCAA tournament, it feels more like an extension of the regular season than a postseason. Twelve teams get to host a game. That's good stuff that will make ADs feel happy. I am a competition committee of one for this exercise, so here is your 2011 FOV playoff:
Is beautiful, no? In this way, regular season protectionists (like myself) can be satisfied, because it separates the teams into four distinct tiers: host a third-round game, host a second-round game, host a first-round game, get your ass on the road. Here we have eight conference winners and eight at-large choices, and you can quibble with my choices all you want but if you do, that's kind of the point - playoffs don't really make any controversy disappear.
I don't hold any illusions about the powers-that-be being this creative, though. If the choice were between the current system and this, give me this. But that doesn't make me pro-playoff - if the choice were between the current system and some of the crap being peddled these days, give me the BCS all day. Sadly, I think the playoff debate is skewed by people who confuse "I want MY playoff" with "I want A playoff." Let's be honest with ourselves: the people in charge of this are the ones who brought you the BCS in the first place and are about to place San Diego State in a conference called the "Big East." If you've been telling yourself "anything but the BCS" do you really trust them to come up with something you'll like? Join my miniscule army and let's get this bad boy approved instead.
**Seriously: Dan Wetzel is no longer a credible or objective reporter when it comes to the BCS. He has written uncountable scathing attack pieces and a scathing attack book called "Death to the BCS" - this removes any shred of objectivity when he reports on it. He has an agenda. Period. As an opinion columnist, he is perfectly entitled to one, but when he tweets made-up bullshit like this, you are required to remember that he has an agenda. He wrote a book based on that agenda. That agenda involves making the BCS look as bad as possible. Objectivity: zero.
I'm in the minority, of course, so in order to be in the majority I have my own idea for a playoff, since everyone does. You can read that here, and you probably should, or some of this might not make sense. (One thing: if you've read it in the past, you might notice a few changes this time. Normally I keep changes so it doesn't look like I'm covering up mistakes, but that's an important page and I don't want it to have a thousand words struck out, it would get cluttered. You'll get the gist.) Anyway, I don't want a playoff, no - but if we must, that'd be the one I'd want. Why is it better than everyone else's?
One, because of the way I went about constructing it. When people say, "gee, I'd really like to see this idea," they start with their own happyland wishes and go from there. Then when you point out problems and why it couldn't occur, they say, "well, we could change this and this and then it would work." These decisions are made by actual stakeholders with stuff at stake. Which they lose if they do it wrong. You have to try and get in their heads and figure out what they want, and go from there. This is what I've tried to do. To put this in quick and dirty terms, most people pick up their favorite-shaped square peg and try to change the hole. I have analyzed the hole and tried to find the best peg to fit it.
Two, because with my idea you can have your cake and eat it too. Right now football is like a five-year old's birthday party with delicious chocolate cake. Everyone likes cake. Some people like a different kind of cake, and complain that they want a different flavor, but they're gonna eat the cake anyway because it's irresistible. (Except for the one five-year old, screaming and throwing a huge temper tantrum in the corner.**)
Well, the FOV playoff lets you playoff lovers have your delicious cake of whatever flavor, and us bowl and regular season lovers have ours. Let me give you the very basics:
-- 16 teams, arranged in what we'll call the Big East Style (Biggie Style if you say it fast) because it's how the Big East arranges its basketball tournament. Double byes for the top four teams, single byes for 5 through 8.
-- Play the first three rounds in the first three weekends of December so that the losers can play in bowls. And play them at home sites.
-- Eight conference champions are autobidded, based on some kind of RPI-esque ranking system. Eight more teams are chosen by a competition committee from an at-large pool that consists of the three non-autobidded champions plus the top X number of teams in the RPI-esque system. Whatever you want X to be, I don't care.
It's that simple. Well, there are other details, but please click through to the playoff proposal post since I've already typed 'em up and I don't want to duplicate the effort. Since there's already the equivalent of a two-team playoff, it would only require one bowl's worth of teams extra - 12 playoff losers can go to a bowl, and only the Football Final Four would be held out of the bowl process. Bowl invites could get interesting. Clemson might well be ticketed again for the Orange Bowl, but what if they win out? Maybe the Orange Bowl then contracts to take the team they beat. Or - also intriguing - perhaps playoff performance helps determine bowl eligibility; bowls such as the Sugar and Orange might agree to take only those teams which got past the first round of the playoffs. Lots of possibilities.
If I were made king of college football, of course, there'd be other changes besides. No bowls after the first weekend in January, or January 3rd, whichever is earlier. No "Capital One Bowl." Fuck you and put your real name back on the game. Bowls will be played in ascending order of importance, except that the Rose Bowl will always be on New Year's Day. None of this Weedeater.com Bowl stuff on January 8. But don't confuse these for problems with the system. This is the fault of the idiots in charge of it.
Anyway, this post largely exists to give you a taste of what this could look like this year. I'm not going to list out all the bowls, either, but you'd still get them, of course. And because the first three rounds are all played at home, instead of traveling to, like, Colorado Springs or something like in the NCAA tournament, it feels more like an extension of the regular season than a postseason. Twelve teams get to host a game. That's good stuff that will make ADs feel happy. I am a competition committee of one for this exercise, so here is your 2011 FOV playoff:
I don't hold any illusions about the powers-that-be being this creative, though. If the choice were between the current system and this, give me this. But that doesn't make me pro-playoff - if the choice were between the current system and some of the crap being peddled these days, give me the BCS all day. Sadly, I think the playoff debate is skewed by people who confuse "I want MY playoff" with "I want A playoff." Let's be honest with ourselves: the people in charge of this are the ones who brought you the BCS in the first place and are about to place San Diego State in a conference called the "Big East." If you've been telling yourself "anything but the BCS" do you really trust them to come up with something you'll like? Join my miniscule army and let's get this bad boy approved instead.
**Seriously: Dan Wetzel is no longer a credible or objective reporter when it comes to the BCS. He has written uncountable scathing attack pieces and a scathing attack book called "Death to the BCS" - this removes any shred of objectivity when he reports on it. He has an agenda. Period. As an opinion columnist, he is perfectly entitled to one, but when he tweets made-up bullshit like this, you are required to remember that he has an agenda. He wrote a book based on that agenda. That agenda involves making the BCS look as bad as possible. Objectivity: zero.
Friday, May 6, 2011
soapboxing: antitrust? really?
I guess if there's a downside to the Sunday raid that iced Osama bin Laden for good, it's that I can't use him as an example of Don't You Have Better Things To Do anymore when the feds start nosing around in college football.
This is ridiculous, frankly, and not just because I don't want to see a college football playoff. Look, I hate to get political around here and I think I've been good about never doing it, but if you or I want electricity we have to buy it from a monopoly, so I can think of at least one better example of antitrust operations in this country than the BCS.
But that's not the point. Apparently the point is that the BCS "may not be conducted consistent with the competition principles expressed in the federal antitrust laws."
Let's examine this. Antitrust laws are supposed to protect the consumer. Well, the consumer is us, the fans. We pay money for their product. But the point of this particular incursion is to eventually force a playoff, not give us choices for our football-watching desires. So the laws are being applied to try and protect a different kind of consumer, the TCUs, Utahs, and Boise States of the world that are somehow being unfairly prevented from a shot at the national championship.
But what are the criteria for a shot at the national championship? There's only one, actually: Be #1 or #2 in the BCS standings at the end of the season. It doesn't say: "Be #1 or #2 in the BCS standings and be affiliated with a particular conference." If Middle Tennessee can achieve #1 or #2 status, then the Blue Raiders will play for the title the same as Auburn would.
No, the conference affiliations matter for one thing only: an autobid to a "BCS bowl." The ACC is a BCS conference, so it has an autobid to the Orange Bowl. And besides the label "BCS" and the method of choosing an opponent for the ACC champion, what is the difference between that and Conference USA's autobid to the Liberty Bowl for their champion? We have a bid to a bowl. They have a bid to a bowl. The fact that the national championship game is tied in by affiliation to other bowls under the umbrella of the "BCS" is totally irrelevant - in fact, the national championship game is far more open and achievable than the Orange Bowl or the Liberty Bowl or the Website.com Bowl, because it is the only bowl game without conference affiliations. It is part of the BCS only because it's hosted on a rotational basis by other bowls that have allied themselves with each other and called themselves the BCS.
So the BCS is simply an alliance of bowls that have done what every other bowl in the history of bowldom has done: signed agreements with conferences to host a team from that conference. Except for one major difference: the BCS bowls have only one conference affiliation (except for the Rose Bowl) and the non-BCS bowls have two. The BCS bowls have an "in" for all other comers, which has opened, not closed, participation by teams traditionally thought of as mid-majors. Let me illustrate this with a crude graph:
I'll let you stare at that all you want. Prior to the BCS, the Rose Bowl was an exclusive, members-only, Big Ten or Pac-10 or GTFO, millionaire's club. (And we liked it that way in the Big Ten, thank you very much.) TCU would never have played in the Rose Bowl without there being a BCS.
But since the Rose Bowl, look what TCU has done to capitalize on their success: joined the Big East. Utah made a similar move. There's no monopoly or cartel holding them back from advancement. That's capitalism for ya. With the money I have, nobody is forcing me to buy inferior products; I can buy the ones I want. With the money (or otherwise capital of various kinds) the Big East invited TCU. They weren't forced to, either.
College football is very capitalistic, in fact. Much more so than the monopolization of postseason play that's gone on in the basketball world. This is a key point. Remember that the NIT, which was once owned by a third party, actually sued the NCAA in an antitrust lawsuit, because the NCAA was compelling its members to play in the NCAA tournament if invited, even if they preferred the NIT. That may seem crazy, but it used to happen and the NCAA put rules in place to stop it. In order to make the lawsuit go away, the NCAA paid $56.5 million for the rights to the NIT, and now you're compelled to go to both tournaments, whichever you're invited to. Now it's even more of a monopoly than it was before. On the other hand, conferences and teams are free to negotiate their own bowl destinations without outside interference.
$56.5 million. If the feds get their way and force a playoff to be instituted, all 35 bowl games would remember that. And they're each going to want that kind of money to go away. Can the NCAA afford to pay out almost $2 billion to make the inevitable antitrust suit from the bowls disappear?
So, yes, the whole thing is lunacy. It'd be like the British government intervening on behalf of, oh, say, Burnley FC, which plays under exactly the same rules as the big boys at Man United and Liverpool but hasn't a fucking prayer of ever winning the Premiership anyway. And the Brits don't seem to mind. If the feds find the BCS in violation of antitrust rules, we can go one of two ways: Back to the dark ages, or straight to a playoff. During the former, there was no mechanism at all for "the little guy" to get into the big bowls or ever win the national championship; the latter would open up the NCAA to actual, real antitrust lawsuits that in the past have cost them actual, real money. This is not to call the BCS the perfect solution to anything, but if you're hankering for a playoff and you think the federal government is the best way to make it happen, be exceedingly careful what you wish for.
This is ridiculous, frankly, and not just because I don't want to see a college football playoff. Look, I hate to get political around here and I think I've been good about never doing it, but if you or I want electricity we have to buy it from a monopoly, so I can think of at least one better example of antitrust operations in this country than the BCS.
But that's not the point. Apparently the point is that the BCS "may not be conducted consistent with the competition principles expressed in the federal antitrust laws."
Let's examine this. Antitrust laws are supposed to protect the consumer. Well, the consumer is us, the fans. We pay money for their product. But the point of this particular incursion is to eventually force a playoff, not give us choices for our football-watching desires. So the laws are being applied to try and protect a different kind of consumer, the TCUs, Utahs, and Boise States of the world that are somehow being unfairly prevented from a shot at the national championship.
But what are the criteria for a shot at the national championship? There's only one, actually: Be #1 or #2 in the BCS standings at the end of the season. It doesn't say: "Be #1 or #2 in the BCS standings and be affiliated with a particular conference." If Middle Tennessee can achieve #1 or #2 status, then the Blue Raiders will play for the title the same as Auburn would.
No, the conference affiliations matter for one thing only: an autobid to a "BCS bowl." The ACC is a BCS conference, so it has an autobid to the Orange Bowl. And besides the label "BCS" and the method of choosing an opponent for the ACC champion, what is the difference between that and Conference USA's autobid to the Liberty Bowl for their champion? We have a bid to a bowl. They have a bid to a bowl. The fact that the national championship game is tied in by affiliation to other bowls under the umbrella of the "BCS" is totally irrelevant - in fact, the national championship game is far more open and achievable than the Orange Bowl or the Liberty Bowl or the Website.com Bowl, because it is the only bowl game without conference affiliations. It is part of the BCS only because it's hosted on a rotational basis by other bowls that have allied themselves with each other and called themselves the BCS.
So the BCS is simply an alliance of bowls that have done what every other bowl in the history of bowldom has done: signed agreements with conferences to host a team from that conference. Except for one major difference: the BCS bowls have only one conference affiliation (except for the Rose Bowl) and the non-BCS bowls have two. The BCS bowls have an "in" for all other comers, which has opened, not closed, participation by teams traditionally thought of as mid-majors. Let me illustrate this with a crude graph:
But since the Rose Bowl, look what TCU has done to capitalize on their success: joined the Big East. Utah made a similar move. There's no monopoly or cartel holding them back from advancement. That's capitalism for ya. With the money I have, nobody is forcing me to buy inferior products; I can buy the ones I want. With the money (or otherwise capital of various kinds) the Big East invited TCU. They weren't forced to, either.
College football is very capitalistic, in fact. Much more so than the monopolization of postseason play that's gone on in the basketball world. This is a key point. Remember that the NIT, which was once owned by a third party, actually sued the NCAA in an antitrust lawsuit, because the NCAA was compelling its members to play in the NCAA tournament if invited, even if they preferred the NIT. That may seem crazy, but it used to happen and the NCAA put rules in place to stop it. In order to make the lawsuit go away, the NCAA paid $56.5 million for the rights to the NIT, and now you're compelled to go to both tournaments, whichever you're invited to. Now it's even more of a monopoly than it was before. On the other hand, conferences and teams are free to negotiate their own bowl destinations without outside interference.
$56.5 million. If the feds get their way and force a playoff to be instituted, all 35 bowl games would remember that. And they're each going to want that kind of money to go away. Can the NCAA afford to pay out almost $2 billion to make the inevitable antitrust suit from the bowls disappear?
So, yes, the whole thing is lunacy. It'd be like the British government intervening on behalf of, oh, say, Burnley FC, which plays under exactly the same rules as the big boys at Man United and Liverpool but hasn't a fucking prayer of ever winning the Premiership anyway. And the Brits don't seem to mind. If the feds find the BCS in violation of antitrust rules, we can go one of two ways: Back to the dark ages, or straight to a playoff. During the former, there was no mechanism at all for "the little guy" to get into the big bowls or ever win the national championship; the latter would open up the NCAA to actual, real antitrust lawsuits that in the past have cost them actual, real money. This is not to call the BCS the perfect solution to anything, but if you're hankering for a playoff and you think the federal government is the best way to make it happen, be exceedingly careful what you wish for.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
let this be a warning to you
I didn't have any comment the first time this monster reared its ugly head, so it's time to seize that opportunity. The monster in question is the specter of NCAA tournament expansion, specifically the idea of exploding the tournament from 64 to 96 teams, brought into the forefront again by the revelation today that the commissioner of the Big Ten considers expansion of the tournament "probable."
Now, it's being widely reported that Jim Delany is referring to the big kahuna of 96, despite the fact that the question posed to him (at least as written in the original story there) has nothing to do with 96 teams and refers instead to "the expansion issue", which could mean quite a few different things. But the media is running with the 96 number that the NCAA floated a few weeks back. So I will too.
The response to the idea of 96 has been pretty much unanimous among those whose job, hobby, or preferred distraction is to opine about sports in whatever forum they have: they hate it. It is a universally condemned idea, and I'm not about to try and be the lone voice going against that crowd. I hate it too. The 64-team tournament (I do not acknowledge that the loser of the play-in game actually participated in the tournament) has a perfect symmetry to it. And more importantly, it still means something to make the tournament. For those of us in a power conference, it's the dividing line between a good and bad season. Chanting "N-I-T! N-I-T!" at a bubble team you don't particularly like is fun; replacing it with "Eight-teen-seed! Eight-teen-seed!" just doesn't sound the same, does it? When you talk about a tournament season, or "we've been to the tournament this many times this decade" or whatever, it loses a lot of meaning if it becomes that much easier to get in.
But I'm not here to talk about why I don't like a 96-team tournament. If I were, I'd go on for days. A little bit later, I do plan on assessing the possibilities for where this could go in the future, and some of the impossibilities too.
The obvious fact is, the NCAA doesn't give a shit what you or I think. There isn't a fan out there who would say, "oh yeah, the new name for the Peach Bowl is a big improvement." And besides, there are lots of other people on this soapbox, and when it comes down to it we all know - and so do they - that we're going to sop up like dogs whatever the NCAA throws out there. They could declare a 256-team tournament and we'd all be like, "Woo! Tournament!" once March rolls around. So what we think doesn't matter to them.
But that does bring me to the main point: People like tournaments, you see, and though the Official Platform Position of this blog is anti-playoff in football, your humble writer knows he's in the minority. And for that matter, accepts the likelihood that sometime in his lifetime, a playoff will exist. Now, there is a very sizable contingent among the very sizable pro-playoff crowd whose feelings about a football playoff run something like this: "I want a playoff, but I don't want to ruin the regular season, so I want a small one. Six or eight teams. This would allow the best teams to play for the title." Does that sound familiar? Do you or someone you know feel this way?
If the answer is yes, then I'm speaking directly to you. We all like the 64-team format in basketball. It's symmetrical, it's competitive, it's entertaining. Nobody wants to see it messed with by going to a 96-team monstrosity, but the NCAA doesn't care what you think and is seriously considering going to one anyway. As soon as next year, in fact. I will say this in big, bold, yellow, colorful, completely unmistakable letters - not to insult your reading or seeing capabilities, but so that nobody ever miscontrues what I'm saying:
THIS. IS. YOUR. WARNING.
This 96-team idea is the shot across your bow. I've said this before, I've been saying for the longest time, and I will continue to say it. The NCAA does not give a rat pellet about what's best for the competition. They care about the money. Money drives them. Let me restate what I said over a year ago:
The NCAA wants a 96 team tournament. If they don't do it this summer, they will do it eventually. Never underestimate the ability of the college presidents and conference commissioners and NCAA board to screw up a good thing if it's not bringing in enough cash. The same will happen with football, if they ever decide to shake up the bowl system. It might not happen immediately, but it will happen. If you want a football playoff but would be unhappy with a big one, now is a very good time to rethink.
Now, it's being widely reported that Jim Delany is referring to the big kahuna of 96, despite the fact that the question posed to him (at least as written in the original story there) has nothing to do with 96 teams and refers instead to "the expansion issue", which could mean quite a few different things. But the media is running with the 96 number that the NCAA floated a few weeks back. So I will too.
The response to the idea of 96 has been pretty much unanimous among those whose job, hobby, or preferred distraction is to opine about sports in whatever forum they have: they hate it. It is a universally condemned idea, and I'm not about to try and be the lone voice going against that crowd. I hate it too. The 64-team tournament (I do not acknowledge that the loser of the play-in game actually participated in the tournament) has a perfect symmetry to it. And more importantly, it still means something to make the tournament. For those of us in a power conference, it's the dividing line between a good and bad season. Chanting "N-I-T! N-I-T!" at a bubble team you don't particularly like is fun; replacing it with "Eight-teen-seed! Eight-teen-seed!" just doesn't sound the same, does it? When you talk about a tournament season, or "we've been to the tournament this many times this decade" or whatever, it loses a lot of meaning if it becomes that much easier to get in.
But I'm not here to talk about why I don't like a 96-team tournament. If I were, I'd go on for days. A little bit later, I do plan on assessing the possibilities for where this could go in the future, and some of the impossibilities too.
The obvious fact is, the NCAA doesn't give a shit what you or I think. There isn't a fan out there who would say, "oh yeah, the new name for the Peach Bowl is a big improvement." And besides, there are lots of other people on this soapbox, and when it comes down to it we all know - and so do they - that we're going to sop up like dogs whatever the NCAA throws out there. They could declare a 256-team tournament and we'd all be like, "Woo! Tournament!" once March rolls around. So what we think doesn't matter to them.
But that does bring me to the main point: People like tournaments, you see, and though the Official Platform Position of this blog is anti-playoff in football, your humble writer knows he's in the minority. And for that matter, accepts the likelihood that sometime in his lifetime, a playoff will exist. Now, there is a very sizable contingent among the very sizable pro-playoff crowd whose feelings about a football playoff run something like this: "I want a playoff, but I don't want to ruin the regular season, so I want a small one. Six or eight teams. This would allow the best teams to play for the title." Does that sound familiar? Do you or someone you know feel this way?
If the answer is yes, then I'm speaking directly to you. We all like the 64-team format in basketball. It's symmetrical, it's competitive, it's entertaining. Nobody wants to see it messed with by going to a 96-team monstrosity, but the NCAA doesn't care what you think and is seriously considering going to one anyway. As soon as next year, in fact. I will say this in big, bold, yellow, colorful, completely unmistakable letters - not to insult your reading or seeing capabilities, but so that nobody ever miscontrues what I'm saying:
THIS. IS. YOUR. WARNING.
This 96-team idea is the shot across your bow. I've said this before, I've been saying for the longest time, and I will continue to say it. The NCAA does not give a rat pellet about what's best for the competition. They care about the money. Money drives them. Let me restate what I said over a year ago:
Take a look at March Madness. You think it's got 65 teams because those are the best 65 teams in the land and they all have a great shot at the title? Hell no. It's 65 because the NCAA couldn't resist the awesome bracket-building, money-grubbing wonder of three weekends of March Madness, baby! It used to be 8 teams. Then it was 16. Then it was 20-some. Then 32. Then 48. Then 64. Then 65. And they're talking of expansion again! Your cute little perfect six team or eight team football bracket will not stay that way.I warned you back then. I'm warning you now. And to whomever does not listen to these warnings, and thinks they can have a neat little eight-team bracket without having it balloon to an ugly and unrecognizable mess in the future, I will have no hesitation in saying I Told You So when the time comes.
The NCAA wants a 96 team tournament. If they don't do it this summer, they will do it eventually. Never underestimate the ability of the college presidents and conference commissioners and NCAA board to screw up a good thing if it's not bringing in enough cash. The same will happen with football, if they ever decide to shake up the bowl system. It might not happen immediately, but it will happen. If you want a football playoff but would be unhappy with a big one, now is a very good time to rethink.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
the playoff that i want and that the nation needs
OK, I said I'd hold off on this til October or so, but I have this problem keeping my flap shut, which is why this blog is here in the first place, really. This is my playoff idea, and yes, I realize everyone and their aunt and their aunt's gerbil has an idea. Which is why I expect a lot of very disappointed football fans when they do get around to making a playoff. Lot of folks going, "This isn't what I signed up for."
The reason for that is because most people don't take into account any of the realities of the situation, they just toss ideas out there that they think would be pretty cool. Hell, even the President of the United States is guilty of this. This idea of mine strives to take into account all the realities of the situation (or at least, the ones I know of) as well as keep folks like me happy. Folks who still like the bowls and still like the regular season with a little drama to it instead of having teams yawn through the end of the season because their ticket is punched for the playoffs.
Keep in mind, now, the Two Truisms I put forth earlier. 1, a playoff will be big (that is, four, six, or eight teams = nonsense) and 2, a playoff will be played primarily on home-field sites. That in mind, here is what I propose:
- The playoff should be sixteen teams.
Look. You can get the sorry notion of a six or eight team playoff out of your head right this instant. Here's why: autobids, duh. Once you institute a playoff like that, it will suck up 90% of the dollars invested in the college football postseason. TV contracts will be huge. Participants will get exposure aplenty. Dollars will fly everywhere. There is absolutely, positively no way a conference commissioner whose conference is already in snug with the BCS, bringing in all that dough, is going to agree to any system where in the future, his conference might be left out. Ever.
That means autobids. And once you have autobids, and you exclude somebody, we-he-hell, Mark Shurtleff will be on line 1, stat. The prospects for an antitrust case as it stands now are shaky at best. Nobody is "left out" of the championship because nobody has any kind of automatic bid to it. Once you do autobid to the championship, you have to have everyone. It will never, ever fly otherwise.
That means 11 teams, minimum. If you just add one at-large, to make it 12, you have solved absolutely nothing. If adding one at-large could solve anything, they'd have a three-team playoff and that would be that. Add five at-larges and you have the nice even number of sixteen.
Now, how to set up the bracket?
- The playoff should use the Big East system.
Check out how the Big East does it in basketball. It's a great idea. They're not the only conference to use an uneven bracket, but they're the biggest to do so. The 9-16 seeded teams play in the first round, advance to face the 5-8 seeded teams, and the winner of those games advance to play the 1-4 seeded teams. Two byes for the best teams.
This is a fantastic idea for football too. It keeps the regular season extremely valuable. You're playing for byes and you're playing for home field advantage all the way through. The best teams only have to win three times to win the title; the lower seeded teams must win five. It would put a stop to the specific playoff criticism I have; namely, that it's too easy for a lower-seeded team to get hot and play its way through, like, say, the Arizona Cardinals. It forces the lower seeded teams to play one more game than they'd have to in a standard bracket, and immensely rewards the higher seeded ones. And there are other advantages too.....
- The playoff should be played on home fields.
They do this in the lower divisions for a reason: because fans aren't going to travel four and five times to go see their teams. Especially not around the holidays when they're trying to make sure Santa doesn't pass their kids by. You want to fill the stadium, you put it close to where the fans are, and that's at home stadiums.
And here's the part that should appeal to the powers that be: Under a standard bracket, played at home fields, only eight teams would be guaranteed a home game. In the Big East system, twelve teams are guaranteed that extra week of sweet sweet revenue. Naturally, of course, there would be fierce and acrimonious discussions about how exactly all that money is split. No matter how you slice it though, spreading the wealth like that (or the pain-in-the-butt of having to host a home game that you get no real benefit from) is something the commissioners are going to prefer.
So the first three rounds would be at home fields - that's how they do it at the other levels too. And then, for maximum hype and maximum sponsorship dollars, a Football Final Four, bid on by cities in the same manner that they do for the basketball one.
- The playoff should be in December.
Or more specifically, the first three rounds should be in December. This is for a lot of very good reasons:
- First, the NCAA and the TV stations could market the everloving shit out of Thanksgiving weekend as the final weekend of the regular season. The regular season doesn't need to creep up into the first week of December like it does now. Make Thanksgiving weekend the weekend in which playoff berths are won and lost, and hold the selection show on Sunday evening the same way they do for basketball.
- Second, it's just too unwieldy otherwise. Extending this thing into mid-to-late January makes a mess of coaches' recruiting calendars and makes the whole damn season too bloody long.
- Third, it would mitigate the excuse that a team had too long a layoff for the championships. They play right away. Three weeks is the longest a team would go without playing, which is plenty long enough to rest up and practice and short enough to stay sharp.
- Fourth, and most importantly so sit up and pay attention: The losers can be invited to bowl games. I don't want to lose the bowls so this, to me, is a really elegant and simple way to work this out. It's one of the things at the heart and soul of this whole idea. Because the first three rounds would wrap up by mid-December, there's plenty of time for the twelve losers to make travel plans for a bowl two weeks later. The bowls are a terrific reward for a good season. You go somewhere warm (usually), you have a good time, get a free schwag bag, and your fans make a trip out of it. It's a system too good to lose. Some of the sponsorship dollars would dry up and the smaller, weaker bowls might get picked off, but if we lose the New Mexico Bowl I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. 20-25 bowls could still be played, and going to the playoffs doesn't have to mean you don't get to participate. The only teams who don't play in bowls would be the Football Final Four, who would play after the bowl games wrap up. It'd be a bowl-like atmosphere anyway.
- The playoff field should be decided by competition committee.
It works great for basketball.
Edit as of December 6, 2011:
This used to say: "So with the bylaws thing, a slightly revised way is needed to set up the field. Can't just autobid a team from each of the 11 conferences." Actually yes you can. "The bylaws thing" was the idea that at least half a playoff field had to be made up of at-larges, upon which some of this idea was based. Actually it is the other way round. Half the playoff field must be made of autobids, not at-larges. I checked this. It is true. Either they changed it since I wrote that, or I totally read everything wrong, or the media sources I read totally read everything wrong. Either way, someone's a dumbass.
At any rate, it has little effect on this proposal. We're still going with eight autobids and eight at-large bids. Why? Because it's a better playoff that way. Are some people still gonna be pissed off? Yes. I didn't say we were going to please everyone. That's impossible. So how to do this? Create an at-large pool. The three conference champs that don't get autobids are automatically entered into the at-large pool, along with ten or twelve or however many of the remaining highest-ranked teams from the newly-created RPI, that the committee must choose from. This would give these conference champions a little bit of a boost, and it would mean that the eight autobids are earned on merit instead of an agreement in a room. And it would cause the committee to think things like, "hey, Southern Miss actually looks more deserving than West Virginia this year." You could further help the mid-majors that missed out on autobids by stipulating that no conference can have more than two teams in the playoff. This isn't an idea I'm married to, just a suggestion, but it is some food for thought.
Alright, so what of it? Arguments against it? I have some, and I have rebuttals too:
- Final exams? Are these student athletes ever going to be students?
I'm about as worried over this as the NCAA is, which scheduled JMU to play in the I-AA playoffs on December 12, which happened to be the last day of JMU's final exams: Dec. 8-12. They already do this and it's fine. I've never liked this particular anti-playoff argument.
- It's too hard to work the travel arrangements.
Nonsense - basketball teams have a week to figure out how they're getting to Dayton or Greensboro or wherever they find out they're going on Selection Sunday and they do it just fine. The same goes here. And, I envision that many of these teams will have their bowl invite nailed down before actually being eliminated. Bowls and teams will probably know in advance who's going where and have plenty of time for contingencies should a team not be eliminated as planned. Bowls could easily plan to invite the loser of a particular playoff game. Or, they might be, say, the Liberty Bowl and keep their contract with C-USA to take the conference champion, anticipating their elimination - or if that team makes the Football Final Four, plan to invite the team they beat.
- The Rose, Orange, and Sugar Bowls would all be very likely to not get the conference champion they're used to.
True. As a Big Ten fan, the loss of the traditional matchup in the Rose Bowl would be annoying. But less annoying than listening to all these asshole pundits whine about not having a playoff. And the matchups would still be great.
- The season could be as long as seventeen games.
Yes, but highly unlikely. That'd mean a 9-16 seed winning its way to the title game. Chances are excellent the longest season would be fifteen games, and only for two teams. This system actually improves the too-many-games situation by offering up byes and trying to ensure the lower-seeded teams are eliminated before playing too many games.
- This crams up the regular season and doesn't allow any rest afterwards.
Not even true. Most regular seasons are long enough for two bye weeks. Nothing would change here. A lot of teams, Big Ten specifically, finish up the weekend before Thanksgiving and thus would get an off week before the playoffs.
So, to sum up:
- Sixteen teams.
- Big East bracket.
- First three rounds in December at home fields.
- Losers invited to bowls.
- Football Final Four played in neutral city after bowl season.
- Competition committee determines the participants.
- Autobids go to the champions of the eight highest-ranked conferences.
It's brilliant.
Now, keep in mind, my proposing this doesn't mean I actually want a playoff, because I'm not going to kid myself they'll do things my way when the time comes. And I like things more or less the way they are; the BCS needs a serious reworking (for which I have ideas but have not self-vetted them yet for workability) but that doesn't mean I think it can't be fixed. But I think a playoff is coming. And when it does, this is the one I'd want to see.
The reason for that is because most people don't take into account any of the realities of the situation, they just toss ideas out there that they think would be pretty cool. Hell, even the President of the United States is guilty of this. This idea of mine strives to take into account all the realities of the situation (or at least, the ones I know of) as well as keep folks like me happy. Folks who still like the bowls and still like the regular season with a little drama to it instead of having teams yawn through the end of the season because their ticket is punched for the playoffs.
Keep in mind, now, the Two Truisms I put forth earlier. 1, a playoff will be big (that is, four, six, or eight teams = nonsense) and 2, a playoff will be played primarily on home-field sites. That in mind, here is what I propose:
- The playoff should be sixteen teams.
Look. You can get the sorry notion of a six or eight team playoff out of your head right this instant. Here's why: autobids, duh. Once you institute a playoff like that, it will suck up 90% of the dollars invested in the college football postseason. TV contracts will be huge. Participants will get exposure aplenty. Dollars will fly everywhere. There is absolutely, positively no way a conference commissioner whose conference is already in snug with the BCS, bringing in all that dough, is going to agree to any system where in the future, his conference might be left out. Ever.
That means autobids. And once you have autobids, and you exclude somebody, we-he-hell, Mark Shurtleff will be on line 1, stat. The prospects for an antitrust case as it stands now are shaky at best. Nobody is "left out" of the championship because nobody has any kind of automatic bid to it. Once you do autobid to the championship, you have to have everyone. It will never, ever fly otherwise.
That means 11 teams, minimum. If you just add one at-large, to make it 12, you have solved absolutely nothing. If adding one at-large could solve anything, they'd have a three-team playoff and that would be that. Add five at-larges and you have the nice even number of sixteen.
Now, how to set up the bracket?
- The playoff should use the Big East system.
Check out how the Big East does it in basketball. It's a great idea. They're not the only conference to use an uneven bracket, but they're the biggest to do so. The 9-16 seeded teams play in the first round, advance to face the 5-8 seeded teams, and the winner of those games advance to play the 1-4 seeded teams. Two byes for the best teams.
This is a fantastic idea for football too. It keeps the regular season extremely valuable. You're playing for byes and you're playing for home field advantage all the way through. The best teams only have to win three times to win the title; the lower seeded teams must win five. It would put a stop to the specific playoff criticism I have; namely, that it's too easy for a lower-seeded team to get hot and play its way through, like, say, the Arizona Cardinals. It forces the lower seeded teams to play one more game than they'd have to in a standard bracket, and immensely rewards the higher seeded ones. And there are other advantages too.....
- The playoff should be played on home fields.
They do this in the lower divisions for a reason: because fans aren't going to travel four and five times to go see their teams. Especially not around the holidays when they're trying to make sure Santa doesn't pass their kids by. You want to fill the stadium, you put it close to where the fans are, and that's at home stadiums.
And here's the part that should appeal to the powers that be: Under a standard bracket, played at home fields, only eight teams would be guaranteed a home game. In the Big East system, twelve teams are guaranteed that extra week of sweet sweet revenue. Naturally, of course, there would be fierce and acrimonious discussions about how exactly all that money is split. No matter how you slice it though, spreading the wealth like that (or the pain-in-the-butt of having to host a home game that you get no real benefit from) is something the commissioners are going to prefer.
So the first three rounds would be at home fields - that's how they do it at the other levels too. And then, for maximum hype and maximum sponsorship dollars, a Football Final Four, bid on by cities in the same manner that they do for the basketball one.
- The playoff should be in December.
Or more specifically, the first three rounds should be in December. This is for a lot of very good reasons:
- First, the NCAA and the TV stations could market the everloving shit out of Thanksgiving weekend as the final weekend of the regular season. The regular season doesn't need to creep up into the first week of December like it does now. Make Thanksgiving weekend the weekend in which playoff berths are won and lost, and hold the selection show on Sunday evening the same way they do for basketball.
- Second, it's just too unwieldy otherwise. Extending this thing into mid-to-late January makes a mess of coaches' recruiting calendars and makes the whole damn season too bloody long.
- Third, it would mitigate the excuse that a team had too long a layoff for the championships. They play right away. Three weeks is the longest a team would go without playing, which is plenty long enough to rest up and practice and short enough to stay sharp.
- Fourth, and most importantly so sit up and pay attention: The losers can be invited to bowl games. I don't want to lose the bowls so this, to me, is a really elegant and simple way to work this out. It's one of the things at the heart and soul of this whole idea. Because the first three rounds would wrap up by mid-December, there's plenty of time for the twelve losers to make travel plans for a bowl two weeks later. The bowls are a terrific reward for a good season. You go somewhere warm (usually), you have a good time, get a free schwag bag, and your fans make a trip out of it. It's a system too good to lose. Some of the sponsorship dollars would dry up and the smaller, weaker bowls might get picked off, but if we lose the New Mexico Bowl I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it. 20-25 bowls could still be played, and going to the playoffs doesn't have to mean you don't get to participate. The only teams who don't play in bowls would be the Football Final Four, who would play after the bowl games wrap up. It'd be a bowl-like atmosphere anyway.
- The playoff field should be decided by competition committee.
It works great for basketball.
Edit as of December 6, 2011:
This used to say: "So with the bylaws thing, a slightly revised way is needed to set up the field. Can't just autobid a team from each of the 11 conferences." Actually yes you can. "The bylaws thing" was the idea that at least half a playoff field had to be made up of at-larges, upon which some of this idea was based. Actually it is the other way round. Half the playoff field must be made of autobids, not at-larges. I checked this. It is true. Either they changed it since I wrote that, or I totally read everything wrong, or the media sources I read totally read everything wrong. Either way, someone's a dumbass.
At any rate, it has little effect on this proposal. We're still going with eight autobids and eight at-large bids. Why? Because it's a better playoff that way. Are some people still gonna be pissed off? Yes. I didn't say we were going to please everyone. That's impossible. So how to do this? Create an at-large pool. The three conference champs that don't get autobids are automatically entered into the at-large pool, along with ten or twelve or however many of the remaining highest-ranked teams from the newly-created RPI, that the committee must choose from. This would give these conference champions a little bit of a boost, and it would mean that the eight autobids are earned on merit instead of an agreement in a room. And it would cause the committee to think things like, "hey, Southern Miss actually looks more deserving than West Virginia this year." You could further help the mid-majors that missed out on autobids by stipulating that no conference can have more than two teams in the playoff. This isn't an idea I'm married to, just a suggestion, but it is some food for thought.
Alright, so what of it? Arguments against it? I have some, and I have rebuttals too:
- Final exams? Are these student athletes ever going to be students?
I'm about as worried over this as the NCAA is, which scheduled JMU to play in the I-AA playoffs on December 12, which happened to be the last day of JMU's final exams: Dec. 8-12. They already do this and it's fine. I've never liked this particular anti-playoff argument.
- It's too hard to work the travel arrangements.
Nonsense - basketball teams have a week to figure out how they're getting to Dayton or Greensboro or wherever they find out they're going on Selection Sunday and they do it just fine. The same goes here. And, I envision that many of these teams will have their bowl invite nailed down before actually being eliminated. Bowls and teams will probably know in advance who's going where and have plenty of time for contingencies should a team not be eliminated as planned. Bowls could easily plan to invite the loser of a particular playoff game. Or, they might be, say, the Liberty Bowl and keep their contract with C-USA to take the conference champion, anticipating their elimination - or if that team makes the Football Final Four, plan to invite the team they beat.
- The Rose, Orange, and Sugar Bowls would all be very likely to not get the conference champion they're used to.
True. As a Big Ten fan, the loss of the traditional matchup in the Rose Bowl would be annoying. But less annoying than listening to all these asshole pundits whine about not having a playoff. And the matchups would still be great.
- The season could be as long as seventeen games.
Yes, but highly unlikely. That'd mean a 9-16 seed winning its way to the title game. Chances are excellent the longest season would be fifteen games, and only for two teams. This system actually improves the too-many-games situation by offering up byes and trying to ensure the lower-seeded teams are eliminated before playing too many games.
- This crams up the regular season and doesn't allow any rest afterwards.
Not even true. Most regular seasons are long enough for two bye weeks. Nothing would change here. A lot of teams, Big Ten specifically, finish up the weekend before Thanksgiving and thus would get an off week before the playoffs.
So, to sum up:
- Sixteen teams.
- Big East bracket.
- First three rounds in December at home fields.
- Losers invited to bowls.
- Football Final Four played in neutral city after bowl season.
- Competition committee determines the participants.
- Autobids go to the champions of the eight highest-ranked conferences.
It's brilliant.
Now, keep in mind, my proposing this doesn't mean I actually want a playoff, because I'm not going to kid myself they'll do things my way when the time comes. And I like things more or less the way they are; the BCS needs a serious reworking (for which I have ideas but have not self-vetted them yet for workability) but that doesn't mean I think it can't be fixed. But I think a playoff is coming. And when it does, this is the one I'd want to see.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
it's that time again
And by that I mean it's obviously time to talk BCS and playoffs again! Yay! I love this stuff. I love the disenfranchisement that comes with being one of those folks who doesn't want a playoff. I love being talked to like a playoff is what I want. I love how every Congressman is a fucking comedian. I love how the media slappies line up to give those good ol' Congressmen a pat on the back. The whole affair sickens me.
Let me just get a couple of links out of the way real quick before I get on a roll:
- The baseball team hits more home runs now. Best line: "As usual, U.Va.'s pitching has been superb." Uh, that's "starting" pitching.
- Danny Glading is one of five finalists for the Tewaaraton Trophy. Unsurprising; as the #1 seed and having four nominees, having at least one finalist was a lock.
- The ACC baseball tournament isn't coming to Fenway next year either. Damn it. I was all excited to go this year until they canceled, but the consolation was I only had to wait a year. Now I'm out of luck.
OK. Advance warning: I'm cranky. I was up til 1:30 last night watching hockey (it's a Red Wings thing - you wouldn't understand), or more specifically, I was up til 1:30 watching so-called professional referees make a mockery of a hockey game. So: no sleep, Wings lose thanks to the world's dumbest rule, and I've had to put up with Congress all week, grandstanding and whoring for votes as usual instead of doing things that the Constitution actually allows them to do.
Let's start by clearing up some fallacies that pervade the discussion. We'll play Mythbusters, if you will.
- Myth: The BCS excludes certain teams from playing for the championship.
Here's Mark Shurtleff:
- Myth: The BCS is a monopoly.
The BCS is actually the most capitalistic system in any sport the NCAA sponsors. Jon Stewart tackles the subject nicely. Every bowl is free to negotiate their own title sponsor, TV rights, conference tie-ins, invitations, and advertising dollars. Likewise teams are free to accept or decline invitations, and independent teams can negotiate their own tie-ins as well.
Compare to the March Madness tournament, for which the NCAA actually has been sued in antitrust court. Key line:
But, as I said, the lawsuit was settled. Oh, it was settled all right - by the NCAA buying the NIT. Oh, that should alleviate all worries about a monopoly. Can you imagine any other industry where that would be allowed? Can you imagine, say, Costco suing Wal-Mart for monopolistic practices - and the antitrust judge allows the case to go away by letting Wal-Mart gobble up Costco?
Fortunately, there are rational voices out there. Even ones on the playoff side. Congress doesn't know it because rational thinking isn't their strong suit, nor is recognizing it when they see it, but they're there. And there are those who realize something I've believed for a long time: when the playoff comes, it's not going to be the one you want.
Now, I'm not unrealistic and I'm not irrational. Sooner or later, a playoff is coming. It might not be soon enough for some, but somewhere down the line we will have one. I do have my own idea for it, but that's a post for another day. I'll spring that on you probably around the annual late-October-to-November whinefest about a playoff.
But until that day comes (the playoff, not my post) the BCSers could do something very simple to take a lot of wind out of the sails of the hysterical playoff types: Just stop calling it the BCS.
I'll explaine, but first, a little history lesson: The BCS movement has been around since 1992, when it was called the Bowl Coalition, and later, the Bowl Alliance. It was rather informal, though, and the last straw for the old system was the 1997 season, in which the obvious title game was Michigan vs. Nebraska - two undefeated powerhouses. That game never happened, because the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Rose Bowl weren't signed on, and thus Michigan and Nebraska each played different opponents, beat them, and split the title.
After that, the BCS monster was created. It was a formal attempt to fit a national title game into the bowl structure. It felt like the natural thing to do: get four of the most prestigious bowls together in an agreement to rotate a national title game among them, and in order to keep a level playing field for the four, set up a structure to determine who would play in the others. For a while this worked OK, or appeared to, because it was better than what we had.
But then two things happened. The "little guys" starting pushing for a bigger slice of the pie, and the TV people got greedy. As always, if you can kill two birds with one stone, you do it, and so the BCS Championship Game was initiated. Since then the BCS games have always included one non-BCS interloper.
But the TV greed has also included a lot of things that don't help the BCS' cause. Selection shows. "Autobids" to the BCS. A convoluted system of standings, complete with hurdles to jump if you want to be eligible. But when you get down to it, what is the difference between the Orange Bowl and the Liberty Bowl? Nothing! The ACC has an autobid to the BCS because, like every conference in the land, it has a bowl that's agreed to invite its champion to play, only that bowl is a "BCS bowl". The Liberty Bowl takes the C-USA champ, and the difference between the two is a label named "BCS" and a lot of money. Strip away the label and what do you have? An antitrust suit against a nonprofit organization that's made a perfectly legal private contract with another entity?
The Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls have no bearing on the national title. None. They did once. They no longer do. The problem this leaves is that Utah and the MWC, feeling butthurt about the fact that voters think Florida and Oklahoma are better than they are, are launching willy-nilly attacks on the BCS as a whole entity, and they have Congress involved, and the BCS commissioners are now forced to defend the whole thing.
The solution is simple: Disassociate the "BCS Championship Game" from the rest of the BCS. The facts are that no conference has an advantage over any other (on paper) in getting to the title game, but the perception is now poisoned by the idea of "autobids", when in reality the autobid to the BCS is no different than the autobid to any other bowl game that's contractually obligated to invite a conference champion. If you want, invite the Liberty Bowl and the other bowls with conference champion tie-ins to the "Bowl Championship Series" and then not only does the money pie get bigger, but so does everyone's slice - and the worst-case scenario as far as competition goes is that we all find out that Troy and Ball State don't actually belong in the national championship picture. And then we can have a proper debate about the nature of the title game - should it operate like a bowl? should it be a plus-one after the bowls are done? should it be a four-team playoff? - without all this garbage about antitrust suits and false whining about "being excluded."
Let me just get a couple of links out of the way real quick before I get on a roll:
- The baseball team hits more home runs now. Best line: "As usual, U.Va.'s pitching has been superb." Uh, that's "starting" pitching.
- Danny Glading is one of five finalists for the Tewaaraton Trophy. Unsurprising; as the #1 seed and having four nominees, having at least one finalist was a lock.
- The ACC baseball tournament isn't coming to Fenway next year either. Damn it. I was all excited to go this year until they canceled, but the consolation was I only had to wait a year. Now I'm out of luck.
OK. Advance warning: I'm cranky. I was up til 1:30 last night watching hockey (it's a Red Wings thing - you wouldn't understand), or more specifically, I was up til 1:30 watching so-called professional referees make a mockery of a hockey game. So: no sleep, Wings lose thanks to the world's dumbest rule, and I've had to put up with Congress all week, grandstanding and whoring for votes as usual instead of doing things that the Constitution actually allows them to do.
Let's start by clearing up some fallacies that pervade the discussion. We'll play Mythbusters, if you will.
- Myth: The BCS excludes certain teams from playing for the championship.
Here's Mark Shurtleff:
"We've established that from the very first day, from the very first kickoff in the college season, more than half of the schools are put on an unlevel playing field," Shurtleff said Tuesday. "They will never be allowed to play for a national championship."You'd think he'd be a smart guy - he managed to get elected Utah's attorney general. But this is totally, patently false. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about, or he is lying. Here's the fact: As the bylaws are written, every team has precisely the same chance on paper to play for the title. All you have to do is be #1 or #2 in the BCS standings. Nobody is excluded. Whether a system of voters or a competition committee would do a better job is a different debate, and I'm inclined to lean toward the committee myself.
- Myth: The BCS is a monopoly.
The BCS is actually the most capitalistic system in any sport the NCAA sponsors. Jon Stewart tackles the subject nicely. Every bowl is free to negotiate their own title sponsor, TV rights, conference tie-ins, invitations, and advertising dollars. Likewise teams are free to accept or decline invitations, and independent teams can negotiate their own tie-ins as well.
Compare to the March Madness tournament, for which the NCAA actually has been sued in antitrust court. Key line:
The main issue in the case is the current rule requiring teams in all sports to compete in the NCAA tournament if they are invited — or in no other event.Emphasis mine. The article is from 2005 - the lawsuit has since been settled - but the rule, I believe, remains. If invited, you must go. You can't choose to participate elsewhere. I mean, you wouldn't, of course - that's where all the money is, which kind of emphasizes the point.
But, as I said, the lawsuit was settled. Oh, it was settled all right - by the NCAA buying the NIT. Oh, that should alleviate all worries about a monopoly. Can you imagine any other industry where that would be allowed? Can you imagine, say, Costco suing Wal-Mart for monopolistic practices - and the antitrust judge allows the case to go away by letting Wal-Mart gobble up Costco?
Fortunately, there are rational voices out there. Even ones on the playoff side. Congress doesn't know it because rational thinking isn't their strong suit, nor is recognizing it when they see it, but they're there. And there are those who realize something I've believed for a long time: when the playoff comes, it's not going to be the one you want.
Now, I'm not unrealistic and I'm not irrational. Sooner or later, a playoff is coming. It might not be soon enough for some, but somewhere down the line we will have one. I do have my own idea for it, but that's a post for another day. I'll spring that on you probably around the annual late-October-to-November whinefest about a playoff.
But until that day comes (the playoff, not my post) the BCSers could do something very simple to take a lot of wind out of the sails of the hysterical playoff types: Just stop calling it the BCS.
I'll explaine, but first, a little history lesson: The BCS movement has been around since 1992, when it was called the Bowl Coalition, and later, the Bowl Alliance. It was rather informal, though, and the last straw for the old system was the 1997 season, in which the obvious title game was Michigan vs. Nebraska - two undefeated powerhouses. That game never happened, because the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Rose Bowl weren't signed on, and thus Michigan and Nebraska each played different opponents, beat them, and split the title.
After that, the BCS monster was created. It was a formal attempt to fit a national title game into the bowl structure. It felt like the natural thing to do: get four of the most prestigious bowls together in an agreement to rotate a national title game among them, and in order to keep a level playing field for the four, set up a structure to determine who would play in the others. For a while this worked OK, or appeared to, because it was better than what we had.
But then two things happened. The "little guys" starting pushing for a bigger slice of the pie, and the TV people got greedy. As always, if you can kill two birds with one stone, you do it, and so the BCS Championship Game was initiated. Since then the BCS games have always included one non-BCS interloper.
But the TV greed has also included a lot of things that don't help the BCS' cause. Selection shows. "Autobids" to the BCS. A convoluted system of standings, complete with hurdles to jump if you want to be eligible. But when you get down to it, what is the difference between the Orange Bowl and the Liberty Bowl? Nothing! The ACC has an autobid to the BCS because, like every conference in the land, it has a bowl that's agreed to invite its champion to play, only that bowl is a "BCS bowl". The Liberty Bowl takes the C-USA champ, and the difference between the two is a label named "BCS" and a lot of money. Strip away the label and what do you have? An antitrust suit against a nonprofit organization that's made a perfectly legal private contract with another entity?
The Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls have no bearing on the national title. None. They did once. They no longer do. The problem this leaves is that Utah and the MWC, feeling butthurt about the fact that voters think Florida and Oklahoma are better than they are, are launching willy-nilly attacks on the BCS as a whole entity, and they have Congress involved, and the BCS commissioners are now forced to defend the whole thing.
The solution is simple: Disassociate the "BCS Championship Game" from the rest of the BCS. The facts are that no conference has an advantage over any other (on paper) in getting to the title game, but the perception is now poisoned by the idea of "autobids", when in reality the autobid to the BCS is no different than the autobid to any other bowl game that's contractually obligated to invite a conference champion. If you want, invite the Liberty Bowl and the other bowls with conference champion tie-ins to the "Bowl Championship Series" and then not only does the money pie get bigger, but so does everyone's slice - and the worst-case scenario as far as competition goes is that we all find out that Troy and Ball State don't actually belong in the national championship picture. And then we can have a proper debate about the nature of the title game - should it operate like a bowl? should it be a plus-one after the bowls are done? should it be a four-team playoff? - without all this garbage about antitrust suits and false whining about "being excluded."
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
linkpile
Some people who don't watch, follow, or comprehend the existence of Virginia baseball put Matt Packer on the midseason Stopper of the Year list. Packer celebrated the achievement by pitching 8th-inning batting practice to Boston College - four runs later, his blown save total is twice his save total. I can think of a lot of things Packer's stopped, but none of them are late-inning opposition rallies. He needs to be one of those pitchers reserved for midweek games against out of conference opponents and situational relief in ACC games the outcome of which is not particularly in doubt before he does any more damage to our seeding.
The Tony Bennett hire gets a thumbs-up from Jason King at Yahoo.
The Mountain West Conference presented its playoff proposal to conference commissioners, who out of professional courtesy did not stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA." The MWC believes a playoff is the proper way to crown a true champion; in related news, the MWC will not be holding a playoff to determine the MWC champion.
Torrey Mack fluff. Heir apparent and all that. Funny passage:
More spring practice wrapup stuff here. Fluff from the quarterbacks and a few tidbits from Groh.
And some good news on the basketball scheduling side of things. Next year's ACC/Big Ten Challenge schedule is out, minus networks and start times. Not to worry though: we're kicking things off as that one-off game the night before the Challenge really starts, which is nice because that game is typically broadcast on ESPN2 and not at some silly start time like 9:30. Further, we draw Penn State - drawing anyone at all is nice in and of itself because I was really and truly worried we'd be the odd team out this year, what with two pretty lousy seasons in a row. Georgia Tech was worse last year though, and will watch from the sidelines. Penn State loses a couple top scorers, doesn't bring in anyone remarkable, and is basically the Miami of the Big Ten. Football school, occasionally has a dangerous basketball team, shows its face in the tournament once a decade or so. They do have the '09 NIT championship going for them, which is nice. Because we suck, we'll surely be the underdog in the game unless Penn State stumbles out to a terrible start, but the bottom line here is that Tony Bennett has an excellent opportunity to get a high-profile win that's easily spun into confidence-building material, with the very real chance that he won't actually have to beat a good team to do it.
The Tony Bennett hire gets a thumbs-up from Jason King at Yahoo.
The Mountain West Conference presented its playoff proposal to conference commissioners, who out of professional courtesy did not stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LA LA." The MWC believes a playoff is the proper way to crown a true champion; in related news, the MWC will not be holding a playoff to determine the MWC champion.
Torrey Mack fluff. Heir apparent and all that. Funny passage:
"The reason for the high praise was on display Saturday during Virginia’s annual spring festival as Mack rushed six times for 18 yards..."Wooooo three yards a carry woooooooo! No, I'm sure he looked great and all. However, 18 yards on six carries is decidedly not the reason for the high praise.
More spring practice wrapup stuff here. Fluff from the quarterbacks and a few tidbits from Groh.
And some good news on the basketball scheduling side of things. Next year's ACC/Big Ten Challenge schedule is out, minus networks and start times. Not to worry though: we're kicking things off as that one-off game the night before the Challenge really starts, which is nice because that game is typically broadcast on ESPN2 and not at some silly start time like 9:30. Further, we draw Penn State - drawing anyone at all is nice in and of itself because I was really and truly worried we'd be the odd team out this year, what with two pretty lousy seasons in a row. Georgia Tech was worse last year though, and will watch from the sidelines. Penn State loses a couple top scorers, doesn't bring in anyone remarkable, and is basically the Miami of the Big Ten. Football school, occasionally has a dangerous basketball team, shows its face in the tournament once a decade or so. They do have the '09 NIT championship going for them, which is nice. Because we suck, we'll surely be the underdog in the game unless Penn State stumbles out to a terrible start, but the bottom line here is that Tony Bennett has an excellent opportunity to get a high-profile win that's easily spun into confidence-building material, with the very real chance that he won't actually have to beat a good team to do it.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
why the mountain west conference is full of crap
So, I don't always agree with Dennis Dodd over at CBS. In fact, when the Mike Gundy stuff was going on in 2007 and Gundy called out the reporterette at the press conference, Dodd came down on the side of the reporterette and wrote one of the worst columns I've ever seen, and Rob Parker used to write for my hometown newspaper, so I've seen some bad ones.
But the Mountain West Conference is busy grandstanding for a playoff that conveniently is just large enough to include them, and Dodd is calling them out on it, and I agree with a ton of what he says here so I'm going to borrow heavily from the column.
At its heart is this one passage:
The opening paragraph states:
But wait. The winner of the 2007 and 2008 MWC basketball tournament was UNLV. Never let principles get in the way of a good championship coronation. Granted, this banner-raising and stuff is BYU telling the world how awesome BYU is. But given the trophy, it's clearly conference-sanctioned.
No, the Mountain West doesn't think a playoff/tournament is the only right way to crown a champion. Don't believe for a minute they're crusading righteously for the little guy. They just want a seat at the big kids table.
Oh, they try to cover their tracks:
Then there's the problem of this "Fifth BCS Bowl." For brevity's sake, we'll give this the codename of Cotton. The MWC proposes inviting 10 teams to the BCS table and then telling two of them, "Sorry, Charlie! You're not actually playing for the national championship." They'll go play in the Cotton instead, which is still "Bowl Championship Series", except for there's no championship involved. The wording of the proposal pretty clearly states that the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta become the first round of the playoffs and the Cotton is not.
So why even have a fifth BCS bowl if the same four are going to always help determine the champion? Why, for the same reason they have a BCS Title Game now and don't simply have the bowl game itself serve double duty: To allow room for another conference in the money maker! Which, under the Mountain West Conference proposal, just so happens to be - wait for it - the Mountain West Conference!
I haven't even begun to address the notion that they're asking fans of two teams to travel to three separate locations to watch their team play in the postseason. Fans will travel once, if at all in this wondrous economy. Once is all you get. People have jobs they have to go to once in a while. They have presents to buy during the Christmas season and they have kids to feed and class to attend and heating bills to pay and Grandma and Grandpa to go visit and they are not going to trek to Pasadena, then to Miami, then to Phoenix, to see their team play. They'll pick one to go to, and good luck filling three 80,000 seat stadiums with anything but corporate clients with courtesy tickets.
Ugh. I am squarely against a playoff til they come up with one that works properly, and this is not it. The BCS may be a self-serving entity of power conferences fiercely protecting their turf from uppity upstarts like the MWC, but the solution is not an equally self-serving pile of tripe that hypocritically leaves the rest of the football world out in the cold on purpose. I'd be much more receptive - probably even in favor - if the MWC used the existing BCS regulations to argue that they should be swapped in for the Big East. Because they probably should. What doesn't earn my sympathy, and shouldn't earn yours, is proposing "reform" consisting of blazing hypocrisy and a system designed specifically to let you and only you in, veiled in populist rhetoric like "equitable" and "decided on the field of play."
But the Mountain West Conference is busy grandstanding for a playoff that conveniently is just large enough to include them, and Dodd is calling them out on it, and I agree with a ton of what he says here so I'm going to borrow heavily from the column.
At its heart is this one passage:
The Mountain West? It's trying to make sure that the likes of Utah get a better chance to play for a national championship. Nothing more. If Houston, Tulsa or Cal-Poly go undefeated next year, that's their problem.Bingo. B-I-N-G-O. The MWC's proposal is here at the official site. I encourage you to read it because it's only four pages and it's worth knowing what's what. The first problem, by the way, is that it's only four pages and conveniently open to the public, and further, that the conference call introducing the proposal was aimed at the media, not the other commissioners. NCAA rules and bylaws are encyclopedic in nature and not designed for Sportscenter sound bites. If this was a proposal to be seriously discussed among the rulemakers, it would not be this short and it would not be disseminated to the public. Rather, the MWC is grandstanding to what it expects is a sympathetic public. Kind of like Congress.
The opening paragraph states:
The MWC Proposal addresses the inequities under the current BCS system and enables the national championship to be decided (1) in the proper location – on the field of play, and (2) by the appropriate parties – the players.Leaving aside the fact that the national championship was decided on the field of play by the players of Florida and Oklahoma, the clear implication here is that a playoff is the only equitable way to declare a champion. Let's see how MWC member Brigham Young feels about declaring a champion:
-During pregame introductions, the 2008 Mountain West Conference Championship banner was unveiled at the Marriott Center as Cougar fans went wild. ... They have won back-to-back MWC titles.Congrats, BYU. Your conference must be very proud. In fact, they are: check out this cool Mountain West Conference trophy. "Cougars Repeat as MWC Champions," says the headline.
But wait. The winner of the 2007 and 2008 MWC basketball tournament was UNLV. Never let principles get in the way of a good championship coronation. Granted, this banner-raising and stuff is BYU telling the world how awesome BYU is. But given the trophy, it's clearly conference-sanctioned.
No, the Mountain West doesn't think a playoff/tournament is the only right way to crown a champion. Don't believe for a minute they're crusading righteously for the little guy. They just want a seat at the big kids table.
Oh, they try to cover their tracks:
One or more of the four remaining FBS conferences can become AQ conferences before 2013 if they satisfy the criteria under paragraph 1(a).No, they can not. I realize what I'm about to say is mathematically improbable, but it is not mathematically impossible. A proposal to shake it up needs to be more airtight than this. The MWC proposes ten BCS teams, but there are eleven conferences. Further, they say that if your conference goes .400 against other qualifying conferences over two years, you're in. The nice thing about choosing .400 is it's conveniently selected to justify the MWC getting into the game under their convenient proposal - see table 2 in the release. It also placates the existing conferences, because .500 would leave out the Big East, Big 12, and SEC. The problem with .400 is that, mathematically speaking, all 11 conferences could theoretically qualify. 11 pegs don't fit into 10 holes. Improbable? Yes. The problem is that when the BCS was created, all sorts of improbable situations (three undefeated teams? Piffle) proceeded to happen.
Then there's the problem of this "Fifth BCS Bowl." For brevity's sake, we'll give this the codename of Cotton. The MWC proposes inviting 10 teams to the BCS table and then telling two of them, "Sorry, Charlie! You're not actually playing for the national championship." They'll go play in the Cotton instead, which is still "Bowl Championship Series", except for there's no championship involved. The wording of the proposal pretty clearly states that the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta become the first round of the playoffs and the Cotton is not.
So why even have a fifth BCS bowl if the same four are going to always help determine the champion? Why, for the same reason they have a BCS Title Game now and don't simply have the bowl game itself serve double duty: To allow room for another conference in the money maker! Which, under the Mountain West Conference proposal, just so happens to be - wait for it - the Mountain West Conference!
I haven't even begun to address the notion that they're asking fans of two teams to travel to three separate locations to watch their team play in the postseason. Fans will travel once, if at all in this wondrous economy. Once is all you get. People have jobs they have to go to once in a while. They have presents to buy during the Christmas season and they have kids to feed and class to attend and heating bills to pay and Grandma and Grandpa to go visit and they are not going to trek to Pasadena, then to Miami, then to Phoenix, to see their team play. They'll pick one to go to, and good luck filling three 80,000 seat stadiums with anything but corporate clients with courtesy tickets.
Ugh. I am squarely against a playoff til they come up with one that works properly, and this is not it. The BCS may be a self-serving entity of power conferences fiercely protecting their turf from uppity upstarts like the MWC, but the solution is not an equally self-serving pile of tripe that hypocritically leaves the rest of the football world out in the cold on purpose. I'd be much more receptive - probably even in favor - if the MWC used the existing BCS regulations to argue that they should be swapped in for the Big East. Because they probably should. What doesn't earn my sympathy, and shouldn't earn yours, is proposing "reform" consisting of blazing hypocrisy and a system designed specifically to let you and only you in, veiled in populist rhetoric like "equitable" and "decided on the field of play."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
playoffs actually make a legitimate national championship
That is why, over in the NFL, either the 9-7 Arizona Cardinals or 9-7 (tie against Bengals = loss in my book) Philadelphia Eagles will be in the Super Bowl.
But playoffs don't make the regular season meaningless. Nope.
Because Florida vs. Cincinnati would have been a way better title game.
But playoffs don't make the regular season meaningless. Nope.
Because Florida vs. Cincinnati would have been a way better title game.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
don't these idiots have anything better to do?
It's an outrage, I tell you. More in a bit. First, recruiting. Some slightly overdue updates to the recruiting board:
- Moved DE Will Hill to Verbal. Obviously.
- Moved WR Tyree Watkins from Soft Verbal to Verbal. This here Rivals article is a pay article but dates from after the Mike Groh firing and includes Watkins' comments on the situation. Watkins says, basically, he's committed and will take his official, and if he doesn't like it, he'll "consider other visits." He's not paying for it. I suspect he will like it.
- Dropped WR Justin Brown. We never really were in great shape for him, and we fired his recruiter.
- Added OT Nolan MacMillan, who got hisself an offer. I wish there were more to know about MacMillan, but Scout gives him the One-star of No Bother Look, and that's a step or two better than ESPN, which doesn't even have him in the database. Awesome.
- Moved Lanford Collins from red to blue and changed his position from DE to LB, as we would use him in a Clint Sintim role. ($) Oh, and he listed a top four of us, VT, Md., and PSU, hence the move to blue. Nice.
I will tell you what, with early enrollments and all we probably have about 26-28 scholarships we can hand out. We have 22 commits. Give us Brennan Williams, Morgan Moses, one of either Collins or Luke Kuechly (or, hell, both), and Josh Evans (who is given meh ratings from the services but has something like 38 offers from damn good football teams) and I will be a happy camper.
One addition I did not make was OT Hunter Steward. This article lists the all-Tidewater offensive football team (and congrats to Perry Jones and Tim Smith by the way) and you would guess from it that he's a very logical choice to end up in blue and orange, given that his other choices are indicated as Marshall and JMU. We will see - I'll keep an eye on it, ya know, but his Rivals profile has an interview - a recent one, like, a December one - that says he has narrowed his choices to Marshall or prep school. Which would kind of indicate he doesn't really have a UVA offer after all, unless it came in the last week or so. So we'll see.
Regarding the OC job, Jay Jenkins at the CDP (and thanks to Mahini of the Good Ol' Blog who had the article up first) has three possibilities based on past ties with Al Groh, Bob Pruett, and/or the Commonwealth. One is a very familiar name: Ron Prince. Ed Zaunbrecher has just been let go from Purdue, and coached for Groh many moons ago. Dave Clawson is the third; Doug Doughty also mentions Clawson here, along with the very prudent caution that Clawson, having just been victimized by one coaching change, might not jump at another job where the head coach is in hot water.
This, in fact, is why we are going to find it difficult to find a real talent at OC. We're not going to get some "up-and-comer" looking to boost his resume. Think retread. Notice Prince and Zaunbrecher and Clawson are all guys who have just lost a job, not some bright new mind on the scene. I know little about Zaunbrecher and Clawson other than what I read, but this I know: I was never enamored of Prince's playcalling. Too much sideways stuff.
OK, so what's got me all worked up these days? Congress, of course. I'm already not real pleased with these fools over the auto bailout. I try to keep politics out of the football blog, but I will just say that Sen. Shelby of Alabama is a fucktard. Now, naturally, Congress wants to stick their meddling noses into college football and mandate a playoff. I'm only half mad about this because of my strong anti-playoff feelings. Don't you leaders of the free world have a war to win, a deficit to tackle, a national debt to pay down, an economy to fix, crime and hunger to solve, AIDS and cancer to cure, ANYTHING AT ALL??
This is probably as good a time as any to point out the Two Truisms of playoffs. Everyone has their own perfect system. Everyone thinks their own system is The Greatest, and everyone wants to share it with the world because it's Perfect and they're waiting for the world to fall at their feet with admiration for saving us from the Abominable Bee-Cee-Ess. If your Perfect Little System doesn't adhere to the Two Truisms, then forget it. It's not going to happen. Accept the Two Truisms, then see if you still like the idea of a playoff:
- Truism #1: It will be BIG.
Do not for a second delude yourself into thinking you can create a cute little four or six or eight team playoff. Here's why. Playoffs have autobids. All playoffs the NCAA has, have autobids. Believe it: None of the BCS conference commissioners will let go of this BCS thing unless all of them get a slice of that pie. So there will be at least six autobids.
Then one of two things will happen. One, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder; after all, March Madness includes them, and dammit, so should football. So 11 autobids. That basically means a 16 team playoff, because one at-large bid isn't going to be enough. And what will Notre Dame say about all this?
Or, two, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder and get ignored, and that leaves six autobids. Which doesn't fix a damn thing, because that means Texas is still out in the cold, brutha. You need a few at large spots; eight would be the absolute minimum playoff size. You'd actually probably have at least six at-large bids to placate the mid-majors.
And then, take a look at March Madness. You think it's got 65 teams because those are the best 65 teams in the land and they all have a great shot at the title? Hell no. It's 65 because the NCAA couldn't resist the awesome bracket-building, money-grubbing wonder of three weekends of March Madness, baby! It used to be 8 teams. Then it was 16. Then it was 20-some. Then 32. Then 48. Then 64. Then 65. And they're talking of expansion again! Your cute little perfect six team or eight team football bracket will not stay that way.
- Truism #2: It will be home-field sited.
Some people like to claim their little playoff "maintains the integrity of the bowl system" by simply playing the semifinals in Miami and New Orleans and calling them the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. Why, then you could be the Cotton Bowl champ, Orange Bowl champ, and Rose Bowl champ, all in one year!
I got news for ya: The bowls ain't playin' ball. They're independent organizations. You think the Sugar Bowl is gonna like being the quarterfinals? You would have to get them to agree to this. They're non-profit organizations, and not looking to make a buck - many might simply fold.
And even more important: Fans will not travel twice. You think the ACCCG is so damn empty because there are no VT or BC fans? Of course not: Boston College fans actually helped fill the stadium for the C***** S***** Bowl last year for its best crowd in 13 years. It's so damn empty because it's 1300 miles from Boston to Tampa and the BC fans are going to wait for the bowl game before they spend all that cash and call in dead to the office so they can go. Michigan fans, numerous as they are, are not going to travel to El Paso then Dallas then New Orleans then Pasadena for playoff games.
These are the Two Truisms. If you think you can propose a Perfect playoff system that doesn't take these into account, stop it. It might be fun to think about and wish for. It might be fun to play out each season, like little kids with toy soldiers wishing they had real guns. If you think it's realistically implementable and doesn't take these into account, you're deluding yourself and wasting our time. Every other football division has a big-ass playoff with home-field sites until the championship game. If you still want a playoff, then you must accept that you're:
- Willing to destroy the best regular season in all of sports
- Willing to destroy practically 100 years of unique bowl tradition
- Willing to ruin a great excuse for a lot of people to take a great vacation to a warm spot to go see their favorite team play. Ever traveled to a bowl game? It's a blast. You putter around town, play a little mini-golf. You wear your teams colors at the airport and hi-five total strangers wearing the same colors and shoot dirty looks full of malice at total strangers wearing the other ones. You hit the bars, you go to the game and you enjoy the pageantry. Ever travel to hostile territory? You park your car backwards so nobody sees your license plate, and you hope it's not flipped when you get back.
Playoffs must die.
- Moved DE Will Hill to Verbal. Obviously.
- Moved WR Tyree Watkins from Soft Verbal to Verbal. This here Rivals article is a pay article but dates from after the Mike Groh firing and includes Watkins' comments on the situation. Watkins says, basically, he's committed and will take his official, and if he doesn't like it, he'll "consider other visits." He's not paying for it. I suspect he will like it.
- Dropped WR Justin Brown. We never really were in great shape for him, and we fired his recruiter.
- Added OT Nolan MacMillan, who got hisself an offer. I wish there were more to know about MacMillan, but Scout gives him the One-star of No Bother Look, and that's a step or two better than ESPN, which doesn't even have him in the database. Awesome.
- Moved Lanford Collins from red to blue and changed his position from DE to LB, as we would use him in a Clint Sintim role. ($) Oh, and he listed a top four of us, VT, Md., and PSU, hence the move to blue. Nice.
I will tell you what, with early enrollments and all we probably have about 26-28 scholarships we can hand out. We have 22 commits. Give us Brennan Williams, Morgan Moses, one of either Collins or Luke Kuechly (or, hell, both), and Josh Evans (who is given meh ratings from the services but has something like 38 offers from damn good football teams) and I will be a happy camper.
One addition I did not make was OT Hunter Steward. This article lists the all-Tidewater offensive football team (and congrats to Perry Jones and Tim Smith by the way) and you would guess from it that he's a very logical choice to end up in blue and orange, given that his other choices are indicated as Marshall and JMU. We will see - I'll keep an eye on it, ya know, but his Rivals profile has an interview - a recent one, like, a December one - that says he has narrowed his choices to Marshall or prep school. Which would kind of indicate he doesn't really have a UVA offer after all, unless it came in the last week or so. So we'll see.
Regarding the OC job, Jay Jenkins at the CDP (and thanks to Mahini of the Good Ol' Blog who had the article up first) has three possibilities based on past ties with Al Groh, Bob Pruett, and/or the Commonwealth. One is a very familiar name: Ron Prince. Ed Zaunbrecher has just been let go from Purdue, and coached for Groh many moons ago. Dave Clawson is the third; Doug Doughty also mentions Clawson here, along with the very prudent caution that Clawson, having just been victimized by one coaching change, might not jump at another job where the head coach is in hot water.
This, in fact, is why we are going to find it difficult to find a real talent at OC. We're not going to get some "up-and-comer" looking to boost his resume. Think retread. Notice Prince and Zaunbrecher and Clawson are all guys who have just lost a job, not some bright new mind on the scene. I know little about Zaunbrecher and Clawson other than what I read, but this I know: I was never enamored of Prince's playcalling. Too much sideways stuff.
OK, so what's got me all worked up these days? Congress, of course. I'm already not real pleased with these fools over the auto bailout. I try to keep politics out of the football blog, but I will just say that Sen. Shelby of Alabama is a fucktard. Now, naturally, Congress wants to stick their meddling noses into college football and mandate a playoff. I'm only half mad about this because of my strong anti-playoff feelings. Don't you leaders of the free world have a war to win, a deficit to tackle, a national debt to pay down, an economy to fix, crime and hunger to solve, AIDS and cancer to cure, ANYTHING AT ALL??
This is probably as good a time as any to point out the Two Truisms of playoffs. Everyone has their own perfect system. Everyone thinks their own system is The Greatest, and everyone wants to share it with the world because it's Perfect and they're waiting for the world to fall at their feet with admiration for saving us from the Abominable Bee-Cee-Ess. If your Perfect Little System doesn't adhere to the Two Truisms, then forget it. It's not going to happen. Accept the Two Truisms, then see if you still like the idea of a playoff:
- Truism #1: It will be BIG.
Do not for a second delude yourself into thinking you can create a cute little four or six or eight team playoff. Here's why. Playoffs have autobids. All playoffs the NCAA has, have autobids. Believe it: None of the BCS conference commissioners will let go of this BCS thing unless all of them get a slice of that pie. So there will be at least six autobids.
Then one of two things will happen. One, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder; after all, March Madness includes them, and dammit, so should football. So 11 autobids. That basically means a 16 team playoff, because one at-large bid isn't going to be enough. And what will Notre Dame say about all this?
Or, two, the WAC, MWC, and others will cry bloody murder and get ignored, and that leaves six autobids. Which doesn't fix a damn thing, because that means Texas is still out in the cold, brutha. You need a few at large spots; eight would be the absolute minimum playoff size. You'd actually probably have at least six at-large bids to placate the mid-majors.
And then, take a look at March Madness. You think it's got 65 teams because those are the best 65 teams in the land and they all have a great shot at the title? Hell no. It's 65 because the NCAA couldn't resist the awesome bracket-building, money-grubbing wonder of three weekends of March Madness, baby! It used to be 8 teams. Then it was 16. Then it was 20-some. Then 32. Then 48. Then 64. Then 65. And they're talking of expansion again! Your cute little perfect six team or eight team football bracket will not stay that way.
- Truism #2: It will be home-field sited.
Some people like to claim their little playoff "maintains the integrity of the bowl system" by simply playing the semifinals in Miami and New Orleans and calling them the Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl. Why, then you could be the Cotton Bowl champ, Orange Bowl champ, and Rose Bowl champ, all in one year!
I got news for ya: The bowls ain't playin' ball. They're independent organizations. You think the Sugar Bowl is gonna like being the quarterfinals? You would have to get them to agree to this. They're non-profit organizations, and not looking to make a buck - many might simply fold.
And even more important: Fans will not travel twice. You think the ACCCG is so damn empty because there are no VT or BC fans? Of course not: Boston College fans actually helped fill the stadium for the C***** S***** Bowl last year for its best crowd in 13 years. It's so damn empty because it's 1300 miles from Boston to Tampa and the BC fans are going to wait for the bowl game before they spend all that cash and call in dead to the office so they can go. Michigan fans, numerous as they are, are not going to travel to El Paso then Dallas then New Orleans then Pasadena for playoff games.
These are the Two Truisms. If you think you can propose a Perfect playoff system that doesn't take these into account, stop it. It might be fun to think about and wish for. It might be fun to play out each season, like little kids with toy soldiers wishing they had real guns. If you think it's realistically implementable and doesn't take these into account, you're deluding yourself and wasting our time. Every other football division has a big-ass playoff with home-field sites until the championship game. If you still want a playoff, then you must accept that you're:
- Willing to destroy the best regular season in all of sports
- Willing to destroy practically 100 years of unique bowl tradition
- Willing to ruin a great excuse for a lot of people to take a great vacation to a warm spot to go see their favorite team play. Ever traveled to a bowl game? It's a blast. You putter around town, play a little mini-golf. You wear your teams colors at the airport and hi-five total strangers wearing the same colors and shoot dirty looks full of malice at total strangers wearing the other ones. You hit the bars, you go to the game and you enjoy the pageantry. Ever travel to hostile territory? You park your car backwards so nobody sees your license plate, and you hope it's not flipped when you get back.
Playoffs must die.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
On the Desirability of College Football Playoffs
Today, officially, we entered what is both the most exciting and most nauseating portion of the college football schedule. BCS standings are out, the races to the conference championships are in full swing, and the schedule is analyzed incessantly for scenarios that would put this or that team into the title game. Why nauseating? Because this also is the season for a never-ending stream of whining from pundits, columnists, and anybody with an opinion and a major media credential about the P-word. Playoffs. This year, Dan Wetzel at Yahoo! kicks us off with the usual wah wah wah about the BCS and Big Ten.
Since it's that time of the year, I'll get this post out of the way early. Strap in. We may be here a while. This may even be a two-parter. Or a many-parter depending on what kind of mood I'm in after I read the latest anti-BCS invective.
So here is the official stance of this blog: I have never been, am not now, and will never be in favor of a playoff to determine the national champion of the highest level of NCAA college football.
Whether you call it Division I-A or the FBS, I don't want a playoff for it. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm all in favor of the status quo; there are holes in the current system, and they ought to be fixed. But a playoff? No. Never. Let's discuss.
First, we will pick off the sick and weak, in order to make the herd stronger. The arguments often brought up against a playoff that don't, in my mind, hold water:
- A playoff would interfere with academics by overlapping two semesters. Pshaw. Basketball takes a break for final exams in December, and overlaps two semesters or trimesters or whatever a school has. Besides, spring practice and conditioning often has the same bothersome effect.
- The season would have to be extended unacceptably long. Nonsense, there are plenty of bye weeks.
These are stupid arguments. We'll stipulate to this and move on. Here are the real arguments.
- Fans will only make one pilgrimage a year. This is here to squash any mealy-mouthed notions of "we can integrate the bowl system into a playoff." People who say this generally propose that bowls like the Sun Bowl or C****s S****s Bowl host the early rounds, followed by the Gator Bowl and Peach Bowl in later rounds, and then the current BCS bowls get the semis and championship game. Listen. Fans of schools like Michigan and Ohio State are not going to travel from El Paso to Jacksonville to New Orleans to Pasadena to see their team. They will make one trip. Just look at the ACCCG last year. Boston College sent like four fans to the game. Why? They were waiting for the bowl game. And sure enough, BC went to the C****s S****s Bowl against another Northern team and that bowl had its best attendance since 1995, when it was known as the C******t Bowl and was in January for the '94 season. A playoff can only be done one of two ways: at home stadiums, or at neutral sites. Neutral sites are unworkable.
- If the system can't reliably select two teams, neither can it reliably select four, six, or eight. Or any number of playoff teams you like. Look, a bad system is a bad system. If the BCS is so good at getting it wrong, the same system will not work for choosing playoff teams - and that means any system involving the polls and/or computers is equally worthless as playoff proponents claim the BCS currently is. I can only laugh when playoff proponents, in order to show us what a brilliant system they've devised, use the BCS standings to pick the teams. Any playoff would need to completely reinvent the wheel and fix the selection process before it gained any credibility.
- Expanding the number of teams playing for the title also expands the number of teams who would feel robbed. "We need a playoff because Auburn!" The 2004 season is the rallying cry of the playoff crowd, when Auburn, USC, and Oklahoma all finished undefeated, and the latter two teams played for the title. Somebody was going to feel jobbed here, and that's probably understandable. So let's have a four team playoff! Oklahoma, USC, Auburn and......??? Gosh, Utah and Boise State were both also undefeated. We can't pick one and screw the other, that would defeat the purpose. Let's make it six teams. All the undefeateds get a shot. But - uh-oh - Texas, Louisville, and Cal all had one loss each. So, eight teams! Great! Until you realize that this would be the only national title tournament in which winning your conference means nothing, as the ACC, Big Ten, and Big East are shut out.
This argument waters down as the playoffs get larger and larger. By the time you get to the three-loss teams and the weaker two-loss teams, it's easy to say, "Shut up, you're pretty clearly not national-title caliber." But, the larger the playoff, the easier it is to get in and the more watered-down the regular season becomes.
- "Playing it out on the field" is a false fantasy. Sure, if Nebraska and Michigan could have met in 1997, it would have been a nice tidy end to the season. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a nice tidy solution that works every year. If the playoff is too small, it falls victim to the same problem as the BCS: teams will be left out. If the playoff is too big, it renders the regular season practically useless because you can stumble - twice even - and still win. This - and this is the kicker - too big and too small change every season. The BCS worked wonderfully in 2005 and gave us USC-Texas. It left one team out in the cold in 2004. It was a different kind of mess last year. It sorta worked in 2006. Playoff proponents seem to think all would be solved with a playoff. It would not. We'd just have different arguments.
- "Some conferences are tougher than others and beat each other up on the way to the title game, thus taking themselves out of contention." This is the Tommy Blubberville fallacy. Shut up, Tommy. Some conferences (ACC, Big 12, SEC) have title games, others (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big East) do not. These title games are said to be landmines for contending teams. For example, Alabama will likely have to get past the East Division champ, otherwise an undefeated Penn State will slide into the title game. This cuts both ways, of course. If Alabama beats, say, Florida, they then have a clear and fresh-in-the-minds argument for inclusion over PSU.
But I haven't even gotten yet to the silliness of this argument. Playoff proponents argue that a playoff would produce a "true" national champion because the winner would have defeated several very good teams on the way. Then they claim the SEC and other championship-game-holding conferences are handicapped because they have to play a very good team on the way. Look, if you want your national champion to have to "earn it" in a playoff, don't complain about them having to do the same in a conference championship game. It is not the Big Ten's fault that three other conferences are shameless money-grubbers, for that is the root of the presence of the conference championship game in the first place.
- A few games will turn into many games, and quickly. Some playoff proponents like the idea of a four-team or a six-team playoff, but agree that the regular season is too good to mess with much, and grow queasy at the thought of a larger 12 or 16 team ordeal. These people should not kid themselves: Four and six will grow into eight and twelve and sixteen. Basketball wasn't satisfied with 8, nor 16, nor 32, nor 48, nor even 64 for heaven's sake. It stands at 65 and some say it should be expanded again. Money will make this happen. Four teams will not stay four teams for very long. That is a rock solid guarantee.
- The college football regular season is the single best regular season in all of sports anywhere in the world. Why mess with it? Do you care what happens if North Carolina, on a Saturday afternoon in February, is 23-2 and down by 6 points in the middle of the second half to 9-16 Miami and their #1 seed in jeopardy? The hell you do. Will you tune in on November 15 if it's the third quarter and Alabama is losing to Mississippi State? You bet your ass you will. And you'll root for somebody. You'll root for Miss State if you're a Big Ten fan. You'll root for Alabama to pull it out if you can't stand the thought of a third straight Big Ten team representing in the title game. Were you watching Pitt and West Virginia last year? What about Mizzou and Oklahoma? Would you have tuned in if the Tigers and Sooners had already locked up playoff spots?
In short, I'll consider it a dark day indeed when a playoff is instituted. I want to see the BCS tweaked. More on this sooner or later - probably sooner. But I want to see it, ultimately, kept.
Since it's that time of the year, I'll get this post out of the way early. Strap in. We may be here a while. This may even be a two-parter. Or a many-parter depending on what kind of mood I'm in after I read the latest anti-BCS invective.
So here is the official stance of this blog: I have never been, am not now, and will never be in favor of a playoff to determine the national champion of the highest level of NCAA college football.
Whether you call it Division I-A or the FBS, I don't want a playoff for it. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm all in favor of the status quo; there are holes in the current system, and they ought to be fixed. But a playoff? No. Never. Let's discuss.
First, we will pick off the sick and weak, in order to make the herd stronger. The arguments often brought up against a playoff that don't, in my mind, hold water:
- A playoff would interfere with academics by overlapping two semesters. Pshaw. Basketball takes a break for final exams in December, and overlaps two semesters or trimesters or whatever a school has. Besides, spring practice and conditioning often has the same bothersome effect.
- The season would have to be extended unacceptably long. Nonsense, there are plenty of bye weeks.
These are stupid arguments. We'll stipulate to this and move on. Here are the real arguments.
- Fans will only make one pilgrimage a year. This is here to squash any mealy-mouthed notions of "we can integrate the bowl system into a playoff." People who say this generally propose that bowls like the Sun Bowl or C****s S****s Bowl host the early rounds, followed by the Gator Bowl and Peach Bowl in later rounds, and then the current BCS bowls get the semis and championship game. Listen. Fans of schools like Michigan and Ohio State are not going to travel from El Paso to Jacksonville to New Orleans to Pasadena to see their team. They will make one trip. Just look at the ACCCG last year. Boston College sent like four fans to the game. Why? They were waiting for the bowl game. And sure enough, BC went to the C****s S****s Bowl against another Northern team and that bowl had its best attendance since 1995, when it was known as the C******t Bowl and was in January for the '94 season. A playoff can only be done one of two ways: at home stadiums, or at neutral sites. Neutral sites are unworkable.
- If the system can't reliably select two teams, neither can it reliably select four, six, or eight. Or any number of playoff teams you like. Look, a bad system is a bad system. If the BCS is so good at getting it wrong, the same system will not work for choosing playoff teams - and that means any system involving the polls and/or computers is equally worthless as playoff proponents claim the BCS currently is. I can only laugh when playoff proponents, in order to show us what a brilliant system they've devised, use the BCS standings to pick the teams. Any playoff would need to completely reinvent the wheel and fix the selection process before it gained any credibility.
- Expanding the number of teams playing for the title also expands the number of teams who would feel robbed. "We need a playoff because Auburn!" The 2004 season is the rallying cry of the playoff crowd, when Auburn, USC, and Oklahoma all finished undefeated, and the latter two teams played for the title. Somebody was going to feel jobbed here, and that's probably understandable. So let's have a four team playoff! Oklahoma, USC, Auburn and......??? Gosh, Utah and Boise State were both also undefeated. We can't pick one and screw the other, that would defeat the purpose. Let's make it six teams. All the undefeateds get a shot. But - uh-oh - Texas, Louisville, and Cal all had one loss each. So, eight teams! Great! Until you realize that this would be the only national title tournament in which winning your conference means nothing, as the ACC, Big Ten, and Big East are shut out.
This argument waters down as the playoffs get larger and larger. By the time you get to the three-loss teams and the weaker two-loss teams, it's easy to say, "Shut up, you're pretty clearly not national-title caliber." But, the larger the playoff, the easier it is to get in and the more watered-down the regular season becomes.
- "Playing it out on the field" is a false fantasy. Sure, if Nebraska and Michigan could have met in 1997, it would have been a nice tidy end to the season. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a nice tidy solution that works every year. If the playoff is too small, it falls victim to the same problem as the BCS: teams will be left out. If the playoff is too big, it renders the regular season practically useless because you can stumble - twice even - and still win. This - and this is the kicker - too big and too small change every season. The BCS worked wonderfully in 2005 and gave us USC-Texas. It left one team out in the cold in 2004. It was a different kind of mess last year. It sorta worked in 2006. Playoff proponents seem to think all would be solved with a playoff. It would not. We'd just have different arguments.
- "Some conferences are tougher than others and beat each other up on the way to the title game, thus taking themselves out of contention." This is the Tommy Blubberville fallacy. Shut up, Tommy. Some conferences (ACC, Big 12, SEC) have title games, others (Pac-10, Big Ten, Big East) do not. These title games are said to be landmines for contending teams. For example, Alabama will likely have to get past the East Division champ, otherwise an undefeated Penn State will slide into the title game. This cuts both ways, of course. If Alabama beats, say, Florida, they then have a clear and fresh-in-the-minds argument for inclusion over PSU.
But I haven't even gotten yet to the silliness of this argument. Playoff proponents argue that a playoff would produce a "true" national champion because the winner would have defeated several very good teams on the way. Then they claim the SEC and other championship-game-holding conferences are handicapped because they have to play a very good team on the way. Look, if you want your national champion to have to "earn it" in a playoff, don't complain about them having to do the same in a conference championship game. It is not the Big Ten's fault that three other conferences are shameless money-grubbers, for that is the root of the presence of the conference championship game in the first place.
- A few games will turn into many games, and quickly. Some playoff proponents like the idea of a four-team or a six-team playoff, but agree that the regular season is too good to mess with much, and grow queasy at the thought of a larger 12 or 16 team ordeal. These people should not kid themselves: Four and six will grow into eight and twelve and sixteen. Basketball wasn't satisfied with 8, nor 16, nor 32, nor 48, nor even 64 for heaven's sake. It stands at 65 and some say it should be expanded again. Money will make this happen. Four teams will not stay four teams for very long. That is a rock solid guarantee.
- The college football regular season is the single best regular season in all of sports anywhere in the world. Why mess with it? Do you care what happens if North Carolina, on a Saturday afternoon in February, is 23-2 and down by 6 points in the middle of the second half to 9-16 Miami and their #1 seed in jeopardy? The hell you do. Will you tune in on November 15 if it's the third quarter and Alabama is losing to Mississippi State? You bet your ass you will. And you'll root for somebody. You'll root for Miss State if you're a Big Ten fan. You'll root for Alabama to pull it out if you can't stand the thought of a third straight Big Ten team representing in the title game. Were you watching Pitt and West Virginia last year? What about Mizzou and Oklahoma? Would you have tuned in if the Tigers and Sooners had already locked up playoff spots?
In short, I'll consider it a dark day indeed when a playoff is instituted. I want to see the BCS tweaked. More on this sooner or later - probably sooner. But I want to see it, ultimately, kept.
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