The BCS

The debates have already started all across America and in fact, they happened from the moment Iowa State finished off their improbable comeback against undefeated and highly ranked Oklahoma State to win 37-31 in double overtime. Up until that point, it appeared that Oklahoma State and LSU would meet in the BCS National Championship game and if you had to put money on which might have a loss in that game, the smart money would have been on LSU.

However, LSU negotiated their ridiculously brutal schedule without a hiccup and has put themselves in a position to add their name to the list of best college football teams ever. They have defeated 8 ranked teams this year, 3 of which were ranked either #2 (Alabama) or #3 (Oregon and Arkansas) at the time.

There is no question that LSU is the best team in the country is and they will be favored in the national championship game next month no matter what. The only question on the mind of pretty much everyone is who deserves the chance to knock the Tigers off of their pedestal.

Oklahoma State has a more impressive body of work. They beat five teams that are currently in the BCS top 25; Alabama has only defeated two. Unfortunately for the Cowboys, there’s really only one other thing that they have going for them; they haven’t played LSU yet.

Alabama ranks 16th in scoring offense (behind Oklahoma State’s 2nd ranked juggernaut) but they lead the nation in scoring defense at just 8.8 points per game (while the Cowboys are 61st allowing 25.8 points per game). Alabama’s sole loss was at home… to the team mentioned above that is thrusting itself into the conversation for best team ever… by 3… in overtime. Oklahoma State’s only loss was on the road to an unranked team that barely made it to bowl eligibility… and they were 27 point favorites. Alabama’s best win was a 38-14 demolition of Arkansas who was ranked 6th in the final BCS standings and has been shut out of a BCS bowl. Oklahoma State’s best win was their 44-10 destruction of then #10 Oklahoma who dropped to 14th in the final edition of the BCS.

Despite the fact that Alabama has already played LSU, they are widely considered the second best team in the country and there is no logical reason that, if they are the second best team in the nation, they should not play LSU again for the national championship.

THE SEC

Many people around the country are getting tired of hearing about the dominance of the SEC and for much of last year, I was among those people. Now, however, I am changing my tune. Yes, the SEC is dominant and yes, I was born and raised in Pac-10 country (way back when it was the Pac-10). Yes, I miss the glory days of USC’s incredible run through all comers (before we found out that none of that counts anymore).

The fact of the matter is this is a historic run that the SEC is on and if you can’t appreciate that, you can’t appreciate college football through the blinders of your home colors. When USC was dominant in that several year stretch, nobody else in the Pac-10 was making much noise. Cal had a good year and that was more or less it. Starting with 2003 and running through 2008, the Trojans won all 6 Pac-10 championships and no other Pac-10 team made it to a BCS bowl. What is truly remarkable is in the last five years, four different teams have won the national title from the SEC.

For a conference to produce one program that is that dominant is very unusual but not half as unusual as producing five national champions that hail from four different campuses in consecutive years. It is a feat that might never be duplicated. All of this has led to an aura about any team that comes from the SEC. If you finished 7-5, 5-3 in the SEC, there are ego building whispers that you would have finished 12-0 in the Big East and maybe 11-1 in the ACC. If you finish 12-0 in the SEC you’ll be playing for the national title and if you finish 11-1, you’re better by default than any champion from outside the BCS conferences and it’s a toss-up between your team and an undefeated team from the Big East or the ACC.

The major question that needs to be asked is whether or not that is the way it should be and the logical answer is that you shouldn’t make assumptions like that when you are trying to figure out who the best team in the country is. The problem is that, as far as the BCS bowls have been concerned, those assumptions have been put to the test and have been shown to have some validity to them.

In both 2006 and 2007 there was a consensus number one team in the country, the Buckeyes of Ohio State. I watched several games from that team and followed the rest of the country and I was in agreement; they were the best team on paper and they passed the “eye” test. Both times they went to the BCS National Championship Game and both times they were blown out by SEC teams. Florida beat them 41-14 and then LSU beat them the next year 38-24 in a game that wasn’t nearly that close. Clearly the Big Ten was overrated and Ohio State wasn’t as good as their record indicated.

What about the Big XII? In 2008 Oklahoma was the number one team in the final BCS standings (wiith ridiculous amounts of controversy because when people start clamoring that Texas beat them head-to-head, they always seem to forget that Texas was beaten by Texas Tech and they finished 7th in the BCS). The Sooners had an offense for the ages with the future number one overall pick at quarterback in Sam Bradford. Everyone knew that you could put that offense up against any defense and they would just pick it apart. So what happened? A team that scored 702 points (54.0 per game) and had scored 35 points in their only loss was held to 14.

The next year they had another shot with Texas trying to dethrone Alabama. The Longhorns actually had a good defense that year, allowing just 15.2 points per game while they scored 40.7 per game. Just as before, an SEC team held them to far fewer points and scored far more than the Longhorns had averaged in the regular season; Alabama 37, Texas 21.

In 2010, the Pac-10 had its first crack at the SEC in the title game with the blur offense of Oregon. I will never really understand why the Ducks abandoned (largely) their frenetically paced offense. While watching their first few drives in the first half, there was a definite methodical nature to their offensive cadence. When I watched them get behind big to Stanford and then blow the doors off of the stadium, they were at their breakneck pace for the entire game when they had the ball, not just one or two plays per drive. Anyways, I digress. The result was again the same when an SEC defense held a very powerful offense (49.3 points per game) to a fraction of their previous potency in a 22-19 win.

For those of you who hate the SEC so much, the past five SEC champions have taken on teams from the Big Ten (Ohio State twice), the Big XII (Oklahoma and Texas) and the Pac-10 (Oregon) who had a combined 60-2 record and were averaging 42.6 points per game and allowing 16.0 points per game and have defeated them all by an average score of 32.4-18.4.

Give me one good reason why the SEC is NOT the best conference and they shouldn’t have two teams in the title game this year and I might listen. The fact of the matter is, there isn’t one.

WHAT’S IN A CHAMPIONSHIP?

What is a champion? Is it a team that has had the best season or the best postseason?

For the rest of you clamoring about the injustice that the teams ranked numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 are not going to be playing in a BCS bowl we must remember that the BCS has just two purposes and the first and more important one is to rake in a boatload of money. The second is to provide a match-up between the teams most widely regarded as the #1 and #2 teams in the nation.

The job of the BCS is not to ensure that the Fiesta Bowl has a good match-up; that’s the job of the Fiesta Bowl. If the Sugar Bowl thinks that Virginia Tech and Michigan will sell more tickets and entice more advertising dollars than Boise State and Kansas State, that is their prerogative and it is not at all the fault of the BCS. All the BCS does for the other bowls is they determine the schools that are eligible. After that, the bowls themselves pick the match-ups. It should also be noted that two of the four teams mentioned that are in the top ten but didn’t make it to a BCS bowl were also from the SEC (#6 Arkansas and #9 South Carolina) so consider that before you say the BCS was overrated.

Let’s get back to the question posed at the beginning of this section; what is a champion? Ideally, it is a team that satisfies both of the requirements I set forth; they were the best team in the regular season and they were the best team in the postseason. The problem is that very few teams have ever satisfied both of those requirements.

The 1998 Yankees went 114-48 and then ripped through the postseason to win the World Series easily.

The 1985 Bears were 15-1 before destroying their three playoff opponents to win the Super Bowl.

The 1996-97 Bulls were 72-10 and easily won the NBA title that year.

Those are off the top of my head and with time, I could come up with several more examples but I can think of several that don’t fit that mold and are in fact the opposite.

The 2006 St Louis Cardinals were 83-78 before they won the World Series.

The 2009 Arizona Cardinals were 9-7 before they very nearly won the Super Bowl.

In the last four years, two teams have won the Super Bowl from the #5 seed (2007 New York Giants) and the #6 seed (2010 Green Bay Packers).

Last year, Connecticut’s Men’s Basketball team was 21-9 and ranked 21st in the country. They then won 11 games in a row to claim the national championship.

What do all eight of the previous examples have in common? They were all very exciting and they were all crowned champions by a playoff. We can very easily see (and possibly remember) that the 96-97 Bulls, the 85 Bears, and the 98 Yankees were the best teams in their respective sports that year but what about the other five I mentioned? They were far from the best teams that year and were some of the worst teams ever to compete for a championship (in the case of the Arizona Cardinals) or win one.

This is something that never happens in the BCS and we have to give them credit for that. This year, you don’t have to worry about #21 Southern Miss getting hot and knocking off #1 LSU. The regular season matters and if you don’t take care of business (like against a 27 point underdog who finished 6-6) you don’t play for the national title.

The top two teams rarely play in the Super Bowl or in the World Series or the NBA Finals or the Final Four but for each and every one of the last thirteen years, the top two teams in the country (by at least one definition) have met on the field to determine the national champion. If you can’t at very least stipulate that then you have an illogical dislike (or hatred) of the BCS.

NATURE OF THE BEAST

What is the best way to determine a champion? A playoff or a ratings system that boils down every play to a series of 1’s and 0’s and spits out two team names? This is where I have to take myself out of the dream world and come back to reality. The best way to determine a champion is through a playoff bracket but not with individual winner-take-all games but with series.

In February of 2008, the New York Giants entered the Super Bowl with a record of 13-6 while the New England Patriots entered the contest with a record of 18-0. They had played just a few weeks before with the Patriots winning 38-35 to finish off their 16-0 regular season. If they had played 100 times, who would have won more? In my opinion, the answer is the Patriots because they were the better team. On that Sunday evening in February, the Giants were better but overall they were the inferior team.

This is the beauty of series in playoff brackets. Any team in any league can beat any other team. Under normal circumstances, the 0-13 Colts could potentially beat the 13-0 Packers (although this might be the exception to the rule) but could they do it more than once when they had to? Could they win 2 of 3, 3 of 5, or 4 of 7? The answer for the most part is no. When two teams line up against each other 7 times, it is rare that the truly inferior team wins. If the teams are evenly matched, of course, all bets are off but the cases are rare where there has been a disparity of talent and performance and the lesser team wins.

That is a fair way to determine a champion. You have to achieve success and then maintain it and that idea works for basketball (at least on the professional side), baseball, and hockey. It does not work for football.

Football cannot be played in series unless you want one season to take three years. It is, as the heading suggests, the nature of the beast that is football.

IS IT TIME FOR A PLAYOFF?

What is the answer when it comes to college football? Personally, I like the bowl system (even though it is becoming a reward for mediocrity) and I like the BCS. It needs to be tweaked and it needs to be revamped but its essence is still pure. Every week matters and if you lose, you have to hope that everyone else does as well. Alabama is not getting a mulligan this year; they negotiated a difficult schedule with one small blemish against one of the best teams of the BCS era. They were better than every other team with one loss according to the combination of computer and human polls.

The formula for playing for a national title has always been simple; win. In the fourteen years of the BCS system, 30 teams have gone undefeated prior to the bowls and more than half (17) have played in the national championship game. While many people would say that it’s unfair that thirteen teams went undefeated and didn’t play for the national title, I disagree. I believe that the number of undefeated teams that had a legitimate claim to the national title are very few (Auburn in 2004 and then Cincinnati and TCU in 2009 and TCU in 2010).

The truth of the matter is that there will always be controversy until the NCAA does away with half of the regular season games and institutes a 128 team playoff bracket. I know that it sounds ridiculous but how else can you appease all of the people complaining about how unfair the BCS is? That way, every team has a chance to win it all. While we’re at it, maybe March Madness should expand to include all 300 Division 1 teams.

If you want to do away with the Coach’s Poll, fine. If you want to revamp the computer formulae to include every possible statistic and measure of a football team, fine. If you want to eliminate the automatic qualifying spots for conference champions, fine. However, the essence of the BCS is pure:

#1 vs. #2… just the way it should be.