Posted on 12/07/2004 11:34:08 AM PST by Sideshow Bob
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the BCS. Once again, it built a better mousetrap and wound up slamming the thing down on its own neck.
Auburn, your reward for a 12-0 season is to become the first undefeated SEC team since the invention of this bowl gerrymandering system not to play for the national title. Who knew that beating Tennessee twice, LSU and Georgia would matter so little?
Jeff Tedford and Cal are on the outside looking in at the BCS bowls. California, your reward for going 10-1 and pushing No. 1 USC to within nine yards of its life on the Trojans' home field is to lose the Rose Bowl to Texas.
Yes, the team that was shut out in Dallas by Oklahoma. If life were fair, the team that maximized its talent would have gotten the spot, instead of the team whose coach politicked for BCS inclusion on national TV. This just in: Life isn't fair. The Checkers speech got Mack Brown to Pasadena.
(Since Cal's mortal sin was beating bowl-bound Southern Mississippi by only 10 in Hattiesburg, perhaps we should compare that with what Texas did in its last road game. The Longhorns beat a 4-7 Kansas team by the hair on Bevo's chin, requiring a questionable interference call on the Jayhawks and a last-minute touchdown to pull it out.)
That's this year's new twist on the old mess. Next year, of course, it will be some other unforeseen complication -- unless we do the right thing and detonate this poor substitute for a playoff.
But if the bowl system is inevitable, and an eight-team playoff is the impossible dream, then let's at least go retro with it. Let's reconnect with traditional values -- political buzzword! -- and bring back the old-school bowl lineup.
Forget trying to manufacture a title game. Send the teams to their traditional bowls and let the voters sort it out. (Sorry, coaches, but in this bowl system your final Top 25 ballots will be public.) If a consortium of computer rankings wants to award its own title, that's fine -- just leave them out of the king-making process.
Let's have Auburn play in the Sugar Bowl against, say, California. Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl against Utah. USC in the Rose Bowl against Michigan. Virginia Tech can play Texas in the Orange Bowl for sun.
Then play them all on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day -- none of this drip-drip-drip of games over a course of four days -- and let the chips fall where they may.
That way, all three still have a chance at a national title in the polls. Auburn's season still would matter; it could finish No. 1 if both the Trojans and Sooners lose. Even Utah conceivably could wind up saying "We're No. 1!" if it beat Oklahoma and the other two unbeatens were to lose.
And that way, more than one bowl means something. As it stands now, we have the BCS championship bowl and a 27-game undercard of diminished importance. That's why New Year's Day is dullsville now, packing nowhere near the punch it once did.
Obviously, there were major flaws in the old bowl system that would have to be addressed. The secret sweetheart deals bowl execs once made with schools weeks in advance would need to be policed.
If the current setup is the best we can do, it's not good enough. And how college football keeps getting itself into this predicament, year after year, is beyond me.
Yes, at least this year the BCS got a matchup of two undefeated teams -- two teams that went 1-2 all year in the polls, that have the most star power, that represent perhaps the most enticing bowl matchup in three decades. (I'll still take Notre Dame-Alabama from the 1973 Sugar Bowl, Bear vs. Ara, as the sexiest of 'em all.)
But even with all that going for it, this system hasn't gotten it right. Here's why: There's simply no definitive way to differentiate between USC, Oklahoma and Auburn -- no reliable way to say which one absolutely, positively doesn't belong.
You can rattle off statistics from now until New Year's. You can blather about strength of schedule, quality wins and conference strength. You can produce all the computer ratings known to man. But without a playoff to prove it on the field, you'll just be talking noise. The mousetrap still doesn't work right.
Pat Forde is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.
Unfortunately, baseball is not a universal Division I sport because many colleges have been forced to drop baseball because of Title IX. As for structure, I prefer best of 3 for baseball to double elimination. In basketball, I like much of March Madness. I love the fact that the championship is decided on the court.
But I'm not a big fan of conference tournaments and/or awarding automatic NCAA bids to conference tournament champs. Theoretically, a team could finish 0-26 in the regular season, win 3 games in the conference tourney, get a bogus NCAA bid and keep a bubble team out. The seeding of the NCAA basketball tournament has also been extremely suspect - last year in particular.
Still, despite its flaws, March Madness is still the best sports championship around.
A 12-0 loss to the team that should be ranked #1 is getting completely smoked?
When did they play against LSU?
You may be on to something there; it was too tough for the likes of Houston, East Carolina, and UAB. The only teams to beat the mighty Southern Miss Eagles at Hattiesburg were California and that perennial powerhouse Cincinatti (6-5) who beat them 52-24.
Actually, there's 56 teams playing right now in 28 bowls. I doubt many of the second tier schools and conferences are willing to sacrifice their bowl game money and exposure for a large playoff system. The bowl committees and their sponsors also don't want to lose their piece of the pie.
I suppose you could structure a 48 team tournament with the top 16 receiveing a 1st round bye. That would mean 16 opening round games and 16 second round games, 8 third round, 4 fourth round, 2 semis and a championship game for a total of 47 games.
That's too big. I don't think the NCAA or the networks want to add that much programming. It turns the opening round games into regional broadcasts. That's a step backwards from the national TV audience they have now. And which network would want to run the opening round games counter to NFL programming on Saturdays and Sundays in December?
Besides, who really wants to see USC taking on the winner of 6-5 Southern Miss and 7-4 North Texas?
Let's push for baby steps instead.
Politics and logistics will keep the NCAA from creating anything more than an 8 team playoff (yes, 16 would be better). It would add only 3 games to the existing format, make the Rose, Sugar, Orange & Fiesta relevant EVERY year and make the national championship a lot more real.
Maine defeated Mississippi State, not Southern Miss.
My mistake.
My alma mater just moved from Div II to Div I-AA, so I've followed that league this year and have enjoyed the heck out of it.
Southern Miss
44 wins, 27 losses and 5 bowl appearnces since 1999.
Only 4 losing seasons and 12 bowl appearances since 1980.
Tell me again, which is the historically tougher place to play?
You know, im new to college football, and when i ask fans to explain the "computer system" to a simple minded person like me, they usually tell me it is "unexplainable"
They're pretty much correct, but I'll give it a shot anyway.
Currently (the formula has been different in previous years), the BCS rankings are computed with 3 basic factors:
1) Point total in the AP poll.
2) Point total in the coaches' poll.
3) Average ranking in the six selected computer ranking systems, after throwing out the best and worst ranking for each team.
For the 2 polls, a team's score is its point total divided by the best possible point total for that poll. In 2003, there were 65 AP voters and 63 coaches voting, which meant that the best possible score for the AP poll was 1625 (65 voters x 25 points for a first place vote) and in the coaches' poll, the best possible score was 1575.
The 6 computer rankings (conducted by pencil necked computer uber-geeks Anderson-Hester, Richard Billingsley, Wes Colley, Kenneth Massey, Jeff Sagarin and Peter Wolfe) use their own unique mathematical formulae to determine their rankings. Within each nerd's system the team ranked #1 gets 25 points. The #2 team receives 24, and so on, down to the #25 team getting one point. Each team's four computer scores (after tossing the best and worst computer score) will be added and divided by 100 (the best possible score) to give the computer average.
Then, the three numbers - writer's poll, coach's poll and average computer ranking - are averaged in equal weight for the total BCS score, highest being better.
There are eight spots in the four BCS bowl games - Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar. Six of those spots are reserved for the champions of the six BCS conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big LEast, Pac Ten, SEC), regardless of their ranking in the complicated BCS standings listed above.
Two at-large teams are also included. The at-large teams must come from different conferences, unless the #1 and #2 teams are at-large and from the same conference.
At-large teams can earn guaranteed selection in the following ways (in order of preference):
1) Finish first or second in the BCS rankings.
2) Finish in the top six of the BCS standings as an independent team or team from a non-BCS conference. If a team other than Notre Dame qualifies in this manner, then the Irish would also automatically qualify by winning 9 games or finishing in the top 10 in the BCS standings.
3) Be the highest rated at-large team remaining and finish either third or fourth in the BCS rankings. Only one team can automatically qualify under this provision.
4) If the two at-large spots become filled via steps 1, 2 or 3, the process stops.
5) If a situation arises where there are 3 or more teams who "automatically qualify" under step 2, then the individual bowls get to select from among the automatically qualified teams, and someone gets their feelings hurt (like Cal, Louisville & Boise State).
6) If there are still open spots after all of the above, then any team can be selected if it has 9 wins and is rated in the top 12 of the BCS standings.
Now that you know the 8 teams, where do they play?
The top two teams in the BCS rankings play in the designated national title game, which rotates among the 4 BCS bowls. Then, the remaining conference champions are paired with their tie-in bowls:
Rose - Big Ten & Pac10
Fiesta - Big XII
Orange - ACC & Big LEast
Sugar - SEC
After that, there is a priority order to the selection.
1) Any bowl losing its tie-in team to the championship game can pick a replacement from among the remaining teams.
2) If two bowls lose their tie-ins to the title game, the bowl losing the #1 team in the BCS standings picks first.
3) Any bowl with open spots submits a list of three teams they would like for its game.
4) If there are any BCS conference champions still in the pool, they must be first or second on that list.
5) Each bowl will then be given its first choice on its list.
6) If more than one bowl chooses the same team, the priority order is:
a) the bowl with the highest payout
b) the bowl that did not get first choice the previous year.
Okay, everyone got all that?
Like your friends said, it is unexplainable.
Yes, but put Kansas in Conference USA and put Southern Miss in the Big 12 and try to convince ANYONE with even a passing knowledge of college football that those numbers wouldn't be reversed.
Puh-leeeeeze.
Texas and Okalhoma are great teams, but the Big 12's mid-tier teams are just as mediocre as those in any other conference. A&M lost to Baylor, for crying out loud.
My point remains that there is a strong, fan-supported winning football tradition at Southern Miss and none at Kansas. The fact that KU has been Oklahoma's (and Nebraska's...and Kansas State's...and Colorado's...and even Missouri's...and hell's bells, Iowa State kicks Kansas' ass on a regular basis) perennial doormat for 50 years carries no weight with me or any other knowledgeable college football fan.
The good mid-major teams - and Southern Miss is one of them - are as good or better than many major conference mid-tier teams. Southern Miss (or Utah or Louisville or Cincinnati or TCU) would fare just fine in the middle of the Big 12 pack. Kansas would still suck in any conference - even the Big LEast.
Kansas (or Duke or Indiana or Vanderbilt or Baylor or fill-in-your-favorite-loser-program-here) football is a joke. They have been and will likely remain the "major" cupcakes that other schools seek out to schedule in non-conference play. There isn't an athletic director in the country that feels that way about Southern Miss.
p.s. It's hard for me to have any good feelings about the Big 12 with their larceny of Cal's BCS spot. Four coaches in the final AP poll voted Cal 7th and two coaches voted Cal 8th. During the previous month, ALL coaches voted Cal at least 6th or better. Cal and the Pac10 have called for the AP coach's ballots to be made public.
What is nearly certain, but is not being said directly, is that 6 Big 12 coaches changed their votes to put Texas in the BCS and bring home a $12-15 million BCS payment for the Big 12 conference to divvy up among its members.
If I were a coach, AD or univeristy president from any other conference, I would be screaming bloody murder and demanding AP ballots be made public next year.
The only reason this "larceny" was even necessary was because of the tweaking done after last season to put more weight on the polls (the absolute worst method in history for determining an athletic champion) rather than the computer rankings. Any objective measure (as opposed to the popularity contest method of the polls) of analyzing the two teams ranks Texas ahead of Cal. Comparing the Cal's difficult victory over Southern Miss to Texas comeback against Kansas is silly, because you have to look at the overall season. Texas played a tougher schedule than Cal (based on the overall winning percentages of the teams that each played). Cal and Texas both lost to teams that have a legitimate claim to being the number 1 team in the nation. The computer averages rank OU as 1 and USC as 2, while the popularity contests rank USC 1 and OU 2. You disdain the computer averages, while I think the polls are tremendously flawed by the fact that polls start before the season ever starts which builds a bias into the teams that are ranked at the top in the preseason polls.
As for the mighty USC, if not for an over-anxious whistle that blew a play dead when the receiver was not anywhere near being down, UCLA would have had a fumble return for a touchdown that well might have changed the outcome of that game. Your contempt for the Big XII is somewhat similar to what I feel toward the PAC-10 and the left-coast bias in the polls that tends to overinflate the poll rankings for teams from that conference year after year.
***
The only reason this "larceny" was even necessary...
A little liberal "end justifies the means" here?
***
...because of the tweaking done after last season to put more weight on the polls (the absolute worst method in history for determining an athletic champion) rather than the computer rankings. Any objective measure (as opposed to the popularity contest method of the polls) of analyzing the two teams ranks Texas ahead of Cal.
The computers are not objective and have certian biases programmed into their formulae. There is no true objective measure which is why this whole BCS scam is an exercise in futility. You can pretend all you want that the computers provide an objective result. They can't. There are just some things that cannot be accurately quantified or turned into a mathematical certainty.
The writer's poll reflects the collective opinion of participating sportswriters. The coach's poll reflects the collective opinion of participating sportswriters. So long as the particpants provide their honest opinion (even an inflated one - of teams like Nebraska's or Miami's or Florida State's or your perception of a Left Coast bias), the system works. By making the coach's ballots public, perhaps a more honest result will occur.
In the absence of a playoff, I would prefer to rely on those opinion polls to determine a "mythical" national champion than to let a bunch of pencil necked computer uber-geeks who never played the game help in perpetrating a fraudulent BCS title.
***
Comparing the Cal's difficult victory over Southern Miss to Texas comeback against Kansas is silly, because you have to look at the overall season. Texas played a tougher schedule than Cal (based on the overall winning percentages of the teams that each played).
No, comparing Cal's outcome-ever-in-doubt final road game at Southern Miss to Texas' Big 12-referee's-gift final road game at Kansas is not silly. The BCS is all about silly comparisons. Texas' alleged schedule superiority didn't matter all season long in either the polls or computers. It was the gamesmanship of 6 voters in the final AP poll that tipped things in Texas' favor.
You can cry all want about alleged Big 12 superiority, the degree of difficulty of any of the major conferences (excluding the Big Least) is roughly equivalent.
Bottom line, the whole BCS system sucks and the Cal-Texas dispute is yet another blatant example of its failure. But to settle our tangent, I will simply say...
Cal was one play away from an undefeated season.
Texas was one bogus pass interference call away from a 2 loss season.
***
The only reason this "larceny" was even necessary...
A little liberal "end justifies the means" here?
***
...because of the tweaking done after last season to put more weight on the polls (the absolute worst method in history for determining an athletic champion) rather than the computer rankings. Any objective measure (as opposed to the popularity contest method of the polls) of analyzing the two teams ranks Texas ahead of Cal.
The computers are not objective and have certian biases programmed into their formulae. There is no true objective measure which is why this whole BCS scam is an exercise in futility. You can pretend all you want that the computers provide an objective result. They can't. There are just some things that cannot be accurately quantified or turned into a mathematical certainty.
The writer's poll reflects the collective opinion of participating sportswriters. The coach's poll reflects the collective opinion of participating sportswriters. So long as the particpants provide their honest opinion (even an inflated one - of teams like Nebraska's or Miami's or Florida State's or your perception of a Left Coast bias), the system works. By making the coach's ballots public, perhaps a more honest result will occur.
In the absence of a playoff, I would prefer to rely on those opinion polls to determine a "mythical" national champion than to let a bunch of pencil necked computer uber-geeks who never played the game help in perpetrating a fraudulent BCS title.
***
Comparing the Cal's difficult victory over Southern Miss to Texas comeback against Kansas is silly, because you have to look at the overall season. Texas played a tougher schedule than Cal (based on the overall winning percentages of the teams that each played).
No, comparing Cal's outcome-ever-in-doubt final road game at Southern Miss to Texas' Big 12-referee's-gift final road game at Kansas is not silly. The BCS is all about silly comparisons. Texas' alleged schedule superiority didn't matter all season long in either the polls or computers. It was the gamesmanship of 6 voters in the final AP poll that tipped things in Texas' favor.
You can cry all want about alleged Big 12 superiority, the degree of difficulty of any of the major conferences (excluding the Big Least) is roughly equivalent.
Bottom line, the whole BCS system sucks and the Cal-Texas dispute is yet another blatant example of its failure. But to settle our tangent, I will simply say...
Cal was one play away from an undefeated season.
Texas was one bogus pass interference call away from a 2 loss season.
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