Re: The BXS
Thanks for agreeing with me.[/sarcasm]
If we are going to put that much stock into a national champ, we need to work on making the decision fair and unbiased. If we are going to keep college football like it is, we need to completely do away with the "national title" idea and just have bowl games that mean virtually nothing. I don't see them eliminating the national title game, therefore we need to do more to improve the decision process- if that means playoff, that's how we should go.
Fact, college football has changed. The national title used to be virtually nothing in college football because there really wasn't a national title. It used to be that college football reporters would talk about the games, now they talk about the road to the BCS. The BCS has drawn more attention to the national title and as long as the national title is relevant, they will continue to make changes to the current system till we have a playoff of some type. Making a separate championship game is the first big step in starting a playoff.
Mark my words, as long was we have a "national champ" we will move closer and closer to a playoff until we have one.
And mark mine, as long as the BCS conferences remain intact, as-is, we will never have much more than a +1 game.
The decision cannot be fair and unbiased because the SYSTEM is not fair and unbiased. In EVERY other sport that has a playoff, teams play largely equal schedules and have largely equal resources.
The only example otherwise would be college basketball, and, in that case, they have a much longer season than college football, and have a MUCH larger playoff than any other sport to compensate. There is a clear path to the tournament for every single school in Division 1 in that case.
A playoff is only the answer if you can find a way to make it legitimate. And the ONLY way to make it legitimate is to fundamentally alter the landscape of FBS Football. There is really no other way to do it. You have to take the polls out of it. You have to take rankings out of it. You have to have a clear path for each and every one of the 119 teams to make it to the playoff regardless of conference affiliation, schedule, tradition or polls. And it is simply impossible to do, currently, with 119 teams playing 12 games - and only 3 or 4 out of conference.
I honestly don't think that you would like the system that would come out of that. You'd have to ignore conferences almost entirely, or you'd have to throw them all in a hat and shuffle them. Traditional rivalries would have to go away, and even if they stuck around, they would mean virtually nothing. Schools would lose the ability to manage their own schedules. And all of this just so that you could have a quasi-legitimate tournament champion at the end of the season.
Anything less than that, and it's virtually impossible to create a level playing field for every team, every year. And without a level playing field, it's impossible for you to tell me that you have a legitimate, representative tournament field.
And if you have a playoff field that is not legitimate, than you have a championship that is not legitimate.
And then you're back in the same boat as we are currently, except you've pretty much changed everything there is to love about college football.
The simplistic alternatives really end you up in no better shape than we are in currently, either, and really open up more questions than they do answers.
The BCS, flawed as it may be, has given us some tremendous football games over the years. And, more often than not, given us a chance to see the two best teams in the nation play each other at the end of the year. That is it's entire purpose in life, and I think it does an admirable job, overall. Sure, a +1 game would maybe help from time to time, as in 2003 or 2004, but, overall, it gives most legitimate title contenders a clear path to a championship - win all your games.
We have a de-facto playoff as is. It starts on week 1, and goes until the BCS championship. Win out, and you're in. You control your own destiny. All you have to do is win every game, every week. You can't slip up against Oregon State or Stanford if you're USC. You can't go to USC and get your butt handed to you if you're Ohio State. You can't lose at Iowa if you're Penn State. You can't lose at Texas Tech if you're Texas, and you can't lose at Oklahoma if you're Texas tech.
All you have to do is win all your games.
If you lose one, well, you lose control of your destiny. Is it still possible to make it? Sure, but you're now subject to the whims of the voters and polls - and more importantly other teams. It's sort of a second chance.
I MUCH prefer that to being able to lose 2 or 3 or even 4 games and make it to a playoff. Who would even care about the first 6 or 7 weeks of the season? Who would care that Appy State beat Michigan? Or that Ohio State went to USC and got creamed?
The system we have gives us excitement every week, in every game. I'll take 14 or 15 weeks of excitement over 2 or 3.
