My BCS proposed change
(Written by kencraw)
I’ve long been a believer that the easiest way to solve over half of the problems in the BCS is to insist that only teams that have won their conference are eligible for the BCS championship game. Seriously, if you can’t win your conference, how can you claim that you’re the national champion?
And making the rule change solves a lot of problems:
- There won’t be two teams from the same conference like this year (likely)
- Due to the above, it significantly reduces the rematch possibilities
- There will never be a controversy about which of two teams from a conference should go (Oregon or Stanford?)
Then there’s the more subjective issue that if you look back, the most egregious and controversial slights have happened when a team that didn’t win their conference gets the nod (2001 Nebraska anyone?). Of course it doesn’t solve every problem, like when there are 3 undefeated teams from different conferences, but there’s a lot of scenarios it significantly cleans up.
Ironically, the BCS is going the opposite way. A couple years back they realized there was an issue with the current rules where the top two ranked teams were from the same conference and neither won the conference. Because there’s a two team limit for BCS games, the question was which of the three would go (the conference champ, the #1 team and the #2 team) to BCS games. Could the conference champ be denied a BCS bowl game? Would #2 be denied a spot in the championship game?. The solution was to say that all three teams in that scenario were automatic qualifiers for the BCS.
But of course they could have solved that problem by just limiting the BCS Championship to teams that won their conference.
And as I said above, if you didn’t win your conference, you have no business being in the title game.
Let’s hope Oklahoma State’s impressive 44-10 win over #13 Oklahoma is enough to leap-frog Alabama, because the last thing I want to see is a repeat all-SEC BCS title game. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even watch it.
Update Sunday @ 7:45 AM: I probably should have made it clear that I prefer an 8-team playoff. I’m somewhat flexible within that model as long as some number of conference winners are automatic qualifiers. My current thinking is the top 5 ranked conference winners (of any conference, not just the current BCS conference and independent teams counting as a “conference of one”) getting an automatic bid, with the remaining 3 “at-large” going to the highest ranked non-conference winners. Point being, the above post is a “if we can’t blow the thing up, this is the minor change I’d make” post, not what I think is the best.
December 4th, 2011 at 12:02 am
I just don’t agree. Stanford doesn’t have OK St.’s resume, but it’s close, and if it did, it would deserve to go. It’s one of the best one-loss teams in the country, but got surpassed by Oregon because of the single loss. Once you start barring teams like this, you end up with even worse matchups. Imagine two or three one loss teams being barred so a two loss team could go. Seems crazy.
That said, I hate the BCS. I do admit to kind of liking the two play-in championship games for the Rose Bowl. It’s almost a playoff!
December 4th, 2011 at 9:21 am
(I amended my post to make it clear in the big picture, I’m a playoff fan… teams like Stanford should get a 2nd shot.)
At the same time Jason, it’s just as crazy that Stanford should get a shot at the title when Oregon doesn’t. Oregon’s resume is nearly as impressive and they beat Stanford. Their extra loss is to LSU, who we can’t be sure Stanford could beat either.
The problem with the current “one-loss” (or in bad years “two loss”) system is that it encourages weak non-conference scheduling. Oregon is penalized for going and playing the best team in the country. (side note: since the BCS is a single game, I’m also against any re-matches, although I don’t know how you make a non-ridiculous rule to enforce that.)
It also penalizes teams that won big match-ups but have slip-up games, even early in the season. I’d rather it be exactly the opposite, be more forgiving of the slip-up games and focus more on the big in-conference match-ups.
This year, my rule would have made the game be LSU vs. OkSt, a much better game than an SEC re-match. Looking back, it would have affected two other games:
2001: Oregon gets a shot at the title in 2001 over Nebraska against Miami, which would have been a better game.
2003: Matched USC (who ended up with the split/AP title) against LSU instead of Oklahoma (who lost to LSU in the game)
All other games would have been unaffected.
Said another way, there’s not a year looking back where it would have hurt things and there’s at least two (three including this year) where it would have improved things. In fact, the only controversial year it wouldn’t have fixed was 2004 where their were 3 undefeated conference winners.
Fixes all but one of the the past problem year without hurting any of the past ones… seems like a good change to me.
December 5th, 2011 at 9:29 am
I think if we all just ignored the BCS, college football would return to what it should be. Pac-10 versus Big 10 in the Rose Bowl, everyone else plays in whatever game they feel like.
“National Championship” is stupid.