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1. Charley said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am

   The point of a playoff isn’t to find out who is best but to crown an undisputed champion. The 1996 Cardinals or the 2007 New York Giants may not have been the best teams that year but they are unquestionalby and most deservedly the champions.

   In this system, there is a 2 team playoff. That selection size is too small. Controversy arises because the #3 team generally has a resume not substantially different than the #1 team.

   4 would be better, 8 would be better than that. In an 8 team playoff, the #9 team’s resume would be substantially different than one of the top teams, and the controversy would be isolated to a minor bitch about #8 vs #9 and not a major controversy about #2 vs #3.

   In the current environment, with the “every regular season game is a playoff” flawed mentality, there should be no choice or debate in the OU vs UT situation. UT won on a neutral field. There is no subjectivity there. The fact that one lost to Tech and the other beat Tech would only be of consequence if Tech was under serious consideration for the #2 position. Tech is not under such serious consideration by anybody with any credibility. As such, the results of the mutual game with Tech are irrelevant. Both teams are a wisker different from each other. One team beat the other on a neutral field. There should be no question on who to rank higher.

   SEC rules account for this scenario. If they get down to “BCS ranking” do decide a division champ and the top 2 BCS-ranked teams are close to each other in the rankings, head to head overrules a slight ranking difference via the SEC tiebreaking procedures.

   So just like TV and almost everything else, the SEC is better set up, managed, with better rules and bylaws than the Big 12.

2. Phenomenal Smith said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am

   Charley, the fact that the playoffs aren’t designed the select the best team is exactly what bothers me and leaves me preferring the current system (I guess Gene’s voice isn’t so “lone.”) I don’t feel the need to have a tournament champion after a grueling regular season.

   The Cardinals, whom I love unabashedly, were unquestionably World Series Champions on 2006, but a system that allows them to play in the league’s playoffs is flawed. Why should the league’s finest reward go to a team that barely finishes over .500 over a 162 game season?

3. Euclid said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

   I think you guys (GC and PS) are painting all “playoff” proposals with the same brush. I think the “plus one” system offers the best of both worlds. It does little to diminish the importance of the regular season. If your team is sitting in the top 10 you are still dancing in your underwear when USC gets knocked off by Oregon State on a random thursday night because that helps your team.

   The plus one system allows two more teams to have a chance to compete head to head for the chance to name an undisputed champion. As Chuck points out, the current BCS system does have a playoff, its just a two team playoff. if you increase that to four teams you help to ensure that you have the top team among those four.

   This year you could envision a situation where USC could get into the top 4 as well as 3 teams combined from the Big 12/SEC. My only other tweak would be to require the BCS conferences to have a championship game to help reduce the chance that there would be two deserving teams from the same conference (obviously this would just reduce, not eliminate that chance–this year is case in point).

   The plus one system would also be imminently easy to implement and would do little to destroy the fabric of the current bowl system. Two of the current four BCS bowls could be used as the semi-final games (the two semi-final games would be rotated among the four bowls each year). The final bowl would just be the current BCS championship game which is played a week later anyway.

4. Charley said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

   Most reasonable people have concluded that a playoff with a subset of teams that played best in the regular season seeded in such a way to reward those teams that performed the best in the regular season with the easiest path to the championship is the most logical way to crown a champion in sports.

   I don’t know a single person that advocates that we take a poll in any other sport at the end of the year as to who the top 2 teams are and let them play one single game to decide everything. Are you suggesting that system for other sports?

   Baseball allows 8 of 30 teams into the postseason. That is a reasonable number. There is no dispute as to the 2006 champion in baseball. Are you suggesting that baseball allow for a vote of the top 2 teams at the end of the year and have those 2 teams square off in October for the World Series championship? Of course not. While that would eliminate the opportunity for the 10th best team during the regular season in a weak division to get hot in October and win the championship, it would also eliminate the opportunity for the arguably best team (some years) from doing the same. The Cardinal scenario is by far the least offensive of the two options.

   8 teams. 6 conference champions, highest rated mid major in the BCS, highest rated at large team, seeded by BCS rank play in the 4 major bowls on New Years day. Semifinals the following week, championship game the week after. Season is extended by exactly one more week and 2 more games for 2 teams and 1 more game for 2 other teams. School is on winter break and there would be so much money made in that system that the basketball tournament would look like a Tiddly Winks contest. The only guy that got left out is the second highest rated non champion, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s got about as much of a beef as the best non-wildcard team in baseball.

   If things go the way we think they will this year:
   (1) Florida (SEC Champ) vs (8) FSU (ACC)
   (2) Oklahoma (Big 12 Champ) vs (7) Oregon State (Pac 10)
   (3) Texas (at large) vs (6) Cincinati (Big East)
   (4) Utah (mid major) vs (5) Penn St (Big 10)

   Nobody legit would be left out that didn’t already lose to a team in the party.

5. Charley said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

   I could live with the plus one also

6. Gene Claude said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 2:09 pm

   Charley, these are all very good points and well presented; I appreciate your thoughts. I started this because I wanted to read some reasonable debates about playoff v. BCS. For the record, a plus one system is fine, and I think that college football playoffs would be a blast. I am annoyed by the groupthink that blames the BCS for many things that a playoff would not fix. A playoff is just a false sense of certainty that offers a nice packaged way to end debate.

   My two points: The champion of a sport should be the best team in that sport and the method used to select that champion should do the best job possible at selecting that team.

   In every sport, there is significant uncertainty about who the best team is. Playoffs sacrifice accuracy at selecting the best team in favor of certainty. The “undisputed champion” label only exists because people blindly accept that the winner of a playoff is self-defined as the best team. I (and Phenomenal) reject that.

   All of the (except, perhaps, the plus one format) proposals I’ve seen likely do a poor job of getting the best teams in, and then it is up to the vicissitudes of fate in single college football games. This is not more fair than the current system, does not guarantee better matchups, and does not do a better job of selecting the best team in the sport to be crowned champion.

   For instance, ff we follow Charley’s proposal, and FSU upsets Florida, PSU beats utah, Oregon State upsets OU and Texas and PSU ends up beating OSU to win the tournament, I dispute they are national champion. They didn’t play any Big 12 or SEC teams, or any of what the collective intelligence in college football think are the top 4 teams!

   And this is supposed to be a more fair system? First, Tech, Bama and USC are left out, because we desire to have objective rules that govern who gets in the playoff. Nevermind that they just did a horrific job of selecting the best teams. The point isn’t that “nobody legit would be left out” the point is that some of the inclusions are demonstrably worse than some of the exclusions.

   And excitement? No first round matchups between the SEC and the Big 12. You could devise dozens of ways this tournament produces a bunch of bad matchups that leave open all of the same debates we currently have.

   In the end, playoff systems in most sports are really another competition, largely separate from the regular season, just tacked on the end. They are fun as hell, but as a way to crown a champion, patently ludicrous. Does anyone really believe that the best way to select the champion of MLB is not to look to the 162 games played, but 20some at the end of the season? The two games aren’t really even the same. You don’t need the back end of your bullpen, or farm teams, or the last 2 guys on your bench in the playoffs.

   After all this, here’s where I think I come out. A small (plus one) playoff system does a better job of selecting the best team, and a legitimate champion than does the current system. A playoff system like Charley proposed is, in my eyes, illegitimate from the start. It’s rules almost guarantee one or more of the top 8 teams will be excluded every year, in exchange for objectivity in the selection process. Do you honestly believe that if that system produced, say, Oklahoma as the national champion, that USC would not lay claim to the tile as well? Or a 1 loss Alabama?

7. Phenomenal Smith said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

   I would not quit college football if the playoffs were as you suggested, Charley. Or the plus one. It would be a ton of fun. I wouldn’t love everything about it, but acknowledge it would be fun. That’s about all it is for me, though, as I don’t see that it “fixes” anything. I don’t think anything’s broken. I value the attempt of finding the best team more than arranging a playoff where we know a less-than-best team can win it all.

   It’s a slippery slope, so I’m more comfortable objecting to it all. Once I agree to a tournament style playoffs, what’s to stop the powers that be from coming back for more? 8 teams are great so 16 teams will be even better! I like the current system sooooo much better than a 16 team playoff.

   And let’s take a break from this high level discussion and talk about me. One problem I have is that I’d want to be there for all Mizzou playoff games (please, let’s assume Mizzou is good enough to make it to the finals). Where would the games be played? I’m struggling with the finances of making it to the bowl game this year – what about three playoff games?

8. Gene Claude said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

   And, Charley, I think MBL, NFL, NBA and NHL playoff systems are largely devoid of merit, yes. I would rather there be a much smaller number of combatants in the playoffs, and that the systems not be so rigid, so as to ensure that the best teams are involved, and bad teams are not involved. In MLB, too many teams are currently involved, the rules regarding selection dictate that perhaps deserving AL teams are snubbed in favor of crappy NL teams. In the NBA, same idea, except the west has gotten screwed by the east.

9. Roberto Frankfurter said:

   November 25th, 2008 at 2:45 pm

   GC, you label everyone who wants a playoff as a person who “blindly accepts that the winner of a playoff is self-defined as the best team.” I don’t know anyone who advocates for a playoff that believes that. Rather, I believe that it is the generally accepted process to determine a champion.

   As Charley and Euclid have pointed out, we currently have a hybrid playoff system . . . conference games, conference championship games, then a two team final playoff. Why bother to matchup #1 and #2 at the end? Why not just have all random bowl games (only adds one), then let the humans and computers decide.

   I support an expanded final playoff because I would like to have more meaningful bowl games at the end of the season. Last year, I would have been much more interested in USC v. Illinios if I knew the winner would be playing the winner of OU v. WVU (or something like that).

   I’m also frustrated because no one will ever explain why Division IA college football is the last holdout with respect to an expanded playoff. I think it is because the conferences don’t want to give up power and any expanded playoff system would be burdened with the current BCS system that prevents more than two teams from the same conference, etc.

10. Charley said:

    November 25th, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    There are problems with all playoff formats because the playoff format MUST be decided prior to that season’s competition and depending on what happens that season, some subjectively “qualified” teams could be left out or subjectively “unqualified” teams could be allowed in.

    In sports, it’s always better to take as much subjectivity out of the process as possible. That’s why we keep score in the major sports. That’s why we don’t subjectively vote on who played better to decide the winner. There are many times team A subjectively “outplayed” team B but because of a certain bad break or odd play or inopportune turnover based on the way the ball bounced team B won the game.

    Point is that even in individual contests the winner isn’t always the best. Our contests aren’t set up so that the best team wins. They are set up so that whoever manages to score the most points or runs that particular day wins. And that’s as it should be. Objectivity (who scored the most points based on the rules of the game) is always better than subjectivity (who SHOULD have won the game) in an individual contest, and it’s better in the entirity of the season.

    I don’t disagree with your point that in general the professional sports allow too many teams into the postseason. But allowing 4 or 8 teams (or even frankly 16 but I don’t see that happening in college football) would not be out of line when there are 119 teams in competition. And in your example if a team won the championship without ever playing an SEC or Big 12 team so be it.

    Champions prove themeselves on the biggest stage. The New England Patriots won the first 18 games last year and lost the 19th to a team they previously beat and are correctly not the champion because of it… in much the same way a team can be outplayed for 60 minutes, get an extra play because the opposing defensive lineman lined up one inch offsides, then win on a 5 lateral hail mary play on the last play of the game and correctly be crowned the winner.

    Like it or not we already have a college football playoff. It’s a 2 team playoff. There is no way most years to identify 2 and only 2 deserving teams. It needs to be expanded to 4 or 8 teams. And yes there may be some subjectivity of the 4th vs 5th team or 8th vs 9th team. But we would have minimized the impact of the subjectivity by pushing it down to decisions that are less likely to punish a legitimately deserving team.

11. Gene Claude said:

    November 25th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

    I’ll buy some of the arguments for a playoff, and I’ll have some more later about it.

    But this whole “champions prove themselves on the biggest stage” is a tautology. You know they are champions because they have to win the playoff to be a champion. To win the playoff they have to performe on the biggest stage. A=B, B=C, C=A. It doesn’t mean anything. The Patriots were clearly the best team in the NFL and lost in the last game of the season and are not considered champions. That doesn’t prove that the system works. It might prove the system is fun, and entertaining, and gives lots of options for potential champions, but it only proves the best team won if you define the best team as the winner.

12. Charley said:

    November 25th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    I define the champion as the winner. The “best team” is as relevant and interesting as having the most total yards gained in a game that was lost.

13. Gene Claude said:

    November 26th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Makes it easy then. No matter how you want to choose a champion, you are always right.

14. Charley said:

    November 26th, 2008 at 10:17 am

    Not in the current system where the champion (or 2 teams that play for the championship) is crowned via a vote.

    There’s no true champion in college football. When it’s a frequent even when the arguably #1 or #2 team in the country cannot compete for the title, there’s no true champion.

15. Gene Claude said:

    November 26th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    The only way there is a true champion is if you decide there is a rule that creates a true champion. Do you understand this? You just defined the winner of an 8 game playoff as The True Champion. It isn’t any more real than saying 100 smart people selecting the team that had the best regular season plus bowl game as The True Champion.

    Football poses serious problems for playoffs, because the only way to make a playoff legitimate, I think, is to have enough games to provide a statistically significant sample. You need best of 7-type series for it to mean anything. Easy, relatively, to do in basketball or baseball, but you can’t do that in football. So you end up with people glorifying teams for results that are often just luck, and ignoring teams who actually proved their worth over a larger data set. For example, the Patriots and the Giants last year.

16. Charley said:

    November 26th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    That’s the way it is in every other sport GC.

    Doesn’t matter who is actually the best. Only matters who wins and who loses. That’s sports.

    Texas beat OU on a neutral field. It’s absurd that this system could rank OU ahead of Texas.

17. Atomic Teeth » Blog Archive » Why playoffs are stupid said:

    February 15th, 2009 at 9:30 pm

    [...] few months ago, I voiced my disdain for playoff systems in general, and especially as a way to identify a college football champion.  [...]

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