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thoughts

How the Big 12 should structure their conference championship

With yesterday’s rule change on holding conference championships the Big 12 has an opportunity to get their “13th data point” but they can structure it so that they only hold a championship when they don’t have a clear champion already. The way to do that would be to only hold a championship game when the team with the best conference record doesn’t have at least a two game lead in both their conference record and their overall record. (They might make an exception to the two game rule if the conference leader either lost to the team two games behind them or won on their home field.)

The two game rule means that most years they would be holding a championship game but it allows them to avoid a trap game for their conference champion when they already have a clear winner. (That 13th data point doesn’t mean much when 12-0/9-0 #1 team beats 9-3/7-2 #2 team again but it sure hurts the whole conference if they lose.)

Categories
culture life

Fixing the BCS Title Game


photo credit: avinashkunnath

It’s time to set the record straight on the difference between the best BCS football programs and the best non-BCS football programs in response to the ill-advised and self-serving comments of Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee. TCU did their part responding on the field by beating 11-1 Big Ten co-champion Wisconsin (from Mr. Gee’s own BCS conference) and people have noticed.

Mr. Gee’s claim was that the schedule in a non-BCS conference could not compare to the schedule in a BCS conference. The fact is that conference schedules account for only 2/3 of the season and that strong BCS programs rarely play a decent opponent outside of their conference. They’re too busy playing the “Little Sisters of the Poor”—either weak teams from weak conferences or teams that do not even play at the FBS level. (Of course there are some rivalry exceptions but they are a minority of non-conference contests among BCS programs.) Non-BCS programs spend most of their non-conference games playing the toughest teams that are willing to agree to play from BCS conferences.

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Uncategorized

Mountain West Perfection

I noticed after publishing my Split Championship post that the Mountain West Conference managed to get the perfect football season that they fell short of last year with perfect order top to bottom in the conference.

The only blemish being their 4-1 record in bowl games this year and the glitch that Colorado State appears to have played an easier non-conference schedule than UNLV, San Diego State, and New Mexico.

Categories
politics thoughts

Split Championship

With Cincinnati falling hard to Florida we can rest assured that there will be two and only two undefeated FBS football teams this year. Last year Utah failed to convince the AP voters that as the only undefeated team in the FBS they deserved at least a split of the title, despite the fact that they beat Alabama more convincingly than Florida had in the SEC Championship game. Of course that turned out to be a great excuse for Barack Obama, Orrin Hatch, and Mark Shurtleff  (among others) to complain to Congress and the media about the BCS.

This year I have already heard some people who argue out of spite that the winner of the Alabama – Texas game should not be considered the National Champion. Personally I think that’s foolish. Whatever team wins that game will have gone undefeated having played against an undefeated team in their bowl game. What more could we ask of them? The same criteria will apply to the winner of the TCU – Boise State game and thus I argue that while the coaches are obligated to vote for the winner of Alabama-Texas the AP voters should create a split championship by voting for the winner of the TCU-Boise State game (unless Texas-Alabama is compelling while TCU-Boise State turns out to be a really sloppy game on both sides). In fact, Obama should follow his sportsman’s heart by inviting both teams to the White House and honoring them as is traditional for the National Champion. (If he really wants a playoff the President could invite them on the same day and watch them play a friendly scrimmage. 😉 )

I just had to get this out before the Fiesta Bowl began today so that I could be fair to both teams – especially considering I have a favorite in this contest. While I like both TCU and Boise State better than either Texas or Alabama I would definitely prefer to see TCU win.

Categories
thoughts

Almost Perfect

The BYU Football team motto for this year was “the quest for perfection.” It looks like the Mountain West Conference adopted the same goal. Like the Cougars, the conference fell short of its goal. There was exactly one conference game that did not follow the script this year. Here are the final conference standings for 2008:

The only game that did not follow the script for perfection this year was played on Saturday, November 22nd. Some people might expect that I would suggest that the BYU/Utah game was the one that didn’t go the right way – they would be wrong. The game that failed to follow the script was the UNLV/San Diego St. game. Had that game gone the other way the standings would be:

2008 Standings - perfected
2008 Standings - perfected

The perfection here is not just the order, but the fact that every team would have lost to every team ranked higher and beaten every team ranked lower. There would be no way to argue who was better based on overall standings or individual games.

Categories
culture

Playoffs vs Bowl Games

Before the BCS pairings were even announced yesterday I heard people talking about how this year should be conclusive evidence that we need to have a playoff for the National Championship in NCAA Football. I disagree. I think that Mike Lopresti got it right (again):

So ends an entirely captivating, wildly absorbing, deliciously unpredictable college football regular season. And now at the finish, what do we see?

Controversy. Mayhem. Protests.

Ain’t it great?

Here comes the BCS bashing, clanging like cymbals in a band, guaranteeing peace in our time — if only there could be a playoff.

Yeah, right. Put eight teams in a playoff. One would have to be Georgia, of course. Hottest team at the end, and all that.

Now go tell that to Tennessee, who won the division that Georgia could not, and beat the Bulldogs head-to-head by three touchdowns. And what about Hawaii? You going to have eight teams in a playoff and leave out the only team in the land with a 12-0 record? Or 11-1 Kansas? Or Missouri, which somehow fell from No. 1 to the Cotton Bowl in 24 hours? Just a few of many dilemmas.

The howls can be heard, though, now that the bowl pairings are out.

THE SYSTEM DIDN’T GET IT RIGHT!

No it didn’t, because there is no right answer. Not for the BCS. Not for a playoff. Someone will always feel shafted. Someone will always have another case to make. There will always be politicking, because if you need two teams, you can’t pick three. And if you need eight, you can’t choose nine.

He missed one thing there – college athletes are not professionals. I know, they work as hard as the professionals (perhaps harder) but thankfully they are still expected to be students and do more than take the field for our entertainment. The fact that we have an imperfect BCS system means that we as fans get to participate in a much more animated discussion surrounding what is happening, right or wrong, in college football. The fact that we don’t have a fool-proof way to declare a champion every year might serve to remind us that there is more to life than sports – no matter how entertaining those sports may be.

Let’s not ruin that by throwing together an imperfect playoff system that would concentrate more money in the big name leagues than we already have and give us the false sense that we really were getting the right champion every time. We’ll never be able to get a football playoff large enough (like the 65-team March Madness) so that the schools at the bottom of the pool will prove each year that while they might surprise us they still never win it all. Each time the lowest seeded team wins we have to wonder why not number 9, or 17, or 66?

Let’s just admit that the system is imperfect but the goal is entertainment, not clarity.

Categories
culture

Title Game Follow-up

I thought I would follow up to my Title Game post.

Basically, the talk of a Ohio State/Michigan rematch for the title game is an embarrassment for the Big Ten Conference. Both of them lost their BCS bowl games. I think that rust was an issue in both games. Michigan got outclassed by USC but they would have made that a close game if they had not been off for over 6 weeks. After 7 weeks off, Ohio State had no business on the field with a well-rested Florida team. This really does not reflect the quality of football team that Ohio State had this year. The moral of the story is, any team that has any hope of playing for the national title should make sure to have a game scheduled after Thanksgiving. This is no problem for the champions of the SEC, ACC, or Big 12 with their Championship games, but the Big Ten, Pac 10, and Big East teams have to think about this issue as they schedule games.

This should also serve as a warning against any title game that only represents one conference.

My personal favorite story line for this title game is the Urban Meyer coaching career. he turned Bowling Green around in two years then moved to Utah in a better conference. Two years at Utah saw him crashing the BCS party and moving on to Florida in a better conference. Two years at Florida and he was in the National Championship game – which the Gators won by 27. This puts him among an elite group of coaches who have won a National Championship within two years of taking over a program – a group that includes Jim Tressel at Ohio State in 2002.

My final take on the season is this – Florida will be #1, USC might get a vote as #1 from someone – they are likely to be the pre-season #1 next season, and I think someone ought to throw a #1 vote to Boise since they are the only undefeated team left even though they did not have a schedule that would make them #1 – they had only one non-conference game with a non-BCS opponent, and that was Utah(8-5) – even Florida played a Div 1-AA team.

UPDATE: Thanks to Greg Archuleta of the Albuquerque Journal I got my wish. Boise State got a vote as #1. It’s too bad the Coaches Poll had them as #6 because they are definitely a top 5 team.

Categories
life

Title Game

Some people who think they know me well would be surprised that I am an avid sports fan. I love sports for their athleticism, and I love good sportsmanship. I appreciate a wide variety of sports and I follow a number of sports, each for different reasons. I follow baseball because of the complexity of the sport – a 162 game season makes it all the more interesting. I follow golf because I know how difficult it is to make the shots that the professionals hit all the time – I’m just happy on any hole which I shoot in par. I follow college football partly because, with 119 Division 1-A teams, there’s a lot to look at.

For those who follow college football, the story of tonight is that Ohio State beat Michigan to finish their season unbeaten. Being unbeaten is not the amazing thing – it is possible the Boise State and Rutgers will also finish unbeaten. The amazing thing is that this is the second time this year that Ohio State has beaten the number 2 team in the country. Michigan was ranked second to Ohio State going into the game, and Texas was ranked second to Ohio State when Ohio State went in and trounced them back in September. Now Ohio State will have to face the second ranked team in the nation for the title game on January 8th. I doubt that any team has ever beaten the second ranked team three times in a season, but right now there is no reason to think that Ohio State will not beat whoever they end up playing.

That brings me to my point in posting. Michigan may be that team. Mike Lopresti, a sports columnist for USA Today, says that a rematch would diminish the value of tonights game and that it would be unfair to Ohio State. I have to agree. I don’t think any team could rightly be asked to defeat Michigan twice this year – except maybe the Indianapolis Colts (unbeaten in the NFL so far). On the other hand, it may be that no other team has a better claim to the number 2 spot than Michigan – their only defeat was on the road at Ohio State by 3 points.

I have concluded that if the title game does end up being a rematch and Michigan wins then we should have co-national champions – unless Michigan wins by more than 10 points. Whoever wins the title game will be voted #1 by the USA Today/Coaches poll (they are contractually obligated to vote that team #1) but if Ohio State loses a close game to Michigan the Associated Press poll should vote Ohio State #1 to create a split title since they will have split their games.

Just my 2 cents.

UPDATE 11/19: After considering my proposal, I have decided that it would not be fair to send Michigan to the title game. Under the conditions I have proposed they would have no chance for an undisputed title. If all they can get is a split-title or no title, the game is not a fare shake for them. I call that another reason to avoid a rematch. Michigan is too good to deserve such a poor fate. Send them to the Rose Bowl and let the voters choose whether to give them a share of the title if they win and Ohio State loses.

Categories
culture life

What I Love About Sports

I really enjoyed reading in the New York Times about one high school football team from a rich neighborhood helping raise money to save the football team of a nearby school in a poor neighborhood. This is what I love about sports. While I love the athleticism and the excitement of watching great plays on the field – no matter what kind of field we are talking about – the thing that I really love about sports is good sportsmanship.