Let’s imagine the way this would play out under the old non-system, system:
Rose Bowl Big 10 v. Pac-12: Oregon vs. Wisc
Orange Bowl Big 8 v at large: Oklahoma State vs Virginia Tech
Sugar Bowl SEC v at large: LSU vs Stanford
Cotton: SWC v at large: Baylor vs Michigan State
Fiesta: At large v. At large: Alabama vs. Boise State
I’d watch all those games.
I think there are a lot more people think this way than the playoff advocates believe. A lot of people are locked into the mentality that 1) because other sports have playoffs, all must, and 2) the national championship is all that matters. Of course, all that really matters to the universities and the NCAA is the money, and the changes in the last 10-20 years have proven lucrative.
Historically, one of the things that distinguished college football has been that for most serious fans, the main objects of interest were local and specific – beating your team’s rivals, and winning your team’s league. The “national championship” was interesting newspaper thing but not a main goal. Alas, in the national-media age, it’s slowly gotten to the point where people care more and more about the national championship race, and much less about all the local stories. It’s a shame, IMO, but the ship has sailed.
At this point, I think the best we can hope for is a “plus-one,” in which all the traditional bowl ties are restored, and there is a championship game held one week after. Alas, I think even a “plus one” will eventually morph into “plus-sixteen.”
I like the other things you said and want to go on record as saying you’re probably correct in how the next “improvement” to the current system will be made. The enormous amount of time and energy and fidgeting with numbers that the BCS requires from so many people to get the #1 vs. #2 decided, with all the residue about “well that’s not right” might just as well be reduced to the “old way” of conference tie-ins to establish who plays in which bowls and reduce the “bowls that matter” to maybe four or eight and let those winners play in a bracket. Another two or three games/weeks instead of just one would make for more excitement and money.
I’ve said elsewhere that the only reasonable way to determine “best team” is to have a series of at least three games between the Top Two. So assuming that Bama does manage to beat LSU this time, there would need to be another tie-breaker to decide which of them is the true champ. All that will be moot since LSU will win this next one anyway! 
So lets run through this “perfect” 8 team playoff scenario this year. 6 AQ champs and 2 at large.
LSU, Oklahoma St., Clemson, WVU, Wisconsin, Oregon, and your 2 at large would be Stanford and Alabama…so we seed them and get the first round pairings:
#1 LSU v. #8 WVU
#2 Bama v. #7 Clemson
#3 Ok St. v. #6 Oregon
#4 Stanford v. #5 Wisconsin
WVU gives it a good shot, but comes up short. Clemson shocks Bama. Ok St squeaks one out and Stanford wins.
Round 2:
LSU #1 v. Stanford #4
Ok. St. #3 v. Clemson #7
Andrew Luck has a phenomenal game and LSU suffers a 21-17 heartbreak. Clemson continues its offensive juggernaut and shows that the end of the season was a fluke.
We now have the one game to determine the true national champion of college football:
Clemson v. Stanford
Luck is injured in the first quarter and Clemson is riding the Cinderella story all of the way. So the best team in College Football in 2011 is, congratulations, The Clemson Tigers!
Would anyone accept that result?
What does the question mean?
I would “accept” that Clemson won the playoff, because they did. I would still probably not think they were the best team. Then again, I think the 18-0 Patriots were a better team than the Giants.
The playoff adherents tend to be of the opinion that a playoff always, by definition, results in the best team, and so they’d presumably say that Clemson “won when it mattered” or “came up clutch” or whatever.
Those of us opposed to a playoff tend to question the premise, and suspect that no system is going to be perfect.
I mean would anyone believe that this playoff system produced a better result than the current system. The real debate is whether Bama or Oklahoma St. should get a shot at LSU. Everyone (I think) agrees that those are the 3 top teams that could be considered the best.
If we had a playoff and a WVU or Clemson got hot and won it all, would anyone seriously consider them the “best” team in the nation?
I understand that the 18-0 Patriots were the “best” team that year, but we all go into the Pro Football season wondering who is going to win the Super Bowl. That is, and always has been, the goal. I contend that the 2004 Steelers who went 15-1 in the regular season is the best Steelers team I’ve ever seen. They didn’t win the Super Bowl, though, so it means dick. That’s not now, nor what college football has ever been about.
The (recent) goal for college football sports fans is to find the “best” college team. I contend that a playoff won’t do that, and in most years it will do a worse job than the current system…
This kind of gets at what makes the whole poll system interesting/unresolvable.
What does it mean to be the #1 team, or the “best” team?
Does it mean the team that won the most games with at least a reasonable schedule is the best?
Or does it mean the team most likely to beat all other teams the highest percentage of times?
The polls appear to be an ambiguous collection of multiple criteria, all weighted differently by different people - resulting in - a lot of arguing.
The people who favor a playoff don’t care. 13-0 LSU means as much to them as 15-1 Pittsburgh.
By definition, they aren’t traditionalists, and do not care what “college football has ever been about.”
I understand that, but the argument is that we want to see which team is the “best.” Polls and computers don’t do it, playoff supporters claim. We have to see it “on the field.”
Okay, so most people agree that LSU, Alabama, and Oklahoma State have an argument for being the “best”. We can’t have a 3 team playoff, so who do we include? Stanford? Boise State? TCU? There would be an argument for #4. So let’s make it 8. Then there would be an argument for #9.
The answer to that is “fuck em.” If you are arguing between 8 and 9, you are lucky to get in, so just shut up and deal with it. Plus it is “better” than the other system that would have shut you out anyways.
My response it that it is not better. If we had Clemson, or a 9-4 WVU team winning the playoff, that wouldn’t answer anything. It would name a “national champion” that NOBODY believes is the best team in the country.
If you want to say that there should be an exciting playoff at the end of the year like the NFL, then fine, but don’t say that it will do better than the BCS, or even the old system, at letting fans know who was the “best” team.
#1 - When you say “NOBODY believes is best” you are falling into the trap of thinking that there is even a definition of “best” that people agree on and is consistent and accurate. It’s not a valuable term and most people when debating about it probably aren’t even envisioning the same criteria. Is it the team with the best record? Or the team that would win the highest percentage of games if they played all other teams? Or a combination of the two such that early season losses are counted less than current performance, etc. etc.
#2 - “national champions” is the term most people are focused on which has a better definition than “best”. Unfortunately today, it’s two teams and one game chosen from the teams with the best records. If that were expanded to 4 or 8, the number of deserving teams left out of the picture drops by orders of magnitude - which is why it’s better than the current system.
That’s wrong, furt. In 1969 there were national outcries over who was going to be #1 in the nation, and President Nixon himself jumped into the fray by declaring Texas national champion over Penn State. Remember Joe Paterno’s famous quip “How could Nixon know so much about college football in 1969 and so little about Watergate in 1973?” How about a couple years later when there were national debates over Notre Dame being chosen as national champions despite their “tainted tie” against Michigan State? Truth is, it’s been a long time since the main objects of interest were local, and “national championship” was far from an “interesting newspaper thing.”
While I agree with the analysis about college football national championships, the Notre Dame/Michigan State “Game of the Century” 10-10 tie was in 1966, a couple years earlier than, not later than, the 1969 Texas/Penn State dispute.
Speaking of Penn State and Paterno quotes, PSU had another undefeated season in 1973 but finished behind Notre Dame, which was also undefeated and which knocked off previously undefeated Alabama 24-23 in a great Sugar Bowl game. Paterno said, “We’re number 1 in the Paterno Poll, which we took in the locker room right after our game.”
Ah, sorry about that, and thanks for the correction. Could have sworn that was from the 70’s.
Penn State actually managed four undefeated, untied seasons without winning the national championship (1968, 1969, 1973, 1994) under Paterno. Any surprise he was one of the first advocates of a playoff system?
I agree with #1, but disagree with #2. Adding 8 teams to the mix, at least this year, would give 5 teams a shot at winning the national championship that nobody believes in the “best” team. It would give Oklahoma State a shot that they don’t have right now. That would be good. It would also give Clemson and WVU a shot. That would be bad because nobody believes that they are the best team by any criteria.
Maybe it you had a system that could be adjusted each year, it would work better. Maybe this year, Alabama and Ok. St. could have a play-in game to determine who would face LSU. (I still contend that is unnecessary because LSU already beat Bama).
Maybe in other years where there are two undefeated teams that are hands down the best, there would be no need for a play in game. Perhaps in other years where 4 teams have a legitimate claim, then you have a 4 team playoff.
Nobody knows what “best” means.
Because of that the best we can do is an NC.
All I know is that there are teams at the top of the polls that deserve more of a shot at the NC than the teams at the other end of the polls. I disagree that anyone is psychic enough to claim that there are 5 teams that don’t deserve the NC. If they get through the playoffs and win, they deserve it. There may be people out there that think they can determine who is the “best” team, but I feel comfortable that they would only be correct some of the time.
There is an argument that says regardless of how good you are, you must win your games to deserve a shot at the NC, meaning a 2 loss team doesn’t deserve it under any conditions, but that gets tricky also with SOS etc., I’m not sure that’s resolvable.
I think a more accurate statement is: nobody believes they are the best team by the somewhat arbitrary method that we currently use to rank them.
You may get an entire nation of people thinking that LSU is better than Clemson, but playing the games is more proof than a poll.
No need to make it complex. 4 is much better than what we have today, and with 8 we are starting to include 2 loss teams which is far enough from the top of the poll that it’s probably safe to say the deserving teams were included.
I think it’s ok if an undeserving team is included as long as your system includes the deserving teams. (“deserving” needs to be defined, but you get the idea).