No, it’s not. It’s so fundamentally different that equating them borders on the dishonest.
In no other sport are the contestants in the “championship” game/s, or the winner of the national championship, determined by a poll of sportswriters and coaches, rather than by an empirical measure of the teams’ performance during the season and/or a playoff system. None. Never. Doesn’t happen.
As i asked earlier in the thread, in what other competition can a team beat every single opponent they face over the course of a season, and still not win the championship? I don’t understand why you can’t grasp how different this is from basically every other sports competition in the world.
I mean, say Florida beats Oklahoma this week. If that happens, we’ll have people all over the country, including the actual voters, asking aguing amongst themselves about issues such as those we see in this thread. We’ll hear things like: “Well, Utah, went undefeated, but they were in an easier conference, and their win over Alabama doesn’t outweigh that.” “Florida might have lost a game, but they’re in a harder conference, and they walked all over Alabama.” Etc., etc.
In what other sport are such conversations even possible, in terms of actually deciding who the national champion is? In what other competition can non-players argue among themselves to determine which of two teams–two teams that never played each other even once in the whole season–is crowned champion?
You’re welcome to your opinion of whether or not the BCS is a good system, but to argue that its difference from other sports competitions is merely “one of degree” does not in any way resemble reality.
Heh. Good one. And a perfect illustration, actually, of the point i’m trying to make. A sport like football shouldn’t determine its champions based on the same subjective, arbitrary criteria as competitions like figure skating and beauty pageants.
I think that’s a pretty awful argument. Why are Florida and Oklahoma playing in the biggest bowl? They’ve both lost a game, so instead it should be the Utes vs. Boise State. And if Oklahoma and Florida whine, just tell them they should have won all their games.
While an undefeated record is a great indicator, it should not be the end all be all for determinations of your “wild card” spots. Does anyone really think Ball State, had they won out, should have played before Texas? I really don’t want to devolve the college games by adding yet another incentive for the Floridas, Alabamas, and Ohio States to schedule more games with Chuck’s Institute for Video Game Developers to make sure they have the wins. Strength of Schedule needs to be a part of the determination.
College basketball. Selection Sunday to determine which teams get into the field of 65. Some automatic based on conference. Some evaluation of records (compare to the computer rankings).
Not exactly the same but not so far off as to say its dishonest to make the comparison or that it is an “emprirical measure” is used.
It is not a stretch at all to say that the current system seeds the teams and has a two team tournament. Not to say that is the best but that is a viable description.
Well, there you go. Ignorance fought. My complete, total, and utter indifference to college basketball meant that i was unaware of their finals selection process.
But i still maintain that this system is so different from football as to make the comparison meaningless. It might be the same if, after the selection, they split 64 teams into 32 different games and then simply selected the national champion from among the 32 winners. But the fact is that, once those teams are selected, in order to win the national championship they have to win their way through no fewer than 6 games, all against teams that are themselves undefeated in the playoff round. While playoffs might not be perfect, the sustained quality necessary to win your way through a six-round knockout tournament is about as close to definitive as you’re going to get.
Note, also, that i would have no trouble if NCAA football had a (for example) 16-team playoff tournament. Sure, there might be some debate about which teams make the final 16, especially regarding the last few spots, but most people would concede that the best teams in the nation would make the list. I’m happy to concede, for example, that the current poll system is probably pretty accurate at judging the top 25 or so teams in the country.
All i’m arguing is that the voting process is not accurate enough to differentiate between those teams for the purpose of declaring a national champion, especially in cases where (as will probably happen this year) at least one of the rejected teams wins every single game it plays, including a Bowl game against a team that was ranked among the top 2 or 3 teams a few weeks prior.
Perhaps you’ve been away for the past decade. That is how things were done for about a hundred years. But a few years ago things were changed so that we now have a 2-team playoff. Hence my comment about it being a matter of degree.
I think it should, and could easily, be increased to a 4-team playoff, without radically altering the bowl system.
Andre Smith, Bama’s star left tackle, just announced his eligibility for the NFL draft. He’s expected to be a top 3 pick. Best of luck to him, and thanks for a great year.
I assumed you were talking about “a matter of degree” different from normal, rational sporting competitions. But if your argument is that the current BCS system is just “a matter of degree” less retarded than the previous college football system, then i’m happy to concede that you might be right.
I think an eight-team playoff could be the best playoff system in sports. You could use the BCS rankings to pick the top eight (barring any undefeated teams), or give automatic bids to all the conference winners and then fill out the rest. The missed potential kills me.
Can we just go back to the old bowl system where the mythical national championship was just that, mythical . . . and my bowl season wasn’t ruined every year but myopic “analysts” shouting about the moral imperative for a playoff, without any idea how that would ruin the best regular season in sports?
Piker
(P.S. I would be open to a plus-one if it was set up to return New Year’s Day to its former position as my favorite sporting day of the year.)
Utah was a member of the Mountain West Conference, won each one of its eight games against the other members of the conference, finished first place and was awarded the championship for their efforts.
Why should Ohio State play Michigan every year? Why not just have each team play all the other teams in the Big Ten, and then take a vote to see who’s the champion of the conference?
Or, why have Texas play Oklahoma every year? Surely, it’s far better to have each team play a random sampling of other Big Twelve teams, and then let the coaches vote as to who the conference champ is.
I see no moral imperative for a playoff. I’m merely arguing that calling one particular team “national champions” without one, or without some other system whereby the best teams can actually play one another, is a farce.
And in fact, it seems to me that your comment about the “best regular season in sports” actually, in some ways, gets to the heart of the matter here. I’ve said before, and surely if you follow college football you understand the truth of this, but the fact is that the aspects of the regular season that college football fans love so much are precisely what stands in the way of a credible national championship competition.
College football fans are obsessed with local and regional competition and rivalries, and don’t want a true national tournament of the best college football teams, because that would mess up all the neighborly pissing contests between Age Old Rivals. I mean, can you imagine a college football season without Auburn v. Alabama, despite the fact that (this year at least), Auburn would not deserve to be anywhere near a national championship competition?
At the same time, this is America, so there has to be a National Champion (i’m surprised they don’t call the winner the World Champion). In the absence of a truly national competition, comprised of the top 16 or 20 (or whatever) teams, they have to resort to a system best described as Giggle and Guess. I have no moral problem with that, and as someone who doesn’t really care about college football it doesn’t effect me at all, except for these scintillating discussions on this message board. I just find it silly, is all.
Yeah, I think we are agreeing here . . . this is exactly what I’m saying. Almost all those fans who call for an unambiguous national champion act like there will be no cost to college football, when having a playoff will hurt the uniqueness of college football’s regular season.
So do I, which is why I would want the sport to move back to the old bowl system, where the mythical national championship was something that was argued about, but not the sole obsession of the media.
The system we have now is basicly a “pick em”, or popularity poll. If people picked the “really best team”, I think USC would be champions. But, no. If we had a “Best Record”, then Utah wins.
We got shit instead. Two teams, without the best players (team) or records, playing for the championship.
I can tell you the very first argument that will come up with that system: Not all conferences have a championship game. It’s an oft repeated complaint that USC doesn’t have to get beat up with a championship game, but the SEC and Big XII do.
And Oklahoma Killed Texas Tech, and Texas Tech beat Texas. Head to head records with only two teams tied, I agree. What’s completely arbitrary is the people who want to use head to head on only two teams in a three team tie. :rolleyes: