Hmm
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 at 08:44PM ESPN takes a hypothetical look at the NFL if it were played under the dictates of the BCS.
The truth of the matter is that the NFL is better suited for a BCS-type method of determining a champion than college football. There are significantly fewer teams, so there are more common opponents to use as a basis of comparison between two teams. The NFL regular season (16 games) is 33 percent longer than the college regular season (12 games), so there's a larger sample of games by which to evaluate teams. And with the league's TV package, it would be much easier for voters -- if the NFL actually had them -- to watch every game played each week.
I do my best not to inject myself into arguments about the NFL's way of doing things. It's not my game, and its fans know better than myself what's good for the NFL. Just the same I cringe when passive observers inject themselves into serious arguments about the future of D-IA football. That said, this story is interesting. I'll let true NFL fans debate the merits or lack thereof, as I have no dog in the fight other than to link the argument to college football's ongoing playoff vs. non-playoff fight.
I disagree with the conclusions above, in that although I agree a polling/BCS method could work for the NFL, its playoffs are barely suitable to determining a clearly deserving champion. So imagine grafting an NFL styled one-and-done playoff system onto another sport with fewer games, fewer common opponents and far more teams. It's just not pretty.
Best of all, the writer acknowledges the NFL hasn't done a great job of getting it right despite a supposedly superior postseason.
If the NFL had made the move to a two-team playoff model along with college football in 1998, the Steelers would not have played in last season's Super Bowl. The Seahawks might not have either (it would have been tight between Seattle and Denver for the right to play Indianapolis). The Eagles would not have played in Super Bowl XXXIX. The Panthers would not have played in Super Bowl XXXVIII. The Patriots definitely would not have won Super Bowl XXXVI. And those are just the ones that are certain. It's possible that more than half of the Super Bowl teams over the previous eight seasons would not have ended up there in a system like this.
All the playoff upsets, all the great finishes, all the excitement ... it never would have happened. Sound like a good plan to you?
Exciting? Yes.
A fair and accurate championship?
So we're back at square one, arguing about two unfair systems, only one of which is rooted deeply in the way THIS great game of college football has done ITS business forever. And there's only one that provides a truly meaningful regular season among all the major sports. I wonder why that is? You already know why if you've been reading here for any length of time.
BCS
Reader Comments (22)
Marty, you are not wrong about the vitriol this year, but (1) it is directed/brought about by the current incarnation of the BCS system...and (2) it is fairly localized in Michigan, not nationwide, where most everyone seems to think: "both teams had an argument, Florida got picked, lets go see some good football." Where was the vitriol over "no rematch" in 1996? There wasn't, because, unlike this year, people knew ahead of time if things happened a certain way, that was going to be the result; What about 1997? Back then everyone accepted that a split title was a possibility, and the vitriol was directed at the Heisman trophy award that particular year. Now, I will grant this: perhaps the vitriol was just as strong in '96 and '97, but we only see it now due to a more pervasive information network via the media and internet; I don't think that's the case, but hard to prove one way or the other. I do know people were bitter about Peyton not winning the Heisman, you could hear the howls nationwide without the Internet's current ubiquity. As such, I'd fall back on the "nobody gets really upset when they know what is coming" argument, whether it be Heismans or "championship" matchups.
A playoff would certainly solve the issue as you have presented it, but it is not the only way, and we believe that in solving that issue it would cause many more problems that, even though we can't anticipate all of them, we don't want to take chance. Baby with the bathwater, so to speak.
Thanks for the clarification.