Should There Be A College Football Playoff?

The NCAA basketball tournament has almost run its course and by sometime Monday night we will have a new national champion. It is taken as given that the NCAA basketball tournament is a legitimate method of determining the champion.  So, naturally, sports reporters and many fans think that a playoff is just the ticket for college football as well.  Understand one thing, the call for a football playoff is not about Truth (finding the "true champion"), Justice (opening the process to the little guys like Boise State, Utah and TCU), and the American Way (giving the people what they want.)  The clamor is simply about a desire that universities create a football extravaganza for sports reporters to opine about, watch, and then report on.  And for fans to watch as well.

The people who call for a playoff don't give a damn about universities and what is in their best interests.  College football is a great sport second only the professional football in the united states in popularity.  The schools that built college football into what it is today are not the little guys like BYU, Utah, and Boise State.  These programs are little more than a sideshow attraction.  It has been built by the BCS schools.  There can be no doubt about that.  I would argue that we should leave college football in the hands of the those who created it and these good people don't want a playoff.  That's good enough for me.

Some reporters seem to think that the BCS schools are run by village idiots since, as seems quite obvious to them, a playoff would bring in huge amounts of money universities are currently "leaving on the table" (as is often said).  They point to the NCAA basketball tournament as the model for their financial imaginings.  There are two problems with that.  First, the BCS schools do not want to share the money they have earned the way the NCAA currently shares basketball tournament revenues. The NCAA dispenses the CBS money to a very large number of schools.  I have no proof that the NCAA might try to grab control of any Division 1 football playoff but the fact is that they control all of the other playoffs.

The second problem with the financial imaginings of reporters and fans is that bowl division schools receive a great deal of money from bowls.  It is very likely greater than what a playoff would bring in but that misses two key points.  First, while the NCAA tournament has just one team that ends its season with a win, the bowls allow for a very large number of winners.  Moreover, it provides exposure to a very large number of schools, albeit not always a great deal of exposure.

The only genuinely compelling reason to have a playoff would be that that is the best way to find the best team in the country, the "true champion."  This is, of course, perfect nonsense. The notion that basketball playoffs reliably find the "best team" in the country is refuted by the facts.  Does anyone really think that North Carolina State was the best basketball team team in 1983 when it beat the Phi Slamma Jamma Houston Cougars by a fluke basket in the last seconds of the game?  Did Dereck Whittenburg make a beautiful last second pass to Lorenzo Charles for a dunk or did he throw up a desperation air ball that Charles fortuitously happened to be in position to pluck out of the air and toss down.  Anyone who say the play knows that it was the latter.  Was NC State the best team that year?  The Sporting News calls it the biggest tournament upset ever.  The fact that NC State won 7 of its last 9 games that year coming from behind in the last minute supports the view that while gritty this team was not the best team.  And, the 8th seeded Villinova team that beat Georgetown in the 1985 NCAA championship game was manifestly not the best team that year.

This year, we have two 5 seeds, Butler and Michigan State, a 2 seed in West Virginia, and a 1 seed in Duke.  Butler got to the Final Four honestly -- it beat a 1 seed and a 2 seed to get there.  Michigan State beat a 4 seed but the rest of the work was done by others.  Tom Izzo was characteristically honest about the situation.

"I don’t know how many of those teams lose if it’s a best-of-three or best-offive,” Izzo said. “But that’s the excitement of the tournament.”  

Is any of the teams in the Final Four the best team in the country?  Very possibly not.  How would we know?  How could we prove it? If we let the tournament decide then we will have to accept that NC State was the best team in 1983 or or Villinova was the best team in 1985 and if Michigan State wins this year we will have to accept the manifest falsehood that it is the best team.

The problem with the basketball playoffs is that who wins is too much a function of seedings and the match ups they generate.  This would be no less true of a football playoff.  A question of real interest to me is how the 8 teams that would play off the championship would be determined?  Ironically we would have to use the BCS formula, possibly tweaked a bit.  Though no one would say that the humans that vote are objective or that they can remember key stats, we have the computer polls for that.  But if we are going to do that then we might as well accept the current system where the BCS determines which two teams will play in the national championship game.  There is no way to prove that the BCS winners are not the best teams of the years they win.

Boomer Buckeye

In 1977, the Oklahoma Sooners came to Columbus, Ohio to play the Ohio State Buckeyes in what was a wonderful football game.  Before that game, I was a bit twisted between my original love of the Oklahoma Sooners football program (I grew up in Oklahoma and went to OU one semester) and my much more recent love for the Ohio State Buckeyes.   At the time I was a thorough-going Buckeye fan but I hadn't exactly abandoned my affection for the Sooners (or Illinois or Rice, for that matter).  In honor of that, the week before the game I revised the Oklahoma fight song to reflect my current loyalty and sang it to anyone who didn't stop me.  It went:

"Boomer Buckeye"

Boomer Buckeye, Boomer Buckeye,

Boomer Buckeye, Boomer Buckeye,

Boomer Buckeye, Boomer Buckeye,

Boomer Sooner, O-S-U!

I'm a Sooner born

And a Sooner bred,

But when I die

I'll be Buckeye dead.

Rah, Ohio! Rah, Ohio!

Rah, Ohio! O-S-U!

Those familiar with the song will know I deleted one of the verses, the problem with it being that "Oklahoma" has 4 syllables and "Ohio" just three which wreaks havoc with the meter.

That game was remarkable in one important respect.  Ohio State went down 20-0 and most Buckeye fans must have thought the game was over since Woody Hayes' teams didn't have an ability to come from behind.  So did ABC as they switched their national coverage to another game.    Coming from behind that far normally requires throwing a pass or two.  In fact, the Buckeyes scored 28 consecutive points while passing 6 times for 29 yards -- a typical Woody passing attack.  We eventually lost by a field goal. After that game, I decided that I was finished with my lingering affection for the Sooners.  They had drawn Buckeye blood and I wanted to see Sooner blood.  Fortunately, OSU beat OU in Norman, Oklahoma.

I actually went to Oklahoma for one semester, the last semester in which they were undefeated in their 47 game winning streak.  The next year, I watched Oklahoma lose to Notre Dame, a school I had already lost all respect for, by 7-0.  Oklahoma couldn't run the ball against the Domers and had no passing game -- indeed they had to turn to their 4th string QB, a kid I knew from my home town, to try to move the ball through the air.  He couldn't get it done either.

I developed almost all my collegiate sports attitudes while growing up in Oklahoma.  Besides my affection for Oklahoma football and Oklahoma Aggie (now Cowboy) basketball, I developed a love for the far away Big Ten.  My dad traveled to Champaign-Urbana from Enid, Oklahoma to go to college and became a wrestler on their Big Ten championship team, and played one year as a scrub on Red Grange's football team.  He made two friends their, two brothers from Illinois, one of whom later became an uncle.  Both which came back to Oklahoma to live their lives.  Later on, I went to the University of Illinois to teach linguistics and before school started my first year I was tackled on the quadrangle by this same uncle's son, with whom I was very close growing up.  I met my wife at Illinois, where she got a a PhD and my kid was born there.  It is hard to hate the University of Illinois, whatever nasty thing they do to the Buckeyes.

As I said, I developed as disdain for Notre Dame very early.  This was due to my listening to what became a famous ND vs Iowa game in which Notre Dame, out of time outs, faked injuries both at the end of the first half and the second half to stop the clock.  In both cases they scored to tie the game, first at 7-7, and then at 14-14.  I was outraged.  The next year a new rule was passed forbidding teams to fake injuries.  This was widely seen as directed at the Fainting Irish.  So, on top of being cheaters, they had the temerity to stop the Oklahoma winning streak.  I latter learned how that streak started.  Before the first win, there was a tie.  Before that there was a loss to, you guessed it, Notre Dame.

And now there is talk that we might add the Fainting Irish to the Big Ten.  The only thing the Fainting Irish have going for them any more is their independence.  Sadly, they are not even the best independent team.  That would be Navy.  They might as well join.