by Joe Jenkins
The BCS and the Soccer System
Wow…
…and here I am just trying to discuss the Earth-shattering importance of college football…
Writing about the BCS has become a bit of a cliché. It’s been debated, re-debated, bashed, praised, questioned, rumored, tweaked, protested, and potentially brought in front of a court of law on anti-trust charges so many times that it’s all been worn down into two distinct camps: Those that demand a playoff system; and those that claim that the regular season is the playoff and a bracketed playoff system would devalue the regular season.
Sooooo….
Where does this leave us? What’s the point in rehashing something that’s been—well—hashed…repeatedly…to death?
I suppose we have to bring something new to the table.
Here’s the bad news:
Because we keep feeding the machine, the BCS probably won’t be going anywhere for a long time. I wrote a few years ago that the only way to really stop the BCS beast was to stop watching it…
…and I actually tried it…
So what does all of this mean?
…Good?
…okay…
This isn’t the real problem from the people clamoring at the bottom. As a fan of a non-BCS FBS school, I can tell you that the rallying cry from the bottom up to the middle is one word: “Inclusion,” and I don’t just mean a pity invite to a BCS bowl. Every fan wants to go into the season knowing that their team at least has a chance to one day compete for the BCS/”National Championship.” Right now that doesn’t exist and the travesty that took place with TCU getting paired against Boise State is the glaring proof.
The answer to the inclusion problem lies with a very different sport that goes by the same name roughly 3,000 miles away.
Premier League soccer relegates its bottom feeders to a different league and in turn promotes the top performers from the Football League into its ranks. It, in effect, keeps the league constantly operating at a competitive zenith at all times.
The rules to the soccer system would be simple: Any champion of a non-BCS conference (MAC, MWC, C-USA, Sun Belt, WAC) that wins its bowl game would be issued an invitation to the BCS conference that makes the most geographic sense. They would replace the team with the worst winning percentage over a 3 year average. This not only prevents the new entries from being one and done, it also protects quality teams that throw up a one year stinker due to injuries or the discovery of flip cup and beer pong tournaments.
Picture a college football world in which no conference has a concrete alignment. Imagine a season in which teams like Northwestern and Indiana aren’t just playing out the string with a 2-7 record in November, they’re playing for their Big Ten lives. What would the interest level be in a Baylor vs. Iowa State game in which the loser could potentially spend the next season slumming it in Conference USA?
Better yet, Imagine TCU proving that they are the best team in the country instead of everyone guessing. Under the soccer system, the Horned Frogs would’ve been playing in the Big 12 this year thanks to their conference championship and victory over Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl last year.
The soccer system also allows for stiffer penalties for the teams committing egregious NCAA violations. So the next time USC wants to pay its players or Michigan wants to enforce sweatshop hours on its players to get to the top, they can sleep at night knowing that they will spend the next three years relegated to one of their non-BCS counterparts—a move that would cost a major program millions in television, bowl and advertising revenues. Likewise, a non-BCS school caught committing the same crimes would be ineligible for promotion to the BCS promised land. Who wants to cheat now?
How is it that we have completely ignored this model?
How would this model do anything but add value to the regular season from top to bottom?
Who could possibly hate this system?
How is it that there wasn’t a single freaking doctor in attendance to attend to Creed after Drago turned his skull to pumice in Rocky IV?
Why am I continuing to ask questions when nobody can answer me?
Aside from the complete lack of medical staff on hand for the Creed, Drago fight, the soccer system isn’t a quantum leap from the current BCS structure! It’s not vast sweeping changes that could potentially alter the entire landscape of college football as we know it. Its tweaks! Its subtle changes for the better. It’s parceling out hopes and dreams to teams that currently don’t have it. It’s promoting greater competition at every level of major college football regardless of record or conference standing.
Now… While we’re talking about all the important things…can we touch on getting the Cubs to the World Series?
The BCS and the Soccer System
Wow…
…and here I am just trying to discuss the Earth-shattering importance of college football…
Writing about the BCS has become a bit of a cliché. It’s been debated, re-debated, bashed, praised, questioned, rumored, tweaked, protested, and potentially brought in front of a court of law on anti-trust charges so many times that it’s all been worn down into two distinct camps: Those that demand a playoff system; and those that claim that the regular season is the playoff and a bracketed playoff system would devalue the regular season.
Sooooo….
Where does this leave us? What’s the point in rehashing something that’s been—well—hashed…repeatedly…to death?
I suppose we have to bring something new to the table.
Look, we all know the BCS supporters are full of crap because their argument is just plain wrong. With every other major sport using some variation on the standard bracketed elimination system, each one stands as a turd in the punch bowl of the BCS argument. This is a lot of turds. Too many turds to ignore. One might say that only one would be too many. Yet every year, we’re stuck staring at the same turdy punch! (Is turdy a word? I’m leaning toward no. But if college football can make up a “playoff system” using only polls and computers, I can make up words like “turdy” to describe it. I might one day be inclined to call it “supercraptastic.” Stay tuned…)
Here’s the bad news:
Because we keep feeding the machine, the BCS probably won’t be going anywhere for a long time. I wrote a few years ago that the only way to really stop the BCS beast was to stop watching it…
…and I actually tried it…
…and by Tuesday of Bowl Week I had achieved Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting levels of withdrawal. Would I have dove into that toilet for my football suppository? Hard to tell, but I’m pretty sure there was a moment during the Capital One Bowl where I was caught licking my television screen like someone had just told me that the schnozberries taste like schnozberries. It was my first bowl season with HD. Don’t judge me.
So what does all of this mean?
It means we need to get off this playoff obsession for the time being and work on making the best out of a supercraptastic situation.
The truth is a few changes to the BCS system would make it pretty easy to make most college football pretty satisfied with the outcome. The key isn’t to focus with only working over the top, but also tweaking the bottom. I’ll wait while your mind works through all the potentially dirty possibilities of that last statement…
…Good?
…okay…
We can all agree that the BCS needs a plus one format in which the winners of the top two bowls meet in the BCS championship so we can at least pretend that the whole thing is decided on the field. Let’s be honest, the 2009 season was an absolute anomaly with 5 undefeated teams. A top 4 format works 99 times out of 100.
This isn’t the real problem from the people clamoring at the bottom. As a fan of a non-BCS FBS school, I can tell you that the rallying cry from the bottom up to the middle is one word: “Inclusion,” and I don’t just mean a pity invite to a BCS bowl. Every fan wants to go into the season knowing that their team at least has a chance to one day compete for the BCS/”National Championship.” Right now that doesn’t exist and the travesty that took place with TCU getting paired against Boise State is the glaring proof.
The answer to the inclusion problem lies with a very different sport that goes by the same name roughly 3,000 miles away.
Premier League soccer relegates its bottom feeders to a different league and in turn promotes the top performers from the Football League into its ranks. It, in effect, keeps the league constantly operating at a competitive zenith at all times.
The rules to the soccer system would be simple: Any champion of a non-BCS conference (MAC, MWC, C-USA, Sun Belt, WAC) that wins its bowl game would be issued an invitation to the BCS conference that makes the most geographic sense. They would replace the team with the worst winning percentage over a 3 year average. This not only prevents the new entries from being one and done, it also protects quality teams that throw up a one year stinker due to injuries or the discovery of flip cup and beer pong tournaments.
Picture a college football world in which no conference has a concrete alignment. Imagine a season in which teams like Northwestern and Indiana aren’t just playing out the string with a 2-7 record in November, they’re playing for their Big Ten lives. What would the interest level be in a Baylor vs. Iowa State game in which the loser could potentially spend the next season slumming it in Conference USA?
Better yet, Imagine TCU proving that they are the best team in the country instead of everyone guessing. Under the soccer system, the Horned Frogs would’ve been playing in the Big 12 this year thanks to their conference championship and victory over Boise State in the Poinsettia Bowl last year.
The soccer system also allows for stiffer penalties for the teams committing egregious NCAA violations. So the next time USC wants to pay its players or Michigan wants to enforce sweatshop hours on its players to get to the top, they can sleep at night knowing that they will spend the next three years relegated to one of their non-BCS counterparts—a move that would cost a major program millions in television, bowl and advertising revenues. Likewise, a non-BCS school caught committing the same crimes would be ineligible for promotion to the BCS promised land. Who wants to cheat now?
How is it that we have completely ignored this model?
How would this model do anything but add value to the regular season from top to bottom?
Who could possibly hate this system?
How is it that there wasn’t a single freaking doctor in attendance to attend to Creed after Drago turned his skull to pumice in Rocky IV?
Why am I continuing to ask questions when nobody can answer me?
Aside from the complete lack of medical staff on hand for the Creed, Drago fight, the soccer system isn’t a quantum leap from the current BCS structure! It’s not vast sweeping changes that could potentially alter the entire landscape of college football as we know it. Its tweaks! Its subtle changes for the better. It’s parceling out hopes and dreams to teams that currently don’t have it. It’s promoting greater competition at every level of major college football regardless of record or conference standing.
Now… While we’re talking about all the important things…can we touch on getting the Cubs to the World Series?
You can have both.
ReplyDelete1. Create a playoff. Top 8.
2. Each Playoff game is a bowl. As long as its neutral site you can name it whatever the hell you like.
3. Rotate the championship game like they do now.
The surprising thing is MORE PEOPLE would watch a playoff game than the crappy current bowls. What do I care that TCU is playing Boise in the "Fromunda Cheese" Fiesta Bowl? Seriously... unless you're an alum or a die hard college football fan whats the draw? It means nothing.
You make the 4 bowl games playoff games and EVERY Football fan will flock to it! Look at wildcard weekend in the NFL and the first weekend of March Madness. No one really has a vested interest other than the office pool, but because they're playing for something its special.
The NFL playoffs are almost like a holiday and the Superbowl IS a holiday. I associate St Patricks Day with the beginning of March Madness and when it falls on that first Thursday it is magical... drunken magical!
College basketball is on the radar and map BECAUSE of a playoff. If it didn't it would be just about the college baseball world series.
Note to advertisers and sponsors. I buy things-lots of things- I watch TV-lots of sports on TV. I don't watch the Bowl games because an April game between the Yankees and the Royals has just as much riding on them... but one.
If Boise and TCU were playing for a chance to move on to the second round of the Bowl Playoffs I'd be locked in and I'd be sitting in front of a flat panel somewhere in anticipation. Instead, this year, I'll be doing something else, not sure what but I've got no plans. I wish you'd make me-make plans!
Joe, that was classic. I read it like 3 times. The more I read it, the more I loved the idea. Get on the horn with the NCAA right away. Great Idea.
ReplyDeleteNathan, the only problem with the playoff system is the inclusion part. The top 8 teams are still BCS bowl teams. All of America do not care about USC, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida, LSU, Alabama, Boise State and TCU. I, like many casual college football fans are "fill in the blank" State fans and not college football fans. I am a Penn State fanatic, but more than likely will miss every other bowl that they are not in.
ReplyDeleteLast night, I watched SMU-Nevada Sheraton Hawaii Bowl. Only because I watched A Christmas Story for the 5th and final time of the year. But I was casually watching, not because I like SMU, but because I like June Jones and the Run and Shoot. But if SMU ever had even a remote shot at playing in a BCS field, I might follow them more intently. Example number two. My home school, Temple University went to a bowl game for the first time in i think 25 years or more. No one cared. This city of Philadelphia did not get excited. Why would they when the Eagles are in the playoffs, The phillies locked up Jimmy Rollins and Roy Halladay, and Iverson just came back home? If Temple had even a small shot of improving upon this year, picking up some solid Penn State throwaway recruits and competing one day for a BCS bowl chance, then city might perk its ears. But not in the present situation.
Currently, I like Bowls over playoffs. Strictly because in the warped system that we have no is satisfied except the college athlete. And THAT is who it's really all about. Fans aren't happy. Sports Media is not happy. Advertisers aren't happy. Networks aren't happy. But at least when you watch these worthless bowl games, the athletes are having a ball. They're taking trips to Hawaii and California and Orlando. Spending weeks there practicing and enjoying the weather. They get a small amount of national recognition. The have the opportunity to put the words "bowl winner" next to their name, regardless of how insignificant the bowl is to sports fans. As I watched SMU last night, I noticed that the players were jubilant! They didn't seem the least bit disappointed. When recruiting athletes, I'm sure they are told that the potential to go to a BCS bowl is slim to none, but they go to a bowl every year. I think coaches that take non BCS conference jobs understand that I might never win a national championship, but i'm 11-2 in bowl games. And I would much rather have on my resume that I'm 11-2 in bowl games versus i'm 0-7 in the BCS playoffs.
So right now, the present system works for what it is. A system of inclusion would be even better.