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BCS Derangement Syndrome
R. Alex Whitlock
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Randy Galloway has an... interesting...
take on the proliferation of NCAA powerhouse football programs scheduling impossibly weak opponents. It, like everything else, is the BCS's fault -- one suspects from reading it that he would blame athletes getting pulled over with pot and guns in their car on the BCS.
Included within the article is this tidbit:
"As a coach, my theory was that a tough schedule in September made you double tough in November," [Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association and former Baylor coach] added. "But those were different times. I remember one season in the '80s when we had one loss but went into our last game having to win to get the Southwest Conference bid to the Cotton Bowl.
"If we lose it, we don't go to a bowl at all. Now, there are six-win teams eligible for bowls."
Accurate, but so what?
If the above hypercompetitive atmosphere in the way things used to be is good, then the BCS is much better than a playoff system. In the old system, if you didn't win a conference you didn't get into the desired (or maybe any) bowl game. In the BCS system, if you don't win a conference you probably don't get into the desire bowl game. Yes, you get to go to the Cheese & Ham Bowl or whatever, but if the existence of small bowls is the problem, that can easily be addressed within the current system. It has very little to do with a playoff structure at all. In fact, the move comprehensive the playoff structure (ie the more teams included), the less each game matters. The less comprehensive the playoff structure, the less it alleviates the problem that Galloway supposedly devoted the column to solving: if the choice is between an 8-game bowl system or an 8-game playoff system, the main issue with both is how those teams are chosen, and each game will continue to matter quite a bit and coaches will be less inclined to schedule tough games.
If, on the other hand, Galloway was attempting to present the way things were as something undesirable, then why did he use the same guy as a hammer on the subject of a 12th game?
And in either case, there really is no reason to bring it up except to try to suggest that any system, which requires more than two paragraphs to establish.
And then he proceeds to write something that is patently false:
Go 4-0, then plow through eight foes in a weak, weak Big 12, and no matter how many other undefeated teams in the land, the 'Horns would have been 12-0 and back in the "title" game in January.
Texas very likely would have been the odd man out if there had been even just a third undefeated (BCS) team. There was
talk about this mid-season, in fact. And that was with Ohio State and Arkansas. Replace those two with Ohio and Arkansas State and it would have been hopeless indeed. They certainly would have been allowed into a playoff system, though.
Overhauling the system wouldn't do a lick of good if the same teams left out of the BCS bowls are also left out of the playoffs (in the case of an 8-team playoff) and in fact it would exacerbate them. The degree to which a team would be upset to be left out of the playoffs would dwarf the degree to which they are upset to be going to the Sun Bowl instead of the Fiesta Bowl. Which would drive coaches to be more cautious and not less. Which would mean more rollover opponents scheduled.
Of course, a 16 or 32-team playoff system could remedy the problem by telling a team that they can schedule a big game and afford to lose it because so many teams are included. But that also makes every other game somewhat less important, too. There's a big difference between playing week in and week out to keep your national championship hopes alive and playing week in and week out for seeding. There is a tradeoff involved here. I personally don't believe so, but maybe it's a tradeoff worth making. Maybe not. But even if it is, it is a very imprecise solution.
Whether it's a playoff system or a bowl system like the BCS, the issue at hand is how teams are ranked. The precise solution would be to change that. This is, ironically, something within the control of the people complaining about it in the article: Mack Brown, Bob Stoops, and Mike Leach. If they want teams to stop being rewarded for baking cupcake teams, then they should penalize those teams in the polls. In fact, collectively they have more control over this than anyone (tied with those that do the other poll that goes in to the formula).
Though imperfect, I prefer the BCS system to any of the proposed bowl systems I have heard thus far. I am, however, willing to entertain the idea of a playoff system if it is well done. I have at least one idea in mind that I would accept quite gracefully. But if Galloway wants to convince me that the BCS system is bad, bad, bad and that it causes this problem and a playoff system would fix it he's going to have to do better than this bad, bad, bad column.
Observations
The reason it's so riggable is that it's such a short season. If each team played 2-3 games against each opponent, this wouldn't be the case. Baseball manages to have a perfectly fine playoff season, but Baseball also involves playing more games against more opponents.
And as for the "ranking" system... what would really help more is if the same guys weren't ranking the same teams (and taking the same payoffs) every year.
Each baseball game is also not worth very much on the whole (especially with the wildcard system). I was actually against adding a 12th game in college football for this very reason.
But anyway, there is always a tradeoff. One of the things I love about college football is that it is the only sport that one bad game in the middle of the season can irreparably ruin it. Alas, mine is the minority view.
The problem I have isn't that "one bad game in the middle of the season can irreparably ruin it", it's the overall organizational structure - a structure that allows the powerhouse teams to pretty much set up their own schedules (to avoid games where that "one bad game" might happen) and leaves other schools as permanent never-to-bes.
If it were a random set of opponents each year, I'd have a lot more happiness with the system.
/The problem I have isn't that "one bad game in the middle of the season can irreparably ruin it",/
Right, that's the best part! :)
Powerhouses and non-powerhouses both have the ability to own their own schedules. I doubt UH has substantially less in the way of options than does UT -- the main difference is that UT will get more of those games at home.
The "permanent never-to-bes" is not a matter of scheduling, it's a matter of conference alignment. Conference heavily influences scheduling, of course, but the debate at the moment centers around out-of-conference scheduling.
Actually, it's the opposite. UH is one of those problematic "in the middle" schools - not quite the powerhouse that UT or A&M are, but not powerless enough that UT/A&M-types are willing to play against them (for fear of the aforementioned "one bad game").
The result? UH is stuck with substantially less power in determining their schedule (since every school wants to be against the "big boys" for a portion of the advertising revenues on that game) and pretty much is left with the pool of "guys not good enough to be top tier but not bad enough to be an easy win" to play against.
That's why UT and A&M have a chincy-easy schedule every year while we wind up playing teams like the Owls.
UH's biggest problem is that it is in Conference USA. As long as that is the case, it will spend 8 games a year playing schools like Rice or Central Florida. With any luck, we'll get in a situation like Boise State where they dominate their conference and play bigger teams outside their conference. Or, like TCU, we'll just earn our way into a better conference altogether. Not holding my breath on that, but our limitations are our own in that regard and not thrust upon us.
Outside of conference, on the whole UH is doing alright. We play Rice (which is a conference thing at this point), but we have Oklahoma State and Miami this year. We had Oklahoma two years ago and Oregon last year. We could have played LSU a couple years ago, but dropped them.
You're right that UT and A&M won't play us, which is unfortunate, but in the greater scheme of things Houston has gotten more quality opponents than it has been able to handle. I do wish we could entice UT and A&M back, but Texas is still mad about that stadium flap from a couple years back and A&M... not as sure what their rationale is.
More generally, I would really prefer the schedule not be randomized. Though it gives UT and A&M the opportunity to boycott us, it keeps our OOC schedules with teams that are closer in (Lousiana-Lafayette, Ok St, Mississippi State). It also lets non-conference rivalries continue such as Houston and Rice, New Mexico and UTEP, and so on. Randomize the game and Houston will as much time playing Kent State and Temple rather than the more regionally significant Louisiana-Lafayette and Oklahoma State.
I could, however, support legislation requiring (1-A) public schools in Texas to play other (1-A) public schools in Texas. Other states periodically do that sort of thing. West Virginia requires WVU play Marshall, Kentucky forces UK to play Louisville, and so on. You couldn't do it as a yearly thing because there are so many Texas schools, but a home-and-away series may be appropriate (the Big 12 teams would have to play UTEP, UH, and North Texas, and the C*USA teams would have to play UT, A&M, Tech, and North Texas).
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