[personal] Re: [Husker] End of the Season

[STUART JONES]

I think you have an idea or argument with potential but I am not sure that I
am getting it. What I am hearing is that under our current system early
losses are not weighted as heavily as late losses. The other variable that
needs some weight is who you might lose to. No argument here. What I don't
understand is how a structured play-off solves that. In a structured playoff
you lose one and you are done. That sort of parallels the current tendency
to make late losses more costly because a play-off comes late as well. This
season probably cannot be used to prove much because it was crazy. Maybe
that proves something. If one applied the logic of a structured playoff to
it (late losses count more), then NC game would have had Hawaii in it which
makes no sense to me. Of course this could be changed by making some of the
BCS games play-offs but you have to draw a line somewhere (why 8, 12, or 16
games--it is all arbitrary). Many of the current BCS teams had late losses.
Again, depending on how you structured the play off-when you decide "one and
done"- a lot of them would not factor into a championship tier. In
hindsight, we could set up a nice bracket system with the current BCS teams.
That is because we are using human judgment. Having seen the games, we now
know that Kansas was not a fluke, USC is actually very good when not dealing
with a lot of injuries, same with West VA, etc. I think a lot of this
argument comes down to the role of human judgment versus a neutral appearing
system. Human judgment is subject to politics and all sorts of things we
don't want, but I generally think human judgment in the polls of CF has not
been too bad. The human judgment of referees in NU-Penn St probably/may have
cost us a NC (also 1993-4? Orange Bowl). The human judgment of pollsters
could, in theory, correct some such things. If the Ohio St-LSU game doesn't
look good, maybe an AP poll would vote for USC or WVA (I think this was an
issue for USC a few years ago when they were left out of an NC game).  That
would not necessarily be bad. It opens one more door to griping and
complaining but that's always the situation and sometimes half the fun. Now
if you get jobbed enough, then the play-off sounds good. Otherwise, the
voted champion adds one more dramatic event to the drama on the field. How
will the vote go? I know coaches sometimes manipulate their votes and some
may argue there has been an East Coast bias. All and all the current system
is a compromise I rather like. If the Big 10 and Pac 10 adopted a
championship game, and Notre Dame entered some such conference, that might
improve the situation, IMO. 
~Stuart Jones