[Husker] Congress to investigate BCS - bring it back to theBig-XII (sort of)

[Nick Chevance]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 12:42 PM, Steve Reichenbach <reich at inetnebr.com> wrote:
> There is already a playoff, with two teams qualifying for the
> playoff.  Actually, increasing the size of the playoff probably
> diminishes the likelihood that the best team or the most deserving
> team wins.  The more you expand the playoff, the less well a team
> must do to qualify.  That diminishes the incentive to play a tough
> schedule, diminishes the meaning of each regular season game, and
> puts less deserving teams in a plae to win the championship.  In
> some of the pro sports, a team that finishes barely .500 or even
> worse can go on a streak and win the championship.  Is that better
> than what we have now?  It isn't clear that it is.

Steve -

With all due respect, I agree with Duane who posted a bit ago about
the two best vs. several best in a playoff.  The problem with the two
team playoff is deciding who those two teams are - and as we saw this
year, there was only one undefeated team and it didn't play for the
MNC.  There were more than two one-loss teams, but only two of them
played for the MNC.

But what I want to address is the statement you made about incentive
to play well, teams getting hot at the end and winning out, or that
teams barely .500 making the championship game.  I'd argue that these
scenarios are nearly impossible to happen in a college football
playoff when there are 11 conferences, and over 115 teams vying for
the right to play.  First, there will be some automatic bids to
conference champs, maybe not all 11 but certainly the top 6 (currently
BCS) conferences.  The second level of participants are likely to be
Notre Dame (cuz they're in a league of their own) and other highly
ranked (however that is decided) second or third place teams in
conferences.

I'm not sure what it is about that scenario that reduces the incentive
to play the best football you can play each week.  In the NFL, you
have 32 teams vying for 12 playoff spots.  Clearly, with more than a
third of the teams getting into the playoffs, being just good enough
works.  On the other hand, with 115 teams vying for 8 or 12 spots, the
odds are if you're just good enough to make the playoffs, you've gotta
be pretty good.  And the playoffs are designed to settle those issues
of whether those teams that are just good enough are really that good,
because they will have to play someone as good or better.

I'm not sure I understand how the regular season games are diminished.
 In order to make those few playoff spots, you will need to win many
more than you lose.  And assuming there's some sort of ranking system
to settle some of the playoff spots, you have to have wins that are
impressive enough to get in.  Utah is a perfect example this year;
they didn't play what was seen by some as a top 10 schedule but they
won all of their games.  If there had been a playoff that included
more than two teams, they would have had to be included.  So the
regular season games count just as much as they do now.  Lose and
you're on the bubble.  Lose twice and better luck next year.

Finally, you said it but I've heard this from others too.  What's
wrong with teams getting hot at the right time?  College football,
with only 12 season games, just doesn't leave much margin for error.
Again, a playoff is not likely to allow any team in with two losses,
but if one does happen to make a spot and then wins all their games,
why is the two loss team now somehow less worthy?  Let's say that next
year Nebraska (and we're really in the hypothetical now) loses to
Florida Atlantic and Arkansas State (close games both times) but then
runs the table, wins the Big12 and gets a playoff spot.  Should they
be denied a shot because of two losses at the beginning of the season?
 Are they any less worthy because they got hot after those two losses?
 I don't think so.

I'm still torn on the number of playoff spots.  12 teams still means
some teams playing up to 4 games to win it all, and 3 seems like the
magic number to me.  But you all make good arguments.

Nick
-- 
"If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
Anatole France