College Football Needs Conference Championship Games

There are so many things that make college football so much more intriguing than professional football: the bands, state rivalries, and I personally love how college players are flagged for showboating (something the pro’s should do—a leap into the end zone is only necessary when dodging someone, and a victory dance just makes you look like an idiot).

Among all the things that will draw fans to hover around the TV in a few weeks, or stand in line to see a college football game, has got to be the non-conference matchups, at least that is one of my favorite parts of the collegiate sport.

Recently there have been polls for the public, concerning conferences like the ACC and the Big 12 eliminating their divisions and playing all 11 teams in the conference every year, like the PAC 10 and the Big East.

I personally hate this idea. 11 conference games would mean only one non-conference matchup, under the current 12-game format. I pose this question: If 11 conference games were played by the Big 12, ACC, Big 10, and SEC, how would conferences know how strong or weak they are if they do not compete with others?

Without home-to-home series like Ohio State-USC, how would we decide whom goes to the national championship at the end of the year if both teams go undefeated?

Many would argue that the probability of any given team going undefeated when playing every other team in the conference is very low, but for the sake of having fun, let’s be hypothetical a minute concerning the upcoming season.

The recently released USA Today/Coaches Poll will be our model.

The top four ranked teams all represent different conferences, and all four received first-place votes, indicating that whether it be small or large, there is a voice in the country that believes these four teams (Georgia, USC, Ohio State, and Oklahoma) have the ability to go undefeated and make it to the national championship.

Now, these votes are cast with the schedules the way they are (three or four non-conference and eight or nine conference), but for our analogy, we will apply these votes of confidence for these teams to a one or two non-conference and nine or 11 conference model.

So, assuming that these four teams do not meet each other in the regular season, and all four go 12-0, who plays for the national championship in this model? Many would say, No. 1 Georgia vs. No. 2 USC.

But why?

Because they won their conferences? Well, so did No. 3 Ohio State and No. 4 Oklahoma. Some would say that Georgia is a given because they won the hardest conference, but how would we know that the SEC is the hardest conference if they have not displayed their superiority over non-conference opponents?

Last year’s bowl games are history, players are gone, what about this year?

Deciding who plays for the national championship in this model is based solely on the assumption that the No. 1 and No. 2-ranked teams are better than all the other conference winners, but, the problem with this assumption is the same problem we have in our current model: This assumption is never proven.

It was never proven that pre-bowl undefeated USC and Oklahoma were better than undefeated Auburn and Utah in the 2004 season. It was never proven that undefeated Ohio State was better than undefeated Boise State in 2006. It was never proven that pre-bowl 11-2 LSU was better than pre-bowl 12-0 Hawaii, 11-1 Kansas, 11-2 Oklahoma, 10-2 USC, 11-2 Missouri, 10-2 Georgia, 10-2 Arizona State, or 10-2 West Virginia in 2007.

All of this was just assumed, and as such, teams get screwed. Now, I omitted 11-2 Virginia Tech from the 2007 scenario because it was proven during the regular season that LSU was better than VT, which is case in point why we need non-conference matchups.

Can you imagine how much controversy would be evoked by the fictitious model posed when it came to deciding who goes to the national championship? What if three of the four teams are 11-1 at the end of the season? Who goes, and why?

A playoff would be the only way to determine BCS bowl matchups under this fake model, and that is not happening any time soon under our current model.

I love the current eight-conference-game module of the SEC, Big 12, ACC, MAC, and Conference USA conferences, which lets the best team from the two divisions meet in a championship game to decide the irrefutable champion, not to mention that it is an additional game, yet another reason I love the current model.

A championship game serves the most essential of all BCS purposes: It decides for the SEC, Big 12, and ACC who goes to the BCS as the conference rep, something that playing every team in the conference does not effectively do.

Take last season and the Big East: West Virginia won the conference and represented them in the BCS, but their conference standing was the same as Connecticut, 5-2. It is assumed that West Virginia won the conference because, even though they have the same record, they beat Connecticut, but the fact remains the same, the Mountaineers did not have a better conference finish than Connecticut.

The same applies to the PAC 10, except it was USC over Arizona State, but again, to state the obvious, the Sun-Devils finished 7-2, just like the Trojans.

This is what is fabulous about a conference championship. It is not about head-to-head matchups during the regular season to determine the champion, it is solely determined by who makes it to the championship game, which is the last conference game of the year.

Face it, the day could come that all 10 teams in the Pac-10 could finish 8-1 in conference play, the same could be applied to the Big 10 or the Big East. So you have multiple conference champs.

The possibility of having any more than one conference champion is not even an option when there is a championship game, and I like that. The championship game singles out who is the most deserving of the teams to go to the BCS.

I also love the non-conference matchups, not only because they are tune-ups to conference play, but they are also great opportunities to revisit old rivalries.

But my favorite part is that they are opportunities for teams that have never met before to play each other, pending that the schools' athletic department makes this happen.

I am an avid OU fan, so I will use my Sooners as an example.

The 2008 campaign will see Oklahoma play two teams that we never have before: Chattanooga and Cincinnati. Now, I know that Chattanooga is not an impressive matchup, and certainly would not have been my first choice for a non-conference game, but it still illustrates why playing four non-conference games are interesting: playing teams you never have before.

As a somewhat OU all-time results historian, the following list represents teams that OU has never played, but has the opportunity with the ongoing non-conference slate (good and great possible matchups are underlined):

Akron, Ball State, Buffalo, Central Florida, Central Michigan, Colorado State, Connecticut, East Carolina, Eastern Michigan, Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida International, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Idaho, Kent State, Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, Marshall, Memphis, Miami OH, Michigan State, Mississippi State, Nevada, Northern Illinois, Ohio U, Purdue, Rutgers, San Jose State, South Carolina, Southern Miss, Toledo, Troy, Tulane, UNLV, Western Michigan

Many of the listed teams are small matchups, but they would be a welcomed change from a regional team we consistently play, like North Texas. Some of the listed schools would make a great home-to-home series, like Florida, Georgia, Rutgers, and South Carolina.

This is not limited to OU alone. Many schools across the country should be scheduling matchups with teams that they have never met before. Everyone can understand though by sheer repetition it is easier to schedule teams that are close by, but give fans what they want: toughness and change.

The non-conference slate also allows teams who have hardly played to play each other again, still dependent on whether or not the athletic departments will schedule them. Using OU again, here is a list of big-name schools (many of which are BCS conference schools) that OU has played three times or less (many only once) in the last 100 years (it’s time to revive many of these series).

The number following the school is how many times OU and the given school have played each other:

Army (3), Arizona (2), Arizona State (1), Auburn (1), BYU (1), Clemson (3), Hawaii (2), Illinois (1), Indiana (1), Iowa (1), Kentucky (3), LSU (2), Louisville, (2), Michigan (1), Minnesota (2), Mississippi (1), Navy (1), Ohio State (2), Oregon State (2), Penn State (2), South Florida (1), Tennessee (2), Utah (1), Vanderbilt (3), Virginia (1), Virginia tech (1), Wake Forrest (1), Wisconsin (2)

In OU’s defense, they have scheduled some big upcoming games in the future with some of the above teams, including Tennessee and Ohio State, and so have many other schools who have recently scheduled big matchups with other powerhouses, with one of the biggest USC-Ohio State coming up this season, and USC-Virginia, Tennessee-UCLA, Clemson-Alabama, Auburn-West Virginia, and Miami (FL) – Florida among others that we’ll get to see this year.

The current college football organization is operating just fine, and for many, the non-conference matchups build up our enthusiasm for the rest of the season (not to mention that several of those non-conference games are what put many teams into bowl games at the end of the year).

My only hope for the future is to see more exceptional matchups between powerhouses and teams that have never played in the future. It would be nice to see each conference adopt a championship game as well.

It irrefutably determines the conference champion by making one team prove itself by outperforming others in the conference throughout the year and beating the team from the opposite division that did the same, and also, if for no other reason, because it is another game for us to watch, which is solid gold for a college-football fanatic!