Bleacher Report - Articles by BeachBum Chris

The Texas Longhorns and a Split National Championship: Arguments for and Against

BeachBum Chris — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:21:22 -0500

Much has been made leading up to the BCS Bowls about the possibility of a split National Championship in college football this season.

The Texas Longhorns feel jilted because they didn't get a chance to play for the Big 12 title and likely for the National Championship as the Sooners do. And certainly, the Longhorns have a legitimate argument to be playing for it all.

But since the Longhorns are not in the BCS title game on Thursday, the question is now simply this: Does Texas have an argument for earning a split national championship?

Here are my for and against arguments for the Longhorns:

FOR

1. Texas arguably played the toughest schedule in college football this year. They beat four teams ranked 11thor higher, including the #1 Sooners in October. Their only loss was to the #6 ranked Red Raiders and that was on the last play of the game.

2. Texas beat an improved Ohio State team although many people are questioning this Longhorns victory, recalling that USC beat the Buckeyes badly in August. What they are forgetting is that Beanie Wells was injured and did not play in that game. However, on Monday night, he accounted for large part of the Buckeye offense. Terrelle Pryor was in only his third collegiate game as a true freshman and not yet a starter when he faced USC. By the Fiesta Bowl, he was starting and had 12 games of experience.

Simply put, Texas beat a better Ohio State team than USC did.

3. Texas beat Oklahoma, who will play in the BCS Title game on Thursday, in a head to head match. If the Sooners beat Florida, Texas has a right to claim "45-35" should mean something. They would be the only team to knock off the Sooners this year and it wasn’t when Oklahoma was struggling. The Sooners were ranked #1 at the time.

4. A split National Championship would continue the splintering of the BCS system. Each year a playoff gains more supporters and another split championship would likely continue that trend. Eventually, one has to believe that the college presidents would agree to a playoff system of some kind.

AGAINST

1. Voters in the college football polls like what has come to be creatively called “style points.” Texas really needed to put up some style points over what many called an over-matched Buckeye team. The Horns did not do that and in fact needed a last minute touchdown to beat Ohio State instead of whipping them like many expected. Therefore, no style points equals no split championship.

2. The BCS, whether we like it or not, is the current method for determining a National Champion. The AP doesn't decide. The Austin-American Statesman doesn't decide. It's settled on the field.

Yes, a playoff would be better but this is what we’ve got. That means that whomever wins the BCS title game is college football’s champion. Period.

3. Speaking of which, this final argument is one of the reasons I dislike the Trojans fans who claim they were national champs in 2003. They weren’t. The LSU Tigers were the champions and we know that because they won the BCS national title game; a game and a system for determining the national champion that USC agreed to. Therefore I cannot promote the Longhorns for the same thing without being a complete hypocrite. I’m not.

So for all the posturing, be it by Mack Brown or Pete Carroll, it really comes down to these types of arguments. I truly believe that the "for" arguments presented here are persuasive but ultimately, it comes down to the BCS Championship Game. It's settled on the field, winner take all.

As much as I love the Longhorns and feel like they got shafted by the system, it is what it is and I must accept that this year, the Horns are not the champs.

But watch out for them next year!

Hook 'Em!

Big 12 Gives Horns The Hook: Here’s What Should Have Happened

BeachBum Chris — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:56:48 -0500

The Big 12 Conference clearly didn’t think this one through.

Perhaps the conference heads didn’t really think a fifth tie-breaker would be needed, and just tossed it in there to have one.

Perhaps it never occurred to them that the South division would have three teams, tied with each other, and each in the BCS top 10.

Perhaps it never occurred to them to see what other conferences use for tie-breakers.

Whatever the reason, the Big 12 hooked the Longhorns right out of the conference championship game, by allowing a conference tie-breaker to be decided by non-conference voters and eliminating on-the-field results.

So, what should the Big 12 have done to make it right? There is no easy answer with a three-way tie, but taking a gander at the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast Conference tie-breakers would have been a good start.

Both the SEC and ACC use the BCS rankings as a guide, but instead of allowing the rankings to be the deciding factor when the top two teams are ranked within five spots or less, as Texas and Oklahoma are, any head-to-head matchup between those teams determines who advances. This allows the tie-breaker to be decided on the field.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not so fast, my friend.

It turns out that Texas Tech is also within five spots of both Texas and Oklahoma in the BCS rankings. So, what now?

All of the other tie-breakers for the Big 12, as well as the ACC and SEC, include records against common opponents which precede using the BCS rankings. So, naturally the next tie-breaker is records against non-common opponents, starting with the highest-ranked opponents in conference and then outside of the conference.

If we used this tie-breaker for the three teams on top of the Big 12 South, here’s what it would look like:

Texas defeated No. 11 Missouri, a conference foe. Neither Oklahoma nor Texas Tech played Missouri.

The Sooners' only ranked non-common opponent was No. 24 TCU, who they defeated 35-10 in September. Neither Texas nor Texas Tech played the Horned Frogs.

Texas Tech did not play any ranked non-common opponents.

If we use this formula, Texas would advance to the Big 12 Championship because of their win over highly ranked Missouri. Texas Tech is eliminated because they did not play any ranked non-common opponents. Oklahoma is eliminated because their highest-ranked non-common opponent was TCU at No. 24.

Many people will say that such a tie-breaking system is not fair, because conference schedules are often outside of a team’s control. But non-conference opponents are solely within each team’s control, and a tie-breaker such as this would guarantee that the team that played the tougher schedule successfully would move on. It would also guarantee that on-the-field performances would be the final factor.

And taking care of business on the field is how ties should be broken every time.

What’s Really Wrong with the BCS? It’s Subjective.

BeachBum Chris — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:33:51 -0500

There is nothing college football fans enjoy more than touting the talents of their favorite team along with debating the shortcomings of the Bowl Championship Series versus a playoff for determining a national champion.

And until we have a playoff in place, we have a mess every year as the current system is used in an attempt to match the two best teams in college football. The problem with the BCS though is not the mess it causes or the potential for leaving a deserving team out. Those are just the symptoms.

The problem with the BCS lies with the two-thirds portion that is determined by the human polls. It’s not clear cut. It’s opinions and biases and pride and politics. In a word, it’s subjective.

Last year is the perfect example of voters subjectivity and the “politicking” of a school to maneuver into the BCS championship. LSU jumped an amazing five spots in the coaches poll in the final weekend to vault themselves into the title game over an idle Georgia team and Virginia Tech, who won the ACC.

What was LSU’s political stance? "We haven’t lost in regulation”; a line coined by the wife of Les Miles in reference to LSU’s two losses both occurring in overtime. It was effective.

Later today, the newest BCS rankings will be announced, which will determine the champion of the Big 12 South division who will then play Missouri for the Big 12 title. Issues with the Big 12 tie-breaking system aside, the team that advances will be based on human polls off the field.

Bob Stoops began his politicking last week discounting his team’s head-to-head loss to Texas, no doubt because it didn’t work in his favor this time and replaced it with circular logic that would all but make losses irrelevant. He’s even offered that his team is playing better now, even though the Sooners were number one in the nation when the Longhorns beat them. Oh those tricky politicians.

Sports pundits from Los Angeles to Austin to Boston and every point in between have offered and been barraged by opinions on who should be ranked higher. And in all likelihood, the Longhorns high computer ranking will be outweighed by two-thirds of subjectivity that no longer has any regard for the Longhorns “gauntlet run”, the fact that their sole loss came to the number six team on the last play of the game or that the Longhorns opponents have the highest collective winning percentage of any schedule in the nation.

It shouldn’t come to this. Regardless of your conference and team affiliation, who you like and who you don’t, the subjectivity of voters should not decide who plays for a conference or national championship. Yes, a playoff would eliminate this problem but we are years from seeing a playoff even close to being reality, if ever.

The solution for now? Reduce the subjectivity.

Raise the impact of the computer rankings to 50% and reduce the human polls to 25% of the total each. This would give the BCS rankings the mettle it needs in determining who plays for the national championship; the precision of cold, hard facts balanced with the opinions and passion of the total of two subjective polls. A nice fifty-fifty split.

This would also reduce another aspect of voter subjectivity; the oft-recognized issue that when a team loses can be more important than who they lose to. USC lost to unranked Oregon State early in the season but now finds themselves an upset or two from possibly playing in the title game. Unfortunately, Texas Tech, who played a much harder schedule lost, badly, later to the highly ranked Sooners. The Red Raiders will have no shot at redemption outside of a bowl appearance.

However, the computers don’t care when teams lose, just whether or not they do and who they play. If a team loses their first game or their tenth, it merely counts as a loss to the computer. To the voters, it’s somehow a sign that the loser must be demoted regardless of how good they still are or who they have beaten.

Polls will always be a part of college football and fans love the polls. But the polls should not bear the weight they do in determining our champions. When teams square off on the field, the result should be the determination, not who has the more clever line. The emotions of humans with all of their biases will only contribute instability to a system that is fragile to begin with.

Until the powers that be see the light of a playoff in Division I football, this is the best we can hope for. But then, that’s just my opinion.

Titans Forget Their Identity, Lose First Game

BeachBum Chris — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:12:55 -0500

The Tennessee Titans did two things on their way to a 10-0 start this season. First, they played awesome team defense, stopped the run, hit the quarterback and collected turnovers to the tune of a +10 turnover ratio and second, they ran the ball.

In Sunday’s loss to the Jets, the Titan’s defense allowed season highs in rushing yards, total yards and allowed the Jets to control the clock for over 40 minutes in time of possession. The defensive line, known for pressuring and hitting the opposing quarterback, sacked Favre just twice and allowed Thomas Jones and Leon Washington to run all over them for 192 yards, almost 100 yards more than the Titans season average of 95. The Titans forced the Jets to punt only once and forced zero three-and-out possessions.

"Defensively we didn't answer the bell and that's it” said Titans LB Keith Bulluck. Nicely put.

But the Titan’s defense isn’t the only one to blame. In earning a 10-0 record to start the season, the Titans ran the ball on offense. They ran the ball a lot. They controlled the clock and their opponents by dominating them with Thunder, LenDale White, and lightning, Chris Johnson. White is tied for the AFC lead in touchdowns with 11 and Johnson is second in the AFC in rushing yards and is over 1000 yards from scrimmage total.

On Sunday, the Titans ran the ball only 11 times. White ran it one time for a loss of one yard and Johnson gathered only 46 yards on 10 rushes, bolstered by a 24-yard scamper in the second quarter. Conversely, Kerry Collins threw the ball 39 times, with only 21 completions.

In the Titans previous game, in which they had to overcome a halftime deficit, they stayed true to themselves and ran the ball. Down 14-3 to Jacksonville at the half, they pounded the ball 18 times out of 31 offensive plays in the second half. The Titans ran the ball 35 times against Green Bay, 25 times against Chicago and 29 times against Indianapolis.

In their last two games, the Titans leaned a little more on Collins to throw the ball around and keep defenses from keying on the Tennessee rushing attack but maintained the run first plan. On Sunday against the Jets, the Titans seemingly altered their identity completely, throwing the ball more than they ran in each quarter, including zero rushes in the fourth quarter, and 39 total passes to just the 11 running plays.

Not only did Tennessee abandon what they do best, but because they did, they couldn’t keep the ball and forced the defense to stay out on the field longer than they had all season. In previous games, the Titans were the strong team in the fourth quarter doing what they do best, according to their identity. On Sunday, the Jets stole the Titans identity and went on a shopping spree.

It’s only one loss in what has been a great season so far for the Titans, and with the winless Lions up next on Thanksgiving Day, the Titans still control their destiny and hold the advantage for home field throughout the playoffs.

But if there’s a nice playoff and even Super Bowl run in the Titan’s future, they will need to reclaim their identity quickly and get back to being who they are.