College Football Playoffs: 7 Things "Death to the BCS" Gets Wrong

Around this time every year, the BCS system that decides who is allowed to play for the national championship in college football comes under attack, and this year that attack is accompanied by a polemic from a trio of writers from Yahoo! Sports titled Death To The BCS.

I say polemic because it is not the most reasoned book ever; it is clearly written by playoff advocates for playoff advocates.

It is to college football what a Bill O’Reilly book is to politics…not so much an attempt to convince skeptics but to throw red meat to the masses.

If that is your cup of tea, then by all means you should read the book. But for college football fans such as myself who don’t necessarily care for the BCS but are skeptical of playoffs, I will provide a quick overview of the problems with what Wetzel, et al., are saying.

The authors propose a plan based on the 11 conference champs (including the MAC and Sun Belt) getting automatic bids and then the rest of the field set by five at-large teams. The games will be played at the higher seed’s stadium except for the championship game.

1)   You cannot simultaneously invite the Sun Belt champion and claim the best teams are on the field. The book uses last year’s season as the template for showing why this is the best system, but fails to explain why Sun Belt champ Troy deserves in while it leaves Arkansas out despite the fact that Arkansas beat Troy 56-20 last year.

The authors argue that it's somehow more fair to include clearly undeserving teams ahead of those that have actually proven themselves somewhat worthy for consideration on the field, as if winning the Sun Belt magically erases from everyone’s memory the fact that in Troy’s two games against BCS league teams they lost by a combined 112-26. 

In the authors’ minds, the Sun Belt title alone justifies a bid ahead of a 12-2 BYU team that actually beat two top 20 teams…because they’re trying to be fair!

2)   The authors claim that the at-large system is fair even though it excludes teams that are capable of going on a run and winning a title because those teams are ranked in the teens and should have won more games.

But it isn’t actually any fairer to exclude a top 15 team with two losses than to exclude an unbeaten team. It is equally unfair in both cases to deprive a team a chance at a title for completely arbitrary reasons, regardless of whether the arbitrary reason comes from the BCS poll or from a selecting committee. To take the title from one of their chapters, it’s always some team getting screwed.

The authors merely don’t care that a two loss team is getting excluded, which I can understand because I don’t care that an unbeaten Boise State was excluded last year. But that doesn’t make their system more fair, and its generally a lot easier to determine who the top two teams are then who is deserving of an at—large berth between several one or two loss teams.

3)   It isn’t really a fair playoff if the top two seeds get all their games at their home stadiums. The authors argue that it’s the way the NFL does it and visiting teams win all the time in their playoffs.

Which is true…but college football isn’t the NFL, and home-field advantage has a lot more meaning in college football. It’s not fair that TCU would have to play at The Swamp or that Ohio State has to play in Tuscaloosa.

If you’re trying to rig the system so that the top two seeds play each other, then what is the point of a playoff to begin with?

4)  Amongst other things, UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman was ridiculed for saying that nobody would want to play in Lincoln in December/January. The authors suggested that no Nebraskan would ever say that they wouldn’t want to watch a game in those conditions, even though Perlman was referring to the fact that Southern schools would never agree to it.

And that is probably true; it is unlikely that Florida is going to agree to a system that makes them play at Nebraska, Wisconsin or Happy Valley in December.

But for the record, I am a born and bred Nebraskan, and I will testify that if given the choice between watching my Huskers in below freezing conditions (as three of the five Saturdays in December last year were) or flying to a neutral site in Florida, Arizona or California, I will absolutely choose not freezing my rear off. There is a reason why Midwestern teams travel so well to bowl games, you know.

Incidentally, I’m not sure why they devoted a chapter to Harvey Perlman in the first place, but having taken a class from him at UNL College of Law, I’m fairly certain that he is much, much smarter than the authors of the book.

Perlman literally co-wrote the book on Intellectual Property and legal books he’s written dating back to the '60s are available on Amazon.  

Devoting a chapter to his supposed naivete and lack of character rather than actually taking on his arguments is nothing more than hack journalism.

5)  For reasons surpassing understanding, the authors assert that a playoff would make the regular season more meaningful and that teams would stop scheduling cupcakes in September.

There really isn’t an explanation why…just an assertion. As I understand their playoff landscape, a team needs to basically have no more than two losses to be considered for an at-large bid (although in their mock they gave one to a three-loss LSU and cheerfully screwed over a two-loss and higher ranked BYU).

Why on earth they think that means that teams would schedule tougher is beyond me. The most likely response by teams would be to schedule more 1-AA teams, since wins against them wouldn’t hurt bowl eligibility or SOS like they do now.

6)   The authors mock the notion that every week is a playoff currently, but as the recent BCS standings show, it really is basically true. Alabama may actually be one of the best teams in the country, but they need some help to make it to the title game because that loss to South Carolina meant something.

Under the authors’ plan, it would have been basically meaningless because they are still the favorite to win the SEC and get an automatic bid. The authors use last year to make the argument, but last year was hardly a normal year.

Years with that many unbeaten teams are exceedingly rare. This year is also not a normal year, but demonstrates the worst-case scenario for playoff advocates. How do you pick your five at-large teams this year?

7)  The authors claim that fans aren’t getting what they want and use message board rants from what they call Superfans as their evidence. I frequent message boards and leave messages and comments on them as much as anyone else on B/R, and my experience is that the message is far from clear that people actually want to see Boise State or TCU in a title game…which is really what we’re talking about in a playoff.

And while there certainly is a large movement for a playoff on these and other boards, it also seems like people haven’t really thought this through very much. Let’s say that Alabama loses to Auburn…under the book’s system the SEC would have only one team in the playoff while not only are TCU and Boise State getting a shot, but also the Big East and ACC champions…to say nothing of whoever wins the MAC and Sun Belt.

Can you imagine the Superfans’ reaction to that?

What if a two-loss Alabama was chosen ahead of a one-loss Ohio State, Missouri or Oklahoma? Is that going to make the Superfans happy, or will we see some message board rants on that as well?

While Superfans don’t like the BCS system, trying to create a system they do like is like herding cats, and whatever else can be said about the BCS system it does generally do a good job of matching up teams that are acceptable to the masses, even if many individuals have loud objections.

At the end of the day, Death To The BCS reads like a rant from a Superfan, complete with angry personal attacks, misrepresented positions, unsupported assertions and references to experts who remain unnamed and unaccountable.

It begs more questions than it answers and shows why playoff advocates have a long way to go before the rest of us take them seriously.