by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-6-14)
TODD:
Monday night's game between the Florida State Seminoles and the Auburn Tigers is for the college football BCS National Championship. It also marks the end of the entire Bowl Championship Series system.
I suppose let's first get the logistics out of the way. Who do you think is going to win..how do you feel about Jameis Winston..what about this spectacular Auburn story of them going from unranked to number two in the nation?..et cetera et cetera.
We can address those arbitrary concerns, but the more pressing matter is of course the abolishment of the BCS.
I am interested in your feelings on the system in general. I feel as though I was routinely in the minority in defending it. I thought the BCS was great. It removed the need for a playoff system technically. But what it actually did was turn the entire regular season into playoffs. Every game mattered.
This will still be the case, for the most part, with the new four-team playoff that is being instituted in 2014. It seems like a second loss during a season will forever bar a team from reaching the playoffs, although multiple one-loss teams will probably be battling for more than just the final spot each season. It is rare to have two or three-plus teams finish undefeated the same year.
So really where we're going in college football is from having a computer formula determine the top two teams to having a panel of random people determine the top four teams. Now I'm no big city lawyer, but it seems to me that using mathematics is a better form of determination. Am I crazy?
With the SABRmetric revolutions going on in basketball and hockey, and baseball being firmly entrenched in complex statistical measures, why is college football going the other way? Wasn't it simply ahead of the curve with the BCS?
If everyone wants to expand the final from two teams to four, by all means. But why replace math with bias and opinion?
DAN:
I want to like Florida State in the championship game, I really do. I think Winston has put up some gaudy numbers, a bit over hyped for my liking. The Seminoles had a great season, but its not the second coming of their greatness and Winston needs to show me a lot more before I can see him in the NFL. But the Seminoles were dominant this year... in the ACC.
The ACC is better known for basketball, but does play some damn good football. However, its not the SEC in terms of caliber of team. Just like how in baseball the American League Central teams as a whole don't stack up to those in the American League East, ACC vs SEC is not a competition. Auburn wins this game on the back of their defense. I hope its not a blowout.
And thus the BCS ends... but are we doing away with the BCS rankings as well? I realize that the rankings have been used to determine the top two teams to play in the championship game, but are they actually going to do away with the mathematical ranking system entirely?
I'm no fan of the BCS system for the National Championship, however, I LOVE the BCS rankings. I think they are infinitely better than the USA today poll or the Coach's poll...
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