by Dan Salem and Todd Salem (1-10-14)
[Part one - Goodbye BCS]
DAN:
The BCS rankings are based on numbers, statistics and lots of other substantial information that has its basis in real life. Contrast that to the Coach's poll which is merely the opinion of the coaches or their assistants or brother-in-law. I did not sign up for the loss of these rankings, simply a four team playoff to replace the one game BCS title game.
Using mathematics is usually a good idea and I can't disagree with you on this one. My gripe with the BCS system was that nearly every season the top five teams were basically equal. It felt arbitrary to let the computer rank a one loss team from a stronger conference over an undefeated team from a weaker conference. They should play each other instead! That's what was missing and that's what excites me about this playoff. The top four teams get to play for the title. Great! A group of randomly selected individuals deciding the top four teams instead of the BCS computers... sucky!
TODD:
Well that was almost a prophetic response by you. The first half of the BCS Championship game went exactly as you described. Auburn's defense was holding down FSU and confusing the young quarterback with blitzes and faking pressure...Then they decided to play thirty more minutes. Auburn struggled to produce points and Famous Jameis drove the Seminoles down for all the points they needed, taking the lead on their final drive with just seconds remaining. It was really a great game and fitting end to the BCS.
But enough pleasantries, because discussing the upcoming playoff is anything but pleasant. Yes, the BCS rankings will be done away with. So if you thought it was arbitrary for a computer system to rank a certain team second overall over another, get ready! We will see a panel of humans try to decipher the validity of teams ranked four through ten or so. How many teams this season would have had a claim to that fourth playoff spot? At least three teams: Michigan State, Stanford and Baylor. You could even have talked me into Missouri and South Carolina or Ohio State. The final decisions of the playoff committee are going to be so arbitrary it's ridiculous.
As far as I know, there will be no voting released, just a final four (Or, technically, a final four plus eight I suppose, since they are still playing other "top" bowl games that literally no one is going to care about now). Also, apparently the group will release rankings just a couple times throughout the year, so we may not have a feeling about where they stand from their final ranking all the way to the bowl announcements.
I wouldn't have minded if they left the BCS intact and simply expanded the final from two to four as you said. That would have been ideal. Now, I think we're in store for a shit show. Mythbusters once did an episode on shit hitting the fan; whether it actually splatters and covers EVERYTHING in its wake. The results weren't perfect, but they decided it was a plausible figure of speech. So if the BCS was shit hitting the fan, this new playoff committee is going to be like shit-covered fans being dropped from the sky, into the jet stream of an airplane.
DAN:
I love your poop analogy and I definitely was spot on with my BCS prediction, as far as the first half was concerned. I missed the boat entirely with the whole come back, kick return for a touchdown and then miracle victory thing. Moving on...
There are two very simple things that make the college football regular season easy to follow and fun as hell. The first is the knowledge that these teams are competing for a top tier bowl game, not just any old bowl game since everyone gets that. The second is the weekly top twenty five rankings of the best teams in the nation. We lose our first thing instantly by adding a four team playoff. No one cares about the Rose Bowl game now, they just want to be in the playoff. Before, if you weren't one of the top two teams then you wanted to win your conference to make the nationally televised bowl game. In the case of the Big Ten and Pac-12, its the Rose Bowl. The conference title is now very much diminished, as its highly likely the top team in both the Big Ten and Pac-12 will make the playoff in the upcoming season. Ok, so we have to lose something to gain something else. That's fine.
I was on board with the playoff up until the loss of the weekly BCS rankings. Every college football season begins with a pre-season top twenty five ranking, but the true rankings were never fully realized until the BCS rankings came out. This was when we as fans could look at the teams ranked one to twenty five and feel confident in the order. It was updated every Sunday night on ESPN, debated endlessly on Monday and Tuesday and then updated again week after week after week. The buzz around college football was huge from this. Huge! Now its all gone...
If the "group of super smart college football geniuses who will pick the playoff teams" don't rank the top twenty five every week of the season, then what are we following as fans? Are they hoping we go back to caring about the conference rankings and positioning? That's just stupid. The conferences only mean something to those teams in them. The playoffs will be national.
I don't think your poop covered fans being dropped through airplane turbines analogy was strong enough. I'm picturing a delicious wedding cake with a giant fat guy picking his nose and then grabbing pieces of the cake and eating them. He continues to do this for a good thirty to forty minutes until the cake is destroyed and full of boogers. Then he farts on it and hands his wife a piece. That piece of cake is our college football product.
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