Playoffs in College football.. Still a mess

 

Like most of you yesterday that saw the news that the NCAA is going to have a 4 team playoff in college football starting in 2014, I started to think of the possible scenarios of how they are going to figure out who plays, where the game is going to be played, Notre Dame, who is going to get screwed, and is this system better than the current one.  I started to think about this past season where Oklahoma St. should have been playing L.S.U. in the title game because they were the champions of both of their conferences and in my view only conference champs should be playing for a title.  I thought about Boise St. moving to the Big East football and T.C.U. moving to the Big 12 to make sure that they get included in the discussions for championships.  I mean think about it, Boise State lost 3 games in Kellen Moore's career and he won 50 games and never played for a National title.  Each loss he suffered, he put his team in position to win the game with make able field goal and he has no ring, no Heisman, and he was not even drafted.  Didn't mean to digress but had to say something.  I thought about the Big east, Mountain west, Conference U.S.A. and WAC conference schools who are really going to have to go way out of their way to qualify to be in this equation.

I came to several conclusions. First and most importantly this entire system is going to get tweaked every year until they "get it right". This system will open the door for more controversy. What happens if there are five teams with an unbeaten record. University of Houston went through the majority of the college season unbeaten. How do you value ones schedule over another? Notre Dame is not in a conference. Yes they play the toughest schedule in the land year in and out. So if Alabama, Clemson, Texas, Notre Dame and Boise St. go unbeaten who goes to the final four game? Some times in conference play all teams don't play one another. Some years Penn St. may not play Ohio St., or Nebraska or Wisconsin!! So who determines schedule strength? a Computer or a human?

What about who makes up the committee?  The biggest complaint about the basketball tournament is that the committee is not made of basketball people and that is why so many schools complain about the selection process.  Everyone has biases.  Whether they admit or not, everyone has regional and conference biases. We joke about the "East Coast" bias in some of the awards and rankings of teams people do vote to please their constituents. No one is going to be happy in the south if Florida does not get in because they lost by one point to L.S.U. and they beat everyone by 20 and don't make the final four if that is their only loss and L.S.U. goes unbeaten.  Isn't that what just happened last season?  Two teams from the same conference playing for the title.
The Notre Dame issue is an enormous one.  They play a national schedule.  What happens if they have a better record than a conference champion who is ranked higher than they are? Everyone knows that every bowl wants Notre Dame at their game.  That to me is one of the reasons I disliked the BCS.  If Notre Dame had a good record they got into a BCS game and that pushed someone else on the outside looking in.  I have said that Notre Dame would be the key to all of this for years.  Schools get paid a boat load of money to play them on NBC.  Bowl games love the national draw that Notre Dame brings to their game.  They are going to be a huge problem for the committee every year.
Is this better than the BCS?  I don't think we can answer that yet until they etch in stone as to the format and qualifications to get into the game.  I think that most people feel that the current system favors the S.E.C because every year they are getting teams into the championship game or in other BCS games taking all of the big revenue from other schools.  Last year, there is no way that Boise St. should have been playing in a bowl game before New Years day.  They lost i believe 39-38 when their kicker missed a 37 yard field goal at home that would have won the game. Boise St. went into the Georgia Dome last year and defeated Georgia who played in the SEC title game.  This argument was dismissed because everyone said that Georgia was better by the end of the season and Boise would have not that game again. On the day that the game was played Boise St did what they were supposed to do.  Yes i get it that the current system is the cause for teams like Boise to go the Big East, Syracuse to the ACC, TCU to the Big 12. This playoff is going to make those school regret moving because they have now put themselves in conferences that are going to beat them up for a while.  Maybe not so much for Boise, but Syracuse, TCU, Texas A&M, West Virginia are going to scratch their heads for years before they compete in new conferences.  Money talks.. Bullsh** walks right?  Why cant we just state the truth as to what this all about?