As a rule, college football folks don’t like math.
Through the supposed Dark Ages of the Bowl Championship Series era, the punditocracy of ex-jocks griped that college football’s national championship was being decided by computers. Even after the formula was tweaked to reduce the influence of statisticians and put decisions back in the hands of humans who might have seen half the teams they were judging, sports talk shows blathered about math as if they were middle-school bullies out to beat up the mathletes.
So let’s make this very simple argument to explain why the current football playoff is inadequate:
Five is a larger number than four.
Try it on your fingers, college football pundits … one, two, three, four … five. See? It’s one larger.
Five is the number of big-time college football conferences – the so-called ‘Power Five’ of the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC. Four is the number of slots in the college football playoff as it stands now.
That means a major conference champion will be omitted. If independent Notre Dame – or, heaven forbid, someone from the sort-of big-time ‘Group of Five’ conferences – goes unbeaten or otherwise impresses the committee, a second conference champion is out.
Even in this relatively simple year for the playoffs, in which the four contestants will be as obvious as the plot twists in a 80s sitcom as long as Clemson and Alabama win their conference championship games, we have a nightmare scenario that could still unfold.
The champions of the Big 12 (Oklahoma) and the Big Ten (the winner of the Iowa-Michigan State title game) are surely in the semi-finals. But what if surging North Carolina upsets Clemson? Or if offensively challenged Florida somehow knocks off Alabama? Neither of those underdogs has much of a case to be among the nation’s top four teams, leaving the committee choosing from Stanford (if it wins the Pac-12 title game vs. USC to take its record to 11-2) or Big Ten also-ran Ohio State.
We can’t wash our hands of subjectivity. Other college sports tournaments, including the March Madness brackets that make us all flush our money away in office pools, force selection committees to compare and contrast teams from all over the country. College football folks’ beloved ‘eye test’ will still be a factor.
What we can do is add some objective criteria without resorting to the math that so befuddles the jockocracy.
Start by doubling the number of teams in the tournament. Eight teams. Three rounds. If the FCS (formerly Division I-AA) can play five rounds, the FBS can play three.
To fill those eight spots, take:
- The five ‘Power Five’ conference champions. Yes, that means you might get a team that isn’t all that good – you’d have to take Florida, USC or North Carolina if one of those teams wins. But that team will have to earn its way in, and it will either provide a nice tune-up for a higher-seeded foe or go on a classic unexpected postseason run that we love so much in basketball.
- Any remaining unbeaten team, no matter the conference. Quit penalizing ‘Group of Five’ schools for their supposedly easy schedules. The ‘Power Five’ bigwigs are loathe to risk their rankings by scheduling away games against the proletariat.
- If no ‘Group of Five’ school is unbeaten, take the subjectively chosen conference champion from that Group.
- Fill out the bracket with wild cards.
Last year, the tournament would have included the four conference champions that were actually chose – Alabama, Florida State, Ohio State and Oregon. Add the Big 12 champion (either Baylor or TCU). Add the highest-ranked Group of Five team (Boise State). That leaves space for two wild cards – the other Big 12 team (Baylor or TCU, whichever isn’t already in), then either Mississippi State or Michigan State.
This year, if disaster strikes in three conference championship games, we would be obligated to take Florida, USC and North Carolina. We would still take Oklahoma and either Iowa or Michigan State. Then the highest-ranked ‘Group of Five’ team, most likely the entertaining 11-1 Houston Cougars. You could still have room for any two out of Clemson, Alabama, the Big Ten runner-up, or Notre Dame.
The four most deserving teams would still make it into the tournament. So would a couple of teams that stumbled early but are playing like potential champions late in the year. The dilemma posed by ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit between choosing the most deserving teams v the best teams would go away – you’d get the five-to-six most deserving teams and the five-to-six best teams.
We might even see better scheduling in college football. Teams will have less reason to shy away from tricky non-conference matchups, secure in the knowledge that they can win their way into the postseason through their own conferences. An eight-team bracket will likely include a few teams with one or two losses, switching the focus for a wild-card team to the quality of its wins rather than the disgrace of their losses.
College football progresses slowly. Like democracy as a system of government, the BCS was the worst way to decide a championship – except all the others that preceded it. The old system gave us national champions like the 1984 Brigham Young team that never played anyone of substance. Or the 1990 Colorado team that had a win, a tie, and two gifts from officials – the “fifth down” game and a clipping penalty that negated Notre Dame’s winning touchdown in the Orange Bowl.
The BCS was a step in the right direction. So is the four-team playoff.
And there’s momentum to take it to eight. This week, ESPN’s Mike & Mike and USA TODAY’s George Schroeder both said, half-jokingly, that the bracket will expand to eight as soon as the champion of the mighty SEC doesn’t make it – a possibility this year if Florida somehow upsets Alabama.
College football doesn’t need to go much farther. No one wants to see a 24-team bracket, with No24 Utah playing No9 Florida State for the right to face the top seed. The college football regular season still counts for something.
Just one more step – from four to eight – would give every team a chance to make its case within that regular season. Win your conference. Get a second chance if you’re really that good.
And college football’s number-challenged pundits can still count the number of teams on both hands.
