Tournament of Champions - 2009 Edition

I want a playoff so bad, I feel compelled to play pretend with my own Tournament of Champions. The rules are simple: win your conference and you're in an 11-team field, each having a shot to play for the national championship. Come in second and enjoy a trip to a great bowl game, but win the conference and you have a legitimate shot at a national title.

For seeding purposes, we'll use again the actual BCS rankings achieved by the conference winners, and for those not making the BCS rankings, we'll tap the minds from the good folks at CollegeFootballNews and use their opinion of how each team ranks, from 1-120. Any independent that ranks in our top 6 will be invited, expanding the field to twelve or more teams as necessary.

Seed	Champion	Conference	BCS/(CFN) ranking
1.	Alabama	SEC	1
2.	Texas	Big XII	2
3.	Cincinnati	Big East	3
4.	TCU	Mountain West	4
5.	Boise St.	WAC	6
6.	Oregon	PAC 10	7
7.	Ohio St.	Big 10	8
8.	Georgia Tech	ACC	9
9.	East Carolina	Conference USA	(45)
10.	Central Michigan	MAC	(48)
11.	Troy	Sun Belt	(78)

The highest rated independent this year is 9-4 Navy, but as the Midshipmen are nowhere close to the top 6, we remain with the eleven-team bracket of conference champions:



It is clear that the Mountain West and WAC belong among BCS conferences in terms of competition. Using the BCS's own rankings, the Mountain West champion TCU and WAC champion Boise State each rate higher than half of the BCS conference champions.

And this isn't a one-time fluke. Last year, the Mountain West champion Utah rated higher in the BCS than the champions of the Big 10, Big East, and ACC, en route to crushing this year's #1 seed Alabama from the SEC 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl. For its part, Boise State as the WAC champion last year was also rated higher than either Cincinnati (Big East) or Virginia Tech (ACC). It's getting harder and harder to claim that the six-conference BCS cabal functions in a tier of quality above the Mountain West or WAC. They simply don't.

How about Conference USA, MAC, or Sun Belt conferences? Is this the year for a first-round upset from among the bottom three in our fictional tournament? Nope, and it's not even close. Realistically looking at the performance of East Carolina, Central Michigan, and Troy against BCS conference competition suggests that they are each undeniably below the first tier. Of the three, Central Michigan had the lone win against a BCS school, having beaten an average Michigan State team in a close one. So for our first round of the tournament, we'll easily call the favorites this year in Oregon, Ohio St., and Georgia Tech.

The second round gets much harder, and what a terrific slew of games it could have been! We'll take Alabama over Georgia Tech pretty easily, but Texas vs. Ohio St. and Cincinnati vs. Oregon are much tougher to call. Really, these are toss-ups. The Longhorns and Buckeyes went toe-to-toe in last years' Fiesta Bowl, with the game not resolved in Texas' favor until a Colt McCoy touchdown pass settled it with 16 seconds left in the fourth quarter. This year, we'd pick Texas to win another close one on the grounds that the Big 10 was a little weaker on the whole. And with Oregon seeming to peak at the end of the season, and Cincinnati's Kelly jumping ship to Notre Dame, we'll give the edge in their fictional game to the Ducks.

This leaves us with the second round matchup of TCU vs. Boise State, an ironic parallel to this year's Fiesta Bowl game. It's a sign of the cowardice of the BCS powers-that-be that this matchup exists in real life. What would happen if each TCU and Boise State had the opportunity to take on, and beat top-notch BCS teams? TCU could absolutely compete with Florida this year; Boise State's offense would have given Iowa fits. The BCS could not afford to risk having both TCU and Boise State undefeated (and rated 2 & 3 respectively in every poll that matters) following the bowl games. It will be bad enough for the BCS that one of these two will be undefeated. And what of the fact that we have essentially the 2008 Poinsettia Bowl being replayed? Really? This same matchup two years in a row? Who's kidding whom, BCS? For our purposes, I'm predicting that TCU's defense will have what it takes to slow down Boise's potent offense and pull off a second bowl win in two years against the Broncos.

Our third-round Final Four then features Alabama vs. TCU and Texas vs. Oregon. TCU is a strong, deserving team this year but it's hard to see them overpowering Alabama. The Tide's running game is too strong, and quarterback Greg McElroy has an uncanny ability to make plays when they need to be made. The Horned Frogs play to Alabama's level for the first three quarters, with Alabama outlasting them in the fourth for a victory by two scores. Texas beats the Ducks in a closer, uglier contest. Oregon is capable of the upset, but we'll pick the 'Horns on the strength of Colt McCoy who also makes the plays that need to be made.

And the National Champion is...

So maybe when it comes down to it, the BCS has the right two teams in this year's championship game. We'd just feel more comfortable if they actually played the (playoff) games to prove that.

Alabama 34, Texas 17.

Anti-trusting the BCS

Sally Jenkins, a columnist for the Washington Post, writes a great article taking the BCS to task as an antitrust enterprise. Read the full article - here's a couple of quoted highlights:

• Try finding a mathematician, a master of ciphers, vector bundles or covariant derivatives, who can explain why TCU and Boise State never had a chance of overtaking Texas in those enigmatic BCS computers despite going unbeaten against comparable schedules. That's because it's a scam. The non-BCS schools simply did not start the season with the same mathematical opportunity of winning a championship as Texas.
  
  
• Over the last five years, the six favored leagues split 88.8 percent of the BCS bowl revenue. The other five leagues got just 11.2 percent -- no matter how good their record or performance.
  
  
• The bottom line is that under the current crooked, dishonorable scheme, the six favored conferences are guaranteed anywhere from $7 million to $10 million more apiece in BCS money than the other five. Period. No matter what.

Ms. Jenkins makes the case that in any other industry, were major competing manufacturers to act in concert with distributors to fix revenues in their favor, they would be committing anti-trust violations and held accountable by the Department of Justice. Yet this is exactly the arrangement in place powered by the six "BCS" conferences (plus Notre Dame) - the manufacturers - and their bowl partners - the distributors.

Are we getting closer to a critical mass of public and political pressure to bust the BCS once and for all?

It's a Start

A bill sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) designed to prevent the BCS from promoting itself as producing a "national champion" in div. 1-A college football just passed a House of Representatives subcommittee on a voice vote. Only one member of the subcommittee, Rep. John Barrow (D-Georgia) voted against the bill.

Here's hoping it gains steam.

Another One Bites the Dust

The Kansas City Star reports that "there was no overall support" for the Mountain West playoff proposal that would see eight teams eligible for championship play. This does not come as a surprise. But what caught my eye was this quote from outgoing BCS Presidential Oversight Committee Chairman David Frohnmayer:

“In the last six years, I’ve read pundits, heard the pronouncements of broadcasters and collected several cubic feet of e-mail printouts from advocates of an NFL-style playoff system... Even those that go beyond sound bite certitude share two intertwined and fatal deficiencies: they disrespect our academic calendars and they utterly lack a business plan.”

Frohnmayer's framing of playoff proposals as "NFL-style" is incredibly disingenuous, and a transparent attempt to support a false "disrespect our academic calendars" argument by associating a playoff with the professional league. We don't want an "NFL-style" playoff. We want an NCAA Division 1-AA playoff. We want an NCAA Division II playoff... Division III playoff...

How is it that all these other college football divisions respect academic calendars with their playoff systems, but Division 1-A somehow can't? The academic calendar is not the primary concern for college presidents in this fight. If it were, we wouldn't have playoffs in the other divisions. The primary concern for these college presidents is the money.

Frohnmeyer is disingenuous when claiming playoff proposals disrespect academics. But he's truthful when he says he's all about the business plan.

Tournament of Champions - 2008 Redux

Before the bowl games, we ran our fictional Tournament of Champions for 2008. The tournament bracket with each of the eleven conference champions looked as follows:




Now that the bowls have been played, it seems clear the #2 Florida vs. #3 USC matchup in the semi-final round would have been the decider. Previously, I had picked USC over Oklahoma in this tournament format, but following the bowls I'd probably have to give the USC/Florida coin flip back to Florida, with Florida taking the tournament. Pete Fiutak's piece on rating Florida #1 on CollegeFootballNews.com lays out a very good case why Florida should be considered an undisputed #1. Among the strong evidence: Florida played eleven - ELEVEN - bowl teams this year and beat two different teams rated #1 at the time. Fine - in the redux, we'll give it to Florida over Oklahoma and BCS supporters can feel good that the proper champion was crowned.

But...

Could Utah have beaten Oklahoma as Florida did? Maybe. Florida has a stronger defense than Utah and that made the difference in the BCS National Championship game. Would Utah have had the speed to match up against Oklahoma's spread attack? And had they played, who would have won between USC and Florida? Though again deferring to Florida given their actual bowl play, it seems that any of the top four seeds (Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Utah) could have had a legitimate chance to win a tournament like this. Unlike Fiutak, I'm not so sure that Utah couldn't have hung with Oklahoma, Florida, or USC and given a good match, if not outright winning.

It would have been nice to find out.

Tournament of Champions - 2008 Edition

It's that time of year again... time when virtually every sportswriter covering college football puts out a fictional playoff, in and of itself strong evidence that the current BCS is a ridiculous farce. So in the spirit of December in College Football Without A Legitimate Post-Season Playoff Format, here is our Tournament of Champions for 2008.

In our fictional system, champions from all eleven conferences are invited to duke it out on the fictional field. We defer to the conferences themselves to select their representatives, so we don't care whether there is a conference championship game or not. We also don't care about three-way ties in the Big XII South; that's for the Big XII to sort out. We also don't care that the SEC has so many strong teams, or that the Big 10, Pac 10, ACC, and Big East are having relatively down years.

Second-placers from the conferences don't make it - you win and you're in - that's all there is to it. No polls, no computers, no lobbying, no mass-opinion-pushed-like-crazy-by-all-the-ESPN-on-air-talent... you win and you're in.

In lieu of a seeding committee, we'll consult a combination of polls for seeding assistance, and allow any independent that finishes #6 or higher in a relevant poll an invitation.

Conference Champions:

Seeding	Team	Conference
1	Oklahoma	Big XII
2	Florida	SEC
3	USC	PAC 10
4	Utah	Mountain West
5	Penn St.	Big 10
6	Boise St.	WAC
7	Cincinnati	Big East
8	Virginia Tech	ACC
9	East Carolina	Conference USA
10	Buffalo	MAC
11	Troy	Sun Belt

Independents: None qualify.

With the championship held in the Orange Bowl, the other top-tier bowls could look something like this:

Rose: Ohio St. vs. Oregon
Sugar: Alabama vs. Texas Tech
Fiesta: Texas vs. TCU

And the tournament bracket is as follows:



Notable in 2008:

• Mid-Majors Utah (Mountain West) and Boise St. (WAC) seed better than the ACC champion (Virginia Tech). Why does the ACC get an automatic bid to the BCS?
  
• Cincinnati of the Big East seeds a respectable #7... but as this isn't in the top 6, one might ask why the Big East gets an automatic bid to the BCS as well?
  
• USC-Boise St. in the second round would be a surprisingly entertaining game.
  

And the National Champion is...

This is a difficult year to call, with a number of teams legitimately in the hunt. We'd give home teams Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, and Boise St. wins in the first round. And it's hard to see any upsets in round two, with Oklahoma, Florida, and USC advancing. While Utah/Penn St. would be a good matchup, we think the Mountain West, top-to-bottom, was a better conference this year than the Big 10, and give Utah the win to advance and face the Sooners. Oklahoma then takes that game, and we'll give a coin-flip to USC to outlast the Gators in the semi-finals, leaving...

Oklahoma vs. USC in the championship game. Oklahoma made headlines as the only team in NCAA history to score over 60 points a game against five opponents in a row. The only problem with a team with such a strong offense is when they hit against a team with a tremendous defense in a championship. It's often enough for the immovable Defense to slow down the irresistible Offense to take the match.

We'll use the 1983 Nebraska Cornhuskers, the dominant offensive powerhouse vs. Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl as the model. Through tremendous special teams' and defensive play, the Hurricanes made the Husker offensive machine play from behind the entire game, ultimately securing the win as Nebraska failed on a two-point conversion gamble late in the fourth quarter. We see our fictional championship playing out in a similar fashion. Yes, Offense wins games... but Defense wins championships.

USC 31, Oklahoma 30.

The BCS vs. the Old Poll System: Consensus or Controversy

Following up on the previous post, I thought it would be worthwhile to look more closely at the major polls and see just how frequently there was controversy regarding the crowning of a national championship. Prior to 1950, the only national poll was that sponsored by the Associated Press. The BCS came into being after 1997, so we'll focus on the years 1950 - 1997 to see if the polls provided consensus or controversy.

In the decade that was the 1950's, the two major national polls were the AP and the coaches' poll sponsored by the United Press (later the United Press International). During this decade, both polls agreed eight times on a national champion, disagreeing only in 1954 (AP choosing Ohio State, with the UP choosing UCLA) and 1957 (AP choosing Auburn and UP choosing Ohio State).

In the 1960's, both major polls agreed on champions nine times, disagreeing only once in 1965 when the AP chose Alabama and the UPI favored Michigan State.

The 70's saw the most controversy, with the AP and UPI agreeing six times and disagreeing on four. Split national championships were awarded in 1970 (Nebraska/Texas), 1973 (Notre Dame/Alabama), 1974 (Oklahoma/USC), and 1978 (Alabama/USC). In fairness, 1974 was the first year the UPI instituted the rule that teams on NCAA probation would not be ranked in its poll; otherwise, Oklahoma may have been the consensus in both polls.

The 80's was a decade clear of controversy, at least as far as the polls were concerned. In all 10 years, both AP and UPI polls agreed on their national champions.

In the 90's, the USA Today took over sponsorship of the coaches' poll from the UPI (1991) and for the eight years of consideration, 1990 - 1997, consensus was had in five. The AP gave national championships to Colorado in 1990, Miami in 1991, and Michigan in 1997 while the UPI/USA Today polls crowned Georgia Tech, Washington, and Nebraska respectively.

So, in a total of 48 years with two major polls, a split national championship occurred exactly 10 times, or approximately 20%. This means that in 48 years before the BCS, a consensus national champion was crowned without controversy about 80% of the time.

So how is the BCS's record on controversy in the decade in which it has existed?

• After the 1998 regular season: Tennessee and Tulane were the only Div. 1-A schools to finish the regular season undefeated, but Tulane coming from Conference USA was not only rejected for the BCS title game, it was excluded from all BCS bowls. And even though Kansas State was ranked #3 in the BCS standings, it too was excluded from the four BCS bowls.
  
  
• After 1999: Not too much controversy, with undefeated Florida State paired with undefeated Virginia Tech for the BCS championship. Third ranked Nebraska had a single loss by four points to Texas, which it avenged by beating the Longhorns in the Big XII title game by a convincing 22-6 score. Though the one loss would mean the Huskers had no shot at the national championship, many at the time believed they were the strongest team in the country as they dominated the defending champions Tennessee in a Fiesta Bowl that was not nearly so close as the 31-21 final score would indicate. And Kansas State again got the shaft, ranked #6 in the final BCS standings, but denied a BCS bowl bid.
  
  
• After 2000: Oklahoma finished the regular season undefeated and was the clear #1 choice. Florida State, Miami, and Washington all finished with a single loss and clear cases to be matched against the Sooners. Florida State was ultimately chosen to face Oklahoma in the BCS championship game, even though their one regular-season loss was to Miami. And while Florida State lost to the Sooners, Miami and Washington each won their bowl games convincingly, adding to the controversy.
  
  
• After 2001: Not only was Nebraska ranked #4 in both the AP and coaches' polls, it had not won its conference, having been blown out by Colorado in its last regular season game. Oregon had one loss and was the Pac 10 champion, but it was the Huskers stunningly selected to play Miami for the national championship. A 37-14 spanking by Miami in the Rose Bowl, combined with Oregon's 38-16 drumming of Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl left many convinced the BCS got it flat wrong.
  
  
• After 2002: This was arguably the best year for the BCS thus far, creating a national championship pairing that could not have happened under the old bowl system. It took double overtime for undefeated Ohio State to beat previously-undefeated Miami in a game for the ages.
  
  
• After 2003: This was arguably the worst year for the BCS thus far in terms of controversy. Oklahoma had a good regular season but was thumped by Kansas State 35-7 in the Big XII championship. The Sooners were loved by computers though and selected to play against one-loss LSU for the BCS championship, even though Pac 10 champion USC also had only one loss, and was rated #1 by both the AP and coaches' polls. And after winning the Rose Bowl against Michigan, the AP kept USC rated #1, creating a split national championship between USC and LSU - the very thing the BCS was created to avoid. The controversy spilled over into the final coaches poll, when three voters broke contractual obligations to vote USC #1 over LSU.
  
  
• After 2004: another year filled with controversy over the selection of two teams to play for the BCS national championship. Fully five teams finished the regular season undefeated: BCS teams USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn, and mid-majors Utah and Boise State. Auburn was hurt by a significantly lower preseason ranking than USC or Oklahoma, but proved its worth winning the Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech. USC crushed Oklahoma in the BCS national championship, and Utah cruised past Pitt leaving three undefeated teams following the bowls, and more question marks as to whether the correct two teams were paired for the championship.
  
  
• After 2005: another clean year, as none would argue over the pairing of undefeated Texas and undefeated USC. Like after the 2002 regular season, this was a terrific matchup that could not have happened under the old bowl system. Had they played and won separate bowl games, Texas and USC would surely have shared a split national title.
  
  
• After 2006: Ohio State finished the regular season undefeated, ranked #1 in the AP, and a clear choice for the BCS national championship game. Controversy came in the selection of the Buckeye's opponent, with Boise State having also finished the season undefeated, and four teams each with one loss. Ultimately one-loss Florida crushed Ohio State to win the BCS championship while leaving Boise State with its victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl the only undefeated Div. 1-A school following the bowls.
  
  
• After 2007: Strong finishes by ACC champion Virginia Tech and Big XII champion Oklahoma as well as an undefeated season by WAC champion Hawaii were overlooked in favor of two-loss LSU, which had lost its final regular season game. For the second straight year, Ohio State, ranked #1 in the BCS standings, lost to the SEC champion in the BCS title game.
  
  
• After 2008: Oklahoma/Florida may very well be the correct pairing, but this year can be hardly considered free of controversy. In a monster Big XII South division, Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech, each with one loss has a legitimate claim to a bid in the title game. Count the same for Pac 10 champion USC and Big 10 champion Penn State. Utah went undefeated in the Mountain West which arguably, top-to-bottom, was better this year than either the Pac 10 or Big 10. Throw in undefeated Boise State, and you have seven teams with reasonable arguments to participate in the BCS national championship game.
  

In eleven attempts, the BCS has had three relatively controversy-free years in 1999, 2002, and 2005. Significant controversy in the selection of two teams to face off for the BCS national championship has occurred in eight out eleven years, or roughly 73% of the total attempts.

National champions decided by polls saw consensus about 80% of the time. National champions decided by the BCS have seen consensus only about 27% of the time. A playoff tournament would be better than either, but if one were to compare the current BCS system to the old poll system, wouldn't one want the system with significantly less controversy in determining its national champion?