Days like yesterday

Days like yesterday are the reason I love college football. Complain all you want about how there should be a playoff but name me a regular season day in another sport that was as much fun to watch so many games as yesterday was for college football. I'd be willing to bet the next two weekends will provide just about as much fun as this weekend did.

What’s that? Ah — Playoffs? Don’t talk about — playoffs?

Just thought I would take a moment to voice my opinion on playoffs in college football since every year around this time there is talk about how there are too many undefeated teams, that someone is going to get screwed, and that we must have a playoff. I will make it very plain that I hate the idea of playoffs in college football. Do some deserving teams get screwed out of a shot at the title, yes. To me though a few teams that deserve a shot missing out is better than having teams that deserve no shot winning it all.

Quick name me the last college football team that truly didn't deserve to at least be in the top 4 to win a national championship? Now compare that to NFL's way of doing things. How many teams that couldn't win their own division have won Super Bowl's? That would be five, four of which have been since 1997. That means 4 of the last 14 "undisputed" world champions can't even claim division championships. The five to win titles averaged winning 70% of their games. The most recent wild card winner, the Green Bay Packers went 10-6, a 62.5% winning percentage. They finished tied for the 8th best record in the NFL. That is about the 75th percentile of teams in the league. In college 62.5% would translate to winning 7.5 games in a season. Being at about the top 25th percentile would put Green Bay just outside of the top 25 in college football. Look I hate AU but which team do you think earned their title more last year; 14-0 AU or 14-6 (after playoffs) Greenbay?

I am not making this argument to say the way that the NFL decides a champion is wrong. I am saying that there are different ways of doing deciding a champion and that just because you get to "prove" it in a playoff does not mean that the best team over the season won it all, just that the team that played the best in the playoffs did. One way is designed to have the greatest emphasis on the regular season and therefore a greater number of games. The other way puts the emphais on the post season and therefore a lesser number of games.

I would begrudgingly accept a 4 team, or plus 1, type change but I just cannot see that people would be satisfied with that. Teams 5-8 would be screaming how they were left out. Then after it was 8 teams 9-12 and so on until you had a playoff that included way too many undeserving teams. Don't think it will happen? Look at college basketball, it has 64 65 68?? teams and there is still talk about expansion of the tournament and every year teams moan and complain about being left out.

College football does not have a perfect way of choosing a champion. It does however have by far the best regular season of any sport. I do not want to see that ruined. I do not want to see college coaches resting guys at the end of the season the way it happens in the pros once a playoff spot is assured. I do not want to watch this years LSU/AL OU/OSU games and think it doesn't matter who wins because they will all end up in the playoffs anyways. I also do not want UGA's chance to ruin the winner of the LSU/AL games season by beating them in the Dome. With a playoff even if Georgia did pull off the upset the chances are that AL/LSU would still make a playoff and that would suck some of the fun of beating them out of the air as they would be like, ah well at least we made the playoffs.

Hooray for playoffs.

Basketball has an 82 game regular season. After 82 games the Spurs were 15 games better than Memphis. Now the Spurs are headed home and Memphis keeps playing, if they somehow make it through and win the title game that makes them the best team around. Yup gotta love playoffs because it is decided on the court. The 82 games before apparently don't count as deciding it on the court. Again I say, Hooray playoffs.

(full disclaimer, yes I am a bitter Spurs fan at this moment but that doesn't change the facts of the situation).

College Football Playoffs

Recently Mark Cuban has started a new company with the sole purpose of pushing for a college football playoff for division 1A. First of all whether you are for a playoff or against it I think getting Mark Cuban involved in college football would be a very bad idea. I believe that while he says it is for the good of college football that he is interested he is only looking out for his best interest and making money will be his only true goal.

I know I am in the minority on this but no matter Cuban's intent I am against a playoff in college period. College football has the greatest regular season of any sport and it is not really even close in my opinion. A playoff would only serve to dilute the regular season and I do not believe the potential gain would be worth it. The team with the worst record to win a national championship in my lifetime was a 2-loss LSU team. This year the Falcons defeated Green Bay and won 4 more games than Green Bay only to have Green Bay called the better team after the playoff game made it a season split and gave the Falcons half as many losses as Green Bay. A few years ago a Patriots team that had the most wins in NFL history and had already beat the Giants fell to the Giants in a rematch in the Super Bowl. NFL playoffs might give give you the 9-7 Cardinals in the championship while an 11-5 team sits at home and doesn't even get to play in the playoffs. Did these games make for an exciting game? Yes. Did they truly prove who was the better team? I don't know that they did. They proved that it is very hard to beat a good team twice in a row, but if they were truly the better team then why did they lose so many regular season games? Baltimore and Indianapolis are two other examples of Super Bowl Champs just in the past decade where they had clearly inferior seasons but got hot in the playoffs and won championships.
The NCAA basketball tournament makes for great excitement but does it always have the best team win it or just the team that got a better series of match ups for that team on their road through the tournament? I am not saying that college football has a better way than the other sports just pointing out that what many people consider to be the most fair way, a tournament, is not always as fair as everyone would have you believe. In all honesty the fairest way to decide a championship is the way foreign soccer leagues determine a champ. Every team plays every other team an equal number of times and the team with the most points (3 for a win, 1 for a tie, 0 for a loss) wins the title. No championship game at all. That is not realistic for college football but we get the next closest thing. A great regular season where the margin for error is very slim and then two of the best, possibly not the two best but at least two teams that are very near to be the best, that play for the BCS title.  Those who are for a "fairer" way to decide the champ can have it. As for me I'll keep the excitement of knowing that there is very little margin for error.
This sums up why I am totally against a college playoff. Suppose your favorite team is suffering through a sub par season. They go into the last game of the season against your biggest rival who is undefeated. Your team does the unthinkable and pulls off a huge upset knocking them out of the national championship. It makes up for the rest of the season, you may not be proud of the overall season but that one game changes your whole outlook on how the season went. But wait, there is a playoff, your rival makes it into the post season anyways. They go on to win the national championship. Would you still be happy you beat them? Yes. The huge upset is completely devalued because it is hard to brag about the win when they flash their title in your face.