The Madness Of Method

Filed under the "Comes As No Surprise" category, I like much of my sports-obsessed demographic spent the past four days consumed with college basketball.

After a pretty blah opening weekend, the great games this weekend were a welcome rebound: Michigan State-Kansas, Mizzou-UConn, and of course Pitt-Nova.

Whether it’s the opening round upsets or the Sweet Sixteen buzzer beaters, every year college basketball taunts the rest of organized sports with its overwhelming and dramatic playoffs.

And I like many can’t help but ruminate on what playoffs would do for college football.

College basketball’s appeal is as much the sport as it is the tournament itself. As the Counselor says, “The tournament is beautiful in its simplicity, I'll never understand why pro football and thunderdome are the only other forums that recognize the value of the ‘Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves’ competition structure.”

Amen.

Why then it is impossible for the NCAA to grasp what a true playoff would do for the football?

Change of course threatens entrenched and lucrative interests. The NCAA and top-performing programs make cash hand over fist in the current system. Even mid-tier schools walk away handsomely compensated with shared revenues off the field or being offered up as sacrificial lambs to powerhouse programs on the field. Everyone wins in the BCS system… except for the players… oh, and the fans. The customers get the shaft. The NCAA plays up the purity of the college athletics when it suits them, while acting like a business when profitability is involved.

The concerns are many. A playoff would add too many games to the season. A playoff would undermine the tradition of the bowl system. A playoff would magnify the disparaties in talent between the conferences.

The excuses are just that. If you believe hallowed tradition includes split national champions in 16 seasons over the course of 50 or so years, you have a skewed idea of what’s untouchable. Or, if you believe it’s USC’s right to destroy a lesser Big Ten opponent in the Rose Bowl every year, you’re a true football masochist.

The public defense of the current college football system runs something like this: the regular season of college football is without peer, functioning as a playoff of sorts.

The breakdown in this logic of course occurs once we reach the postseason. I can think of no better illustration of college football’s faults than pointing to the disparity between the end of the football season and the end of the basketball season.

Every year, the college football season ends in bickering and bitching. Every year, teams excluded from a shot at the championship call for change. This past year it’s Utah among others. But every year, it’s several someones. And this in turn undermines the work players and coaches undertook all season to prove themselves the best. For players, coaches, and fans it’s a cruel joke.

The critics of the playoff proposals all have legitimate gripes. Plus One is simply a cosmetic extension of the current system and its foibles. Eight or sixteen teams would still rely on dubious rankings and could potentially undermine the conference structure by excluding conference champions. Anything more than sixteen teams would add too many games to the season.

The answer lies in the defense of the current system, namely, that the regular season is the best thing the college game has going for it.

I say formalize the regular season as a playoff. Transform the entirety of the season into a recognized playoff that funnels into an elimination-style postseason freed from controversy as much as humanly possible.

It’s a notion I’ve been toying with for much of the past couple months. There are distinct difficulties to constructing a season-long tournament.

First, there are 118 Division 1-A football teams. Second, eleven separate conferences functioning as unique entities award their own eleven champions, to say nothing of the four independent schools. Third, a season long one-and-done elimination is an impossible sell because each team must be allowed a full season schedule to support and maintain their programs.

(For the moment, let’s put aside the political concerns inherent in prying the football postseason from the moneyed interests surrounding the game, like the bowl commissions and corporate sponsorships. With a true fix to the college postseason, the NCAA should be able to make more money while preserving some façade of the status quo, like using the current bowl sites for the biggest year-end games.)

The conference issue is perhaps the biggest and thorniest. First, Notre Dame, Army, Navy, and Western Kentucky would need to relinquish independent status and join conferences, a difficult but necessary step. Second, the end of season playoff would need to include each conference’s champion to ensure each conference participation in the college postseason.

But a conference championship wouldn’t be a team’s only potential ticket to the postseason. This is where it gets tricky, but bear with me. Cap the conference schedule at six games. Why? Because the remaining non-conference schedule of five regular season games will comprise a round-robin tournament between groups of six teams vying for one of twenty automatic bids to a 32 team elimination playoff.

That’s right, the college football season will include not one, not two, but three playoffs: the conference level, the round robin level, then the final one-and-done true playoff running from December through early January. The “regular” season would revert to eleven games, six conference games and five as part of a round robin. The postseason instead of being four weeks of staggered contests and bitching would be a five week elimination producing an undisputed champion

Now, you may quibble with some of my math. Eleven plus twenty doesn’t equal 32. The most logical yet least likely solution is for the NCAA to promote a twelfth conference to Division 1-A while including only two more teams, funneling current independents into this conference, and encouraging a redistribution of teams an overloaded conference like the Mid-American with its thirteen teams or Conference-USA with its twelve.

However, in light of that unlikely scenario, I’ll propose a minor bit of controversy: nominating one at-large bid for the playoff. Thirty-one of the 32 teams would be undeniably deserving of their playoff spots. An oversight committee modeled on basketball’s selection committee could determine the seeding for a playoff while also selecting the one at-large team.

I think it’s important to note that college basketball is not without its controversy. But it sidesteps grave concerns about the legitimacy of its champions by including as many worthy teams as possible and allowing them ample opportunity to prove themselves on the court. This is where the NCAA has failed with college football thus far.

I’ll be the first to admit that my plan is not without its drawbacks. With only six conference games to determine a champion, large conferences like the SEC and ACC would need to rearrange their methods for determining a champion. Less affected would be the smaller conferences like the Big East and Sun Belt with eight teams apiece.

Also, the determination of the groupings for the round-robin in-season tournament would probably rely heavily on the prior season’s performance if not generated randomly. I’ve intentionally not filled out too many details about the round-robin tournament because its mechanisms provide area of compromise for the several sides of the playoff debate.

The conference play and round-robin play would necessarily rely on tiebreakers in the likely event of teams finishing with similar records. Such is sport at any level. As long as the tiebreakers are agreed upon, the hope would be for minimal gnashing of teeth, perhaps a far-flung hope considering college football.

Though my proposal increases the overall games of the season to sixteen, only four teams would play more than the fourteen teams currently play. For the sake of clear and undisputed champion, it is a minor sacrifice.

Again, I’ve left some parts of my proposal intentionally vague. The five games of the round-robin tournament and six games of the conference “regular” season play could be intertwined over the course of eleven or twelve weeks from August to November. Or the round-robin stage could follow the conference schedule.

Consider too that a team that wins its conference as well its group-stage opens the door for another bid. That bid could be determined several ways, likely by the next best team in a conference or round-robin group. Again, ample room to create compromise for varying sides of the playoff debate.

Given that the BCS recently re-upped several television contracts, it's unlikely change is on the near horizon. In the meantime, the madness of college football will remain in the frustration with the system and, not like its fellow sport basketball, in the excitement of its play on the field.

If you have any suggestions or tweaks or extreme reactions, I'd love to hear them in the comments.