Eight years ago, when the concept of the BCS was announced and the scuttlebutt was that it was part of an inexorable march towards a playoff, this is not what I hoped to be reading almost one decade later. To summarize, Brad Edwards writes that the BCS has created non-stop controversy since its inception, there have been cosmetic changes made this off-season involving new polls now that all of the old ones refuse to be associated with this miasma, and his proposed solution - a committee to pick the teams - was rejected. I'm not a big fan of the committee approach for two reasons:
1. It places too much power in the hands of a few people and there are no checks on those people because their decisions are made in private; and
2. The analogy to the NCAA selection committee is misplaced because that committee makes marginally important decisions in seeding and selecting the last at-large teams, all of whom will be done by the end of the first weekend, while a football committee would have a hugely important and essentially impossible task, thus amplifying the effects of problem #1.
All that said, I'd be very interested to read a transcript of the ESPN college football analysts' review of the game tapes of USC, Oklahoma, and Auburn last year. Assuming that they aren't using the Orange Bowl for 20/20 hindsight, I'd like to hear what some people with knowledge of x's and o's had to say in separating the three teams. Personally, I thought there was virtually no good way to do so, thus highlighting the stupidity of the current system.
1 comment:
Right. I could take my clothes off and run around the office, rapping "It's getting hot in herrre" and that would lead people to talk about me, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. I hate the idea of a big playoff, but after last year, when Auburn and Utah didn't get a shot despite doing everything they could, it's impossible to justify the current system.
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