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over college bowls
Arcane system for picking which teams will play
By Carl Bialik
The coaches say it stinks.
Sports analysts agree, and so do college football fans, judging by its paltry TV ratings. So do the scoreboards and their lopsided scores.
What stinks is the recently concluded Bowl Championship Series and the arcane method it uses to determine which teams will play in the various college bowls and for the national title.
The puzzle is how to change the BCS selection system, which relies on a combination of polls, computer rankings, and other factors.
Among major sports, only Division I-A college football has no playoff system that matches team against team, sending the winner on to the next level of competition.
As a result, top teams often don't get the opportunity to play one another or to go on to a national title.
All other major leagues give at least 12 teams a spot in the postseason and a chance for a championship.
College football is locked into the BCS for five more years, and many powerful interests stand in the way of reforming it. A playoff system might well reduce the importance of the bowls and the conferences.
Still, no one benefits from ratings like those for the four major bowls this year. The Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls combined for a rating of 43.2, down 22 percent from last year and the lowest in the BCS’s four years of existence.
"From an economic and marketing point of view it would be beneficial to have a playoff system," says Lynn Kahle, professor of marketing at the University of Oregon. "There would be more interest and more viewership, and more revenue would be generated."
To some extent, this year's poor ratings were a result of poor play–all four big bowl games were essentially clinched by halftime. This lackluster parade ended with undefeated Miami’s 37-14 romp over Nebraska in the Rose Bowl last Thursday, clinching the national championship.
However, it was more than poor play that made disgusted fans reach for the remote. In the weeks leading up to the BCS bowls, fans, coaches, and commentators ripped into the system that led to the ill-matched national-title game.
Nebraska’s last game of the season was a 62-36 drubbing at the hands of Colorado.
Colorado went on to win the Big 12 conference, while Nebraska finished third. Oregon, like Nebraska, finished the season with one loss, but unlike Nebraska, the Ducks finished strong and won their conference.
Both the coaches and the media voted Miami No. 1, Oregon second, Colorado third, and Nebraska fourth.
However, the BCS’s confusing formula, understood by almost no one, ranked Nebraska at No. 2. To the great consternation of many, Colorado and Oregon were relegated to the Fiesta Bowl, where the Ducks won, 38-16.
After Miami’s victory, most pundits declared all controversy moot. After all, Miami was undefeated, and no other team was. Oregon, however, never had the opportunity to beat Miami.
Ironically, last year Florida State went to the championship game instead of Miami, even though both teams had one loss and Miami had beaten Florida State. When undefeated Oklahoma dispatched the Seminoles, Miami’s complaint was forgotten, even though the Hurricanes never had the chance to beat Oklahoma.
With a playoff, of course, there would be room for dispute about who was allowed in and who was left out, and about the seedings of the teams.
But a playoff could include each team with a legitimate claim to the title, thereby giving each one a chance to back up its claim on the field. Oregon and Colorado were denied that chance this season, as was Miami the previous season.
And as teams advanced to the title game, interest would build, as opposed to the false BCS "series," in which one game bears no real relation to the next.
John Mansell, senior analyst with Kagan World Media, thinks a playoff would generate viewer interest.
"Ratings would probably increase for the playoff games," he says. "I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if ratings increased."
Consider the other big-money college sport, men’s basketball. A committee chooses which teams will play in a tournament and seeds the 64 teams.
Every year there is some mild bickering about these decisions–the sort of argument that is as much fun for many sports fans as the actual games.
But when the tournament is over, no one questions the legitimacy of the winner. It's generally accepted that only the team that wins all its tournament games deserves to be champion.
This year, proponents of the BCS made the creative claim that the heated discussion surrounding their system proved its viability, in a sort of "all press is good press" argument.
However, while mild bickering can be a sign of health, no sport benefits from attacks on its very legitimacy of the sort that are heaped on the BCS.
There are differences between basketball and football, of course. For one, football teams can only play once a week. However, this has not prevented the NFL from having a successful 12-team playoff system.
Some argue that college-football players can’t afford to miss classes for playoffs, which would add two or three weeks to the football season.
However, Division I-AA college football manages a 16-team playoff each year.
There are many possible ways to structure a college-football playoff. One would be to let the lesser bowls be but to turn seven premier bowls into an eight-team playoff.
Another, suggested by Sports Illustrated writer Tim Layden, would be to keep the bowls as they are and then have a four-team playoff after the bowls.
The powers-that-be would do well to choose one of these options. The viewers have spoken: Until you give us a playoff, we’ll change the channel.
January 11, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Carl Bialik is a New York writer and a regular contributor to Media Life.
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