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22 Jan 2009
Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
This is kind of interesting. SI.com college football writer Stewart Mandel makes the natural connection between two lines of thought you have read here at Football Outsiders: Russell Levine's belief that a playoff system would take away the "every game counts" nature of college football, and my recent complaints about parity in the last few NFL postseasons.
132 comments, Last at 27 Jan 2009, 1:25am by Ramon
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Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I initially assumed this was a sarcastic article that would really be arguing for a College Football Playoff, but it turns out to be one of the best defenses of the current College Football system I've read. That they quote Mr. Schatz is just icing on the cake.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Hey, you're right! Having teams play each other to decide the better team is a bad idea. I guess we should also do away with the national championship game, too, since we've all decided that the games themselves are ineffective at determining a team's merit. Better yet, why don't we just do away with the season altogether, and base the championship on metrics and polling?
Please.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Currently the teams do play each other to determine the best team. What the article is arguing is that reducing the number of such games leads to greater error in the process.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I take issue with the idea that there's an error in the process. The goal of the NFL playoffs isn't to reward the best team with a championship. It's to create an exciting tournament in which the final outcome isn't assured until the end. When Schatz and co. start talking about "legitimacy" and complaining about the regular season being devalued, it just demonstrates that they've missed the point.
I mean, jeez. Winning the DVOA Championship is almost certainly a better indication of quality than winning the Super Bowl, but one is exciting, and one is intellectually interesting to a subset of football fans. Which one would YOU rather build your league around?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The reason a playoff doesn't make sense in college football is because college footballs regular season doesn't make sense. Why should a big school like Texas ever be playing a school like Louisiana-Monroe? Don't even need to see either team and the game is a forgone conclusion.
9-7 means something in the NFL. It's not stellar by any means. But in a league where any team that isn't the Lions can beat any other team having a winning record means you deserve to at least be in the discussion.
College football could fix this by having teams that actually stand a chance play each other week in and week out. If the top n teams played only other teams in the top n then you wouldn't have the goofiness of having three teams going undefeated and someone getting left out. Why? Because no one would be undefeated because every week was a contest and not therapy for alumni.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Obviously you have forgotten what Appalachian State did to Michigan last season.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Oh wow because of that one historic example he must be completely wrong then!
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"Forgone conclusion" upsets happen every year. Just because I named the most notable of recent times doesn't mean there's not a East Carolina over Virginia Tech somewhat frequently. Stanford beating USC was within conference play, but if a 48 point underdog winning doesn't fall into this loose "forgone conclusion" discussion, nothing does. Regardless, you don't need much imagination on this one.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I would rather watch a game with a 6 point spread then a game with a 25 point spread any day of the week. Is it awesome when the underdog manages to win the 25 point spread game? Yes. But, considering that line setters are pretty good at their job, most of the time it is a non game from the get go. And even when that underdog wins, they don't get anything out of it. They beat a ranked team in an upset, they don't suddenly become ranked, the ranked team loses several standings because they had an off day and the underdog had a hot day.
Good teams should play good teams. Every week. Mediocre/bad teams should play mediocre and bad teams. Every week. Some gesture towards parity is good. Upsets are the exception not the rule.
I'd rather have competitive games be the rule and not the exception.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I certainly can't disagree with that. Even though it produced an upset, I don't think anybody condones Michigan's motives in scheduling ASU. Well, perhaps Michigan fans do, while fellow athletic directors empathize with the decision. It would be nice to have a system that gave a greater reward to teams who scheduled quality opponents. College basketball seems to do a better job of this than college football.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The reason weak teams are scheduled is because only weak teams will agree to play a road game without demanding a home game in return. As college sports is currently constructed, a large university needs 8 home games just to stay in the black. I'm all in favor of more matchups between good teams, but that'll mean fewer home games for the football powers, which will mean major cuts in athletic departments. It's possible the shortfall could be made up with extra TV revenue, but I'm not sure.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Stay in the black? Big COllege football is played because the schools make a FORTUNE on it. Do you seriously think Ohio State, or USC, need to schedule 8 home games just to stay in the black?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
They actually do, at this point, because the competition amongst the schools has let to increased recruiting and facilities costs. Seems weird, but that's how it is. As School X competes with School Y, they sink more money into traveling, staff, stadium, weight rooms, et al.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
USC clearly doesn't, because they don't schedule 8 home games. In fact, no one in the Pac 10 did (actually, most major conference schools scheduled 7 home games; most Pac 10 schools, though, scheduled six home games and six away games).
--
My new CuseFanInSoCal blog
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
According to http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3444571, there were 34 bowl games this year. That amounts to 68 teams playing in a season-ending game of "importance." I understand that there are only five major BCS bowl games, but really, giving some sort of recognition to 68 teams? This makes college football unwatchable. It is not as though the season actually matters anyway if the top 68 schools in the country get a slap on the back and an extra bowl game. Woo bowl games!
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Are you under the false assumption that you have to watch every bowl game? Do you watch every game of the NBA playoffs? The NCAA basketball tournaments? If not, would you call those sports unwatchable?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The point is not watching all of these games. The point is that these games are given to these football teams. A successful season can be seen as one where your school makes it to a bowl game. There are not 68 successful teams every year in college football. This undermines the validity of any school making a bowl game. If the 68th best team in the nation can make a bowl game, how does that not sully the best team in the nation? And the best in the nation probably became the best team in the nation simply because they played a schedule where 1/3 of the teams they played were actually against competitive schools!
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Do you think Notre Dame considered their season a success because they beat Hawaii in the Hawaii bowl? I think your definition of successful season needs to be more ambitious, and I don't see how the winner of the Las Vegas Bowl has any effect on Florida's accomplishment.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The point is not watching all of these games. The point is that these games are given to these football teams. A successful season can be seen as one where your school makes it to a bowl game. There are not 68 successful teams every year in college football. This undermines the validity of any school making a bowl game.
The point is that there are various degrees of success. Just being 'given a bowl' game is not viewed as a successful season by all teams. If you think all bowl games are viewed equally, you really don't know enough about college football to be commenting on it.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
It's an excellent article - the only thing wrong with the BCS is they allow human voters ...
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Do you think OU should have played in the national championship over Texas, a team that beat them on a neutral field? Do you think Utah, the only undefeated team shouldn't have gotten a chance at the title game? The computers in the last BCS poll did. One of the many problems with the BCS is there is no consensus for what a successful team is. Bill James of sabermetrics fame wrote a great article on this a few months back.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The voters, for the most part, also thought that Oklahoma should have been in the final game over Texas. While I agree that lack of a defined criteria is a problem, the Oklahoma, Texas, Utah problem isn't isolated to the computer rankings.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Yes, and yes.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Do you think OU should have played in the national championship over Texas, a team that beat them on a neutral field?
OU, who destroyed the Texas Tech team that beat Texas? Yes, I think they deserved a spot over Texas. Not because of the conference record, where 3 teams (including Tech) were equal, but because of non-conference record, where OU had the more notable wins.
The idea that Texas was "obviously" better than Oklahoma was something that lazy sportswriters decided to write over and over again because they've discovered editors will let them get away with writing the same things repeatedly as long as it is properly anti-BCS. College sportswriters seem to have the easiest job in the nation...go to college games on weekends; then, instead of actually analyzing what goes on, write about how awful the BCS is during the week.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
45-35. Neutral Field.
Honestly, what's the point of playing games if we can just forget any results we don't like?
Why should non-conference record having anything to do with conference results? The whole point of having a conference is to determine a winner based on in conference play. Having a tie-breaker decided by non-conference games (and by non-conference coaches and writers) is asinine.
Let's take a hypothetical: exact same conference records, but Texas and Oklahoma both lose a very close non-conference game against a high quality opponent (suppose they went to Gainseville or So Cal and lost by a point each). Under the stupid tiebreaker the Big-12 uses, Texas Tech is likely declared the winner of the Big-12 South by the BCS as a result of their 11-1 record being superior to the 10-2 records of Texas and Oklahoma. Does that make any sense? Especially given that Texas Tech was given exactly zero consideration when the actual tiebreaker was announced?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"Honestly, what's the point of playing games if we can just forget any results we don't like?"
You mean like 39-33.
"Under the stupid tiebreaker the Big-12 uses, Texas Tech is likely declared the winner of the Big-12 South by the BCS as a result of their 11-1 record being superior to the 10-2 records of Texas and Oklahoma. Does that make any sense? Especially given that Texas Tech was given exactly zero consideration when the actual tiebreaker was announced?"
If Texas Tech has a better chance to play for the national championship (which I would guess under your scenario), then yes it does (at least to the Big XII powers that be). Your second question doesn't relate to your first. Texas Tech WOULD be given consideration under a tiebreaker where both Oklahoma and Texas had an extra loss. The reason they weren't given consideration is because they lost last.
If Tech had lost in mid-September to Oklahoma, but had closed with the wins over Texas and Oklahoma State (scores remain the same), I believe they would have gotten a lot more consideration for the BCS tiebreaker.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Honestly, what's the point of playing games if we can just forget any results we don't
Your argument might be respectable if you weren't deliberately forgetting the Texas Tech/Texas game.
You are aware it was a 3 way tie, weren't you? Oklahoma had the only truly dominant performance in the 3 head to head games. Looking at conference play only they have at least as strong an argument as the other 2, and I'm OK with non-conference play being used as a tie-breaker.
I have to restate this: Texas was not clearly better than the other two teams when you look at conference play.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Can't we just let the Texas arguments go (at this point)? I'm not commenting on the merits of the arguments; rather, bringing them up now, after months of discussion, is digging up the horse so it can be kicked.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
>>>One of the many problems with the BCS is there is no consensus for what a successful team is<<<
That's why you have multiple sources which you aggregate out.
>>>Do you think OU should have played in the national championship over Texas, a team that beat them on a neutral field?<<<
You can't just compare two teams head to head in one game - don't forget Texas Tech beat Texas but lost to OU. Doing it your way yo end up with things like this:-
Div II Shepherd beat WV State 56 - 14
Div II WV State beat Central St OH 47 - 13
Div II Central St OH beat Missouri S&T 29 - 28
Div II Missouri S&T beat Truman St 39 - 38
Div II Truman St beat Fort Hays St 27 - 7
Div II Fort Hays St beat Washburn 17 - 7
Div II Washburn beat Missouri St 35 - 27
Div I - FCS Missouri St beat Youngstown St 42 - 28
Div I - FCS Youngstown St beat N Dakota St 32 - 24
Div I - FCS N Dakota St beat S Illinois 35 - 27
Div I - FCS S Illinois beat Northern Iowa 27 - 24
Div I - FCS Northern Iowa beat New Hampshire 36 - 34
Div I - FCS New Hampshire beat Army 28 - 10
Div I - FBS Army beat Louisiana Tech 14 - 7
Div I - FBS Louisiana Tech beat Mississippi St 22 - 14
Div I - FBS Mississippi St beat Vanderbilt 17 - 14
Div I - FBS Vanderbilt beat Mississippi 23 - 17
Div I - FBS Mississippi beat Texas Tech 47 - 34
Div I - FBS Texas Tech beat Texas 39 - 33
Therefore, Shepherd is better than Texas!!
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The previous poster is making the point that Texas beat OU, head to head. While a fun exercise, your Shepherd > Texas chart does nothing to argue with that. Shepherd didn't play Texas head to head, that's the whole point.
In fact your statement, "you can't compare two teams head to head in one game" is pretty goofy when I really start to think about it. Isn't that football? Two teams, one game, the team with more points at the end is the winner?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Until undefeated non-BCS conference schools like Utah get a shot at the national championship game the whole thing is a joke.
If you switch to an eight team playoff, there will still be plenty of controversy and excitement over the top eight. Deserving schools like Utah will still be left out. Fans of the football factories like Texas, Oklahoma, USC will still be interested in potential match ups and seeding. But most importantly, the championship football team will be settled on the football field, not in the minds of biased voters, or the circuits of computers.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
An eight-team playoff would never work, and there was a great article here on FO explaining why, right after Obama brought it up. To start, you'd need to include the six BCS conference champions in any playoff system. That leaves you two at-large bids left, which isn't nearly enough to still include Alabama, Texas, Utah, or Texas Tech. Had Oregon State won their final game they would have wrapped up the PAC-10 championship, meaning that you'd need an at-large spot for USC, and had Missouri won the Big XII championship game, then you'd be stuck needing yet another at-large spot for Oklahoma. An eight team playoff wouldn't solve any of the problems that currently exist with the BCS, because you'd still be arbitrarily selecting the participants. What the BCS is is essentially just a two-team playoff; therefore the only advantage offered by an eight-team playoff is that fewer schools get left out - but some still would.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
People are going to get screwed anyway, so why not screw the maximum amount of teams possible. Is that about right?
And why would you assume that a two loss Oklahoma team would be deserving of a wild card spot in an 8 team playoff?
Yes, people get screwed under a playoff situation, but to say its not better than the stupid setup we have now is just wrong.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Another argument is that under an 8 team playoff, it will be quite possible to have a team beat another twice during the regular season and conference championship game, only to meet the same team again during the playoffs. No team should be required to beat another three times to win the championship.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Why not? The Steelers just did.
I don't see it happening. It would take a very strong resume for a non-conference winning team to make it as a wild card, and frankly I don't see a two loss team getting one of two wild card spots.
Of course, if they did, then more power to them. It wouldn't be very hard to set up the bracket so that teams from the same conference wouldn't meet up in the first round.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"An eight team playoff wouldn't solve any of the problems that currently exist with the BCS, because you'd still be arbitrarily selecting the participants."
It'd give eight top-tier teams a chance at winning the title as opposed to two. Using complex math skills, that seems to be about 4 times better than the BCS. Of course there'd still be good teams left out, but the top 5 would be a virtual lock to be in it every year. Tweak your BCS system all you want; you'll never manage that.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
An eight-team playoff without automatic bids is fairly workable. It would have left out one of the nine teams I think definitely belonged in the playoffs this year (Alabama, Boise State, Florida, Oklahoma, Penn State, Southern California, Texas, Texas Tech, and Utah), but more often than not it'll include every legit contender. I'd bet Texas Tech would get snubbed, for much the same reason my Orange were not in the men's basketball tournament for the past two years (too many teams from one conference), but given 20/20 hindsight (see the Holiday Bowl) that's not a huge deal.
I prefer a sixteen team playoff with automatic bids for all eleven conference champs, because it also would never leave out a legit contender, and has the additional advantage of allowing every team in a conference to make the playoffs by winning that conference, no matter what pollsters and computer ratings think, and has five at-large bids to cover for ties, independents, and very good teams that finished second in their conference.
But eight teams is certainly much better than the current system. Heck, a four-team mini-playoff is better than the current system. I'll go even further and say pretty much every playoff I've ever seen semi-seriously proposed except the 'traditional bowls plus one' setup is better than the current system.
--
My new CuseFanInSoCal blog
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"It would have left out one of the nine teams I think definitely belonged in the playoffs this year (Alabama, Boise State, Florida, Oklahoma, Penn State, Southern California, Texas, Texas Tech, and Utah), but more often than not it'll include every legit contender."
Actually, at least three of those teams would have been left out. No playoff system will ever be adopted without a guaranteed spot for each of the six BCS conference champs.
This year, that would have meant:
Florida
Oklahoma
Penn State
Southern Cal
Cincinnati
Virginia Tech
The two at-large teams would have been:
Texas
Alabama (they were ranked ahead of Utah)
Utah still would have been left out, which would have been terrible. And they wouldn't have gotten to beat up on a quality opponent like Alabama to prove their worth.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The BCS picks two teams and has them play for the title. A playoff would give considerably more top-level teams a chance at winning. How is that rather obvious point invalidated by the fact that Utah would have still been left out this year? And given they had zero chance of winning the title even though they were in a BCS bowl, why is it important that the Utes got to play Alabama this year?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Stupidest thing I've ever heard. If the NFL seeded the Super Bowl like the BCS, that would presumably mean the NFC Champ Giants versus the AFC Champ Titans, a month after the regular season ended. Each of those teams lost its only playoff appearance this year, just two weeks after the regular season ended, while looking God-awful - penalties, turnovers, and plain-Jane bad play prevailed for both squads. Using a BCS system would have screwed us out of several good games just this year alone.
And to suggest Florida (or any other team, for that matter) could have (or would have) gone into the tank for the last month of the season without affecting their postseason chances in a playoff system is just ridiculous. Continuing with Florida as an example, the Gators still would have had to win the SEC to earn a spot, or have performed well in losing the SEC to earn some sort of at-large or wild-card bid.
Arizona shouldn't be in the Super Bowl? As a long-time, die-hard Philly fan, I couldn't agree more. But the solution is very simple - BEAT THEM IN THE PLAYOFFS, TOO.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Florida's last three regular season games (against South Carolina, Citadel, and Florida State) would have been irrelevant to them making a hypothetical playoff this year, since they had already clinched the SEC East. So yes, they literally could have tanked most of November. Not all teams can or would tank, but it is a possibility
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I'm not so sure this upset madness hasn't happened before. The 79 and 80 season had there share of the playoff upsets. In 79 the Rams stunned a rather bland NFC field. In 1980 the + 58 Raiders beating an Eagles team that was +162. The Vikings won the central at + 9.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
This kind of thing is just infuriating.
The BCS is wildly unpopular. This article pretends otherwise. There's controversy about the national title basically every year, including this year, with Utah.
There is NEVER argument about who should be the NFL champion. Nobody can credibly argue the Pats should be crowned champs instead of the Giants. When either Pittsburgh or Arizona win this year, they will be indisputably the champ. The cardinals will have to beat the falcons, panthers, eagles and steelers to be champions. No team this year ripped off four wins that convincing a stretch. If they win it all, they've earned it.
"Team outperforming their regular season is making our stats look bad" isn't going to get anybody on board the "parity is destroying the nfl" train. Sorry Aaron.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Mandel is challenging your implicit assumption about the validity of a playoff in crowning a champion. You accept that validity as a premise to your argument as to who should be champion, so his article would not appeal to you. His points, however, still hold water with me. When you move to a playoff, you lose some of the ability to identify which teams is more capable of winning football games. Playoffs undermine the data you gain from the larger sample sizes of regular seasons, having that usurped by a "hot team" or teams who gain from matches which appeal to their strengths.
If a sport's season has the goal of identifying the best team, playoff systems may not be the best means of doing so. That's the point of discussion.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
But you still have to get into the playoffs. You can't ignore the fact that 20 teams don't get that opportunity, because they didn't perform well enough in the regular season. The regular season still matters quite a bit.
Without a playoff system, in a league that only plays 16 games, too much would be dictated by schedule. It makes far more sense to make the "no playoffs" argument for MLB, because of the 162 game regular season.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I completely agree. I'm not sure that a regular season-alone is better than a playoff-heavy system. I personally think that both have their place and regular season accomplishments are just under appreciated. I think we should honor the winners of the postseason tournaments while recognizing that the best team may not have won. I think we should de-emphasize the idea of overall champion and move towards a more thoughtful, granular view of team quality.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I completely disagree. How do you determine the "best team"? All of these advanced stats measure specific variables (DYAR, YAC, DVOA, etc.) Do these stats constitute the "Best team"? What about variance in weakly performance, what about injury, what about weather, what about psychological/personal impacts, You can go round and round trying to measure all the variables in some hope of finding a 100% predictive stat that would tell you that Team A will beat Team B 100 out of 100 times. You'll never achieve this accuracy. I personally think that this whole "acknowleging that the best team may not have won the championship" all adds up to sour grapes.
Giving some sort of trophy or recognition to a team that 'won the regular season' would be a joke. Nobody care's except the fans of that team and someone who's soul purpose for following the game of football is to study which team peforms best under a set of statistical measures, and I'm not sure what the motivation would be to do that.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
There are many sports competitions around the world where giving a team a trophy based on a regular season is anything but a joke. How many association football (soccer) leagues use a playoff to decide its champion? Less than all.
Playoffs are very much an American thing, and probably a product of money-grubbing, at that. To accept playoffs as the inherent means of identifying what might be the better team not only flies in the face of basic statistical concepts, it also contradicts both past and present precedent.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Association football can use a table system to decide the champion mainly because every team plays every other team home and away.
Good luck with that. 62 games of football would kill players. Think of the roster size you'd need...
Playoffs are an imperfect way of deciding the champion but ultimately it's the best we've got. Fair go to the Cardinals for coming on strong when it matters & honestly they are the underdog to end all underdogs so I'm going to cheer for them.
20 years ago if you'd been told the world would end after the Red Sox had won another world series the Cards had won a superbowl & America had voted in a black president you'd have felt pretty safe. Now you'd be sweating :)
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
> 62 games would kill players
So eliminate cross-conference play.
Each team plays all the other teams in its conference once (15 games).
Then either the top team from each conference plays in the superbowl,
or have the top two teams from each conference play a one game playoff
on a neutral field, and then the winners go to the Superbowl.
Dave
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Your point about soccer is good, although as you say playoffs are a very American thing, and I only living in America only know our system of doing it. To me and I would imagine many others, simply rewarding the team with the best regular season record would be far less enjoyable (more team will drop out of contention, the winner may clinch it a week or so in advance, etc.) and you can have your "best team" I personally hate this idea and fear the repercussions it would have on the psychology of the players participating in this system, the result will almost assuredly be worse football (as teams drop out of contention) and lack of interest (as fans withdraw accordingly). I will point out that soccer employs many national and team wide tourny's and of course the World Cup, and the cultures supporting that sport apparently wanted this playoff/tourny type system bad enough to implement it. Its a game, variance in outcome is what makes it a game, and allows for competiton.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The FA cup. The Euro Cup. The Champions League. The World Cup. All involve playoffs, and most existed long before playoffs existed in American Football or were created around the same time.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
All of those contest exist independent of the regular season, have champions which are recognized as independent of the regular season champions, and as such are not really applicable to this conversation. What we are talking about is using a playoff to determine the winner of a competition where a predominant amount of the contest take place during a regular season. That is somewhat (though not totally) isolated to U.S. sports.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
What part of an NCAA football playoff doesn't fit this criteria? Teams play to win their conferences, and at then end of that we select the best conference winners and possibly a few at large teams to play for the "national championship", which would be a higher prize available to those who succeeded in the regular season.
And how do the Euro and World cups fit your criteria? Since when is there a "regular season" for the world cup? Its all geared toward qualifying for and winning the tournament.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
You are correct that it can be difficult to determine the best team, but that doesn't mean that drawing names out of a hat is the best system.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
You're correct that with an unbalanced schedule of only 16 games, regular season records do rely heavily on scheduling. However, that imbalance is something that the playoff system actually rewards. Look at Arizona's record of just 9-7, which was the median record in the league, and then look at who they played. Teams that put up better records against more difficult schedules were denied entry to the playoffs. It's not the case that "they didn't perform well enough in the regular season". In some cases they performed better! The fact that the Cardinals could win this year's Super Bowl means that any of those teams (e.g., Patriots, Cowboys, Buccanneers, Jets) can argue that they are capable of the same. Unfortunately, because the regular season doesn't mean as much as three games in January, they won't get that chance.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Yes, but I see that as a stronger argument to change which teams get in the playoffs (record over division winners), rather than an argument against using a playoff system.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
>>The fact that the Cardinals could win this year's Super Bowl means that any of those teams (e.g., Patriots, Cowboys, Buccanneers, Jets) can argue that they are capable of the same
Anybody can argue. Those teams didn't make the playoffs. Why? Their regular season records. The regular season matters, just ask the Pats, Cowboys, Bucs, Jets, etc. One more win in the regular season would mean they were in the playoffs, and then they could argue with their on-field play.
Playoffs aren't a perfect system, but for a sport with only 16 games, they are definitely the best method.
Now, if we are talking the NBA or MLB, I might not make the same statement. I hate the long drawn out NBA pre-season (Oct until May) that precedes the season (playoffs) when they actually start playing the game.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"Hot team", the problem with this thinking is that it supposes that the team is playing better than it should be (faulty logic). They either are playing to this level and thereby exhibit that they have the ability to play to this level or then don't. The football team's battle is with attrition. Injuries, lack of motivation, poor chemistry, etc. etc. etc., all work to tear down a team's actual performance from its ceiling ability. Football is a game not a math problem, Arizona has always had this ability, but they simply didn't play up to it until now, They are this good.
And how can you even link the season to the playoffs? Of Course the playoffs aren't going to be the most reliable predictor of team that given a large enough sample size would perform the best, That's not the point and never was. The Playoffs bring the core elements of "the game" to the game. Be a good enough team to qualify and you get to play the game, if not you sit this one out.
I continually fail to see the point of statisticians complaining about the validity of playoffs or that they are ruining the league as Aaron said, these are sports not data points. Baseball's post season has basically been a crapshoot for years, you don't hear the guys over at Baseball Prospectus complaining about the Cardinals winning their last World Championship with a regular season record sub 90 wins, no they leave that up to that spoiled brat Hank Steinbrenner and the Yankees to complain.
On top of all this playoffs vs. regular season garbage is the unbalanced schedule that teams play during the regular season, the elements they play in, and etc. and etc. It is obutse to believe that the team with the best record at the end of the regular season can be assumed to be the best team.
Its not rocket science here, a regular season will tease out the good teams from the bad teams, and the playoffs will then allow the good teams to face off head to head and crown a champion. What's so hard to understand here?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
If the Cardinals are this good, what were they doing during the second half of the regular season? To maintain your position, you would have to conclude that they were playing below their ability, and on many occasions. Meanwhile, a team like the Titans or Giants played up to their ability for almost the entire season. One of the few games where they didn't happened to be in their first playoff game, and so they were immediately knocked out of contention. Is this satisfactory? Why is Arizona able to have multiple letdowns over the course of the season, but when New York has (arguably) their second such letdown their season is over? Any system that allows one team to slack off for half a season and still play for the title is a system that diminishes the value of the regular season.
And if you didn't hear the complaints when the Cardinals won the World Series, you weren't listening.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Diminishes the value of the regular season compared to what? A system without a playoff system, a playoff system that that already rewards the best teams from the regular season with one less game risk losing in the playoffs (the bye), a system that rewards them with homefield advantage, and also allows them the chance to face off against the weaker teams accordingly (well at least by record that is). Those precious Giants should have disbanded before the playoffs if they didn't like the rules of the game and its playoff system. This boils down to either doing away with the playoffs all together and simply rewarding the regular season team with the best record with the championship or sucking it up and understanding that the playoffs are not going to reward the best regular season team with the championship every year.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
As a Giants and Mets fan, you bring up 2 crushing examples for me personally. The Giants might be considered by various metrics to have been the 'best team' thru the first 12 or so weeks, but they had a soft schedule. The last couple weeks and the playoff showed who they really were - an offense that is unbalanced without Plaxico, and a defensive lineup half-filled with borderline or not-quite-ripe NFL talent.
They were not as dominant as they seemed from that 10-1 start. They are not the best team in the league, nor are the Titans. Certainly among the best - so goes parity today. Both earned every advantage for the '2nd season', and proved again they are not the clear-cut best teams in the league.
Better strategy and gameplanning could have gotten the g-men further...it seems to have done wonders for the Cards - teams are also more than just the players, and despite fans' constant railing / support for various coaches we sometimes seem to forget their interactive impact when we start looking at stats.
I am totally fine with the Cards in the SB instead of my Giants. You better believe I'm more fine about it than if the Eagles were there. Are you saying that Fitz, Boldin, Warner, Wilson, Dansby, and Cromartie aren't at least the equal of NYG headliners Jacobs, Ward, Eli, Tuck, Pierce, Webster? Of course, football isn't all about individuals (obviously that's not why the G-men have been successful of late), but I would give the nod to the Cards in terms of this list of individual talent.
those names deserve to be there. Just as Ray Allen, Garnett, and Pierce deserved to be there last year.
The Mets, meanwhile, have proven why they shouldn't have been in the 06 Series on a yearly basis, and the Tigers were perhaps too green in some respects. At least baseball gives you up to 7 games to prove yourself.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Have you ever heard the guys at BP talk about the playoffs? They all recognize its flawed, mostly because of sample size issues. They all understate the value of the playoffs in determining which team is best. This is not to say they don't enjoy the playoffs. They do. They are just under no illusion that the best team wins.
The same holds in football. Which sample size is more informative? Sixteen games? Three or four games? I can see arguments either way, based on level of competition, teams planning to play their best during those 3-4 games, etc.
I am in no way saying that we should use formulas instead of on-field accomplishments to give recognition to teams. What I am saying is that we should seek to create on-field circumstances which are more likely to reward better teams, and that almost always involves increasing the sample size from 60 minutes of play against one team.
Your reply takes issue with "hot team" (which would be better defined as hot player better at time Z than they did at preceding times A..Y) and the idea that the best team doesn't win, but those type of things happen. Sometimes, the worst team is given better circumstances to perform than the better team, and they come out the winner. This is why increasing sample sizes are important: because the sample you've teased out may not be representative of the population.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The playoffs in baseball are inherently different from the regular season. More off days, shorter pitching rotation, a top-heavy rotation can dominate. In football, it's the same game. The BP comparison doesn't hold.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Well it holds if you follow the statistical anaylsis that its a crapshoot instead of blathering about off days and such. BP has their "secret sauce" that identifies high K throwing rotation, good defense, and a strong bullpen, but by no mistake are they saying that these have to be included in the winner of the baseball post season, but they tend to occur more often. And how often is the key, the correlation coefficent is weak my friend, the baseball playoffs are a crapshoot, 162 games to get to the point where its basically a role of the dice. It holds.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Who's under the illusion that the best team wins? And who cares? You are talking about making drastic changes to a system so that the teams that perform strongly in regular season have a better chance at producing that same result in the playoffs, and I ask why? Why do we want this? And what exactly are you clamoring for? Do you want a 3 game series between the teams? should there be fewer teams allowed into the playoffs? The Regular season already rewards the four best teams making the playoffs with first week byes. That significantly increases the chances for those teams to make the championship game compared to the teams that did not achieve the bye week. Then you factor in that these four teams tend to be "better teams" and remaining group "lesser teams",,,,and have home field advantage as they go, you have a deciding advantage to the teams that performed better in the regular season. At some point it has to come down to the play on the field, including all of the things out of that team's control (field conditions, referee quality, matchup of opp, injury, etc.) vs. another good team that earned its spot in the playoffs. If on that day the team with the weaker regular season performance wins the game, how can one argue that that shouldn't have happend?
And in response to your last line about needing sample size to tease out allowing the 'worse' team to beat the 'better' team, Why? That better team already had an advantage going into the game (home field, possible bye week, being the better team) if they fail to accomplish the steps to win the game and the other 'weaker' team does, then too bad for that team, I have to go back to the fact that this is a game, not a math equation. Let FO run their stats on which team had the best DVOA of the year and give them that coveted DVOA stats trophy.
Oh and finally...since we are talking about sample size, wouldn't it be correct to consider the whole of the leagues existance in determining champions that are also the best team that season rather than one season? You argue that this system is flawed, yet offer no solution, nor evidence that it is flawed? And what is your definition of "flawed"? is it possible to have a better system? And at what point does that system take away from the spirit and enjoyment of the competition (i.e. removing the playoffs all together and simply rewarding the best regular season team as champion)?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I'm not under the illusion the best team wins, but others clearly are; or, better put, they define the team that wins the last game as the best team.
I do care that the best teams are recognized as such. Call it justice. I don't, however, think that has to be via winning the last game. What I'm ultimately advocating is that people better educate themselves as to the implications of playoffs.
The winner of the Super Bowl can be celebrated without that victory implying that they are the best team. The win is great accomplishment. It need not be more than that.
And no, it wouldn't be correct to "consider the whole of the leagues (sic) existance (sic)." Personnel on teams change. Draft, free agency periods, retirements tend to happen on a annual basis.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I think you missed my point about considering the whole of the league's existence. Look at the all of the super bowl winners and determine how many of them have not been the best team in the league that year by whatever criteria you choose (DVOA, or Pythagorean, whatever) instead of simply looking at the current years results and decrying blasphemy. I'm not sure what you thought I meant.
On to your point about recognition or justice, and further what you are advocating for, that people educate themselves as to the implications of playoffs, why should they do that? This is like a toddler throwing a tantrum demanding to recreate the rules of a game and demand that all others capitulate, what's in it for them? I would assume until proven otherwise (as evidenced by a strong call to change the current playoff system to something you might propose) that most people don't really care about "who the best team was during the whole of the season based on some stat like DVOA or Pythagorean record", so why should they do it just for a minority of people seeking recognition for this accomplishment?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Funny, but I though the purpose of the NFL season was to provide ENTERTAINMENT to viewers, so as to make money for owners. If it does that, it is a success. It is just a business after all. The fairness of the process of determining the champion is only relevant insofar as it increases or decreases the fan base on a scale large enough to matter. Compelling story lines like that of this years Cards make for good entertainment, so why change the system? You could also argue that controversy (e.g., 11-5 teams not making it to the dance) adds to the drama and keeps people interested and invested, so why change the system? Changes to the system might make for a more appealing product, but might not. If the business model as constituted is working well, then why change it?
You could argue that college football is not a business like the NFL, and should therefore implement the fairest possible system. But of course for all the big schools, football is most definably a business and therefore their concerns are much like those of the NFL, as they should be.
My main concern for the NFL is that the games themselves are fun to watch and so things like officiating are much more important to me. If you want to compare a bunch of different cancer treatments, then okay, having the fairest possible system to determine which is best is pretty bloody important. For the NFL, not so much. Just crown their ass.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Playoffs have the goal of identifying the team who is best at the end of the season. Right now, thats clearly Arizona and Pitt.
You can games in weeks 1 and 2 in the BCS, then beat every team you play after that by 100 points, and you still dont make the championship, despite the fact that you would clearly be the best team in the nation.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I'm relatively new to football (2½) years, so I haven't quite made up my mind yet. However i don't think a "devaluated" regular season is that bad. I mean, they still play 16 games for the right to be in the playoffs and still have a chance to win the big dance. Where you go from, say, 10-6 depends on how high you value "momentum" and a bye, or a certain opponent in the wild card round.
You could certainly argue that the "real" cards were the "week six" cards, and then they just stopped playing because from then on their division title was basically secured. Or that the cards have real trouble when they are travelling to eastcoast cities, and can only be saved by Delhomme. But the Cards are still a great team - they just played the setup like a little fiddle - securing their division, secure home-field adv. in WCR, see what happens from there on - they then caught a few breaks (can be said for all deep playoffs participants).
If I had the final vote, I would play a Hockey-like scenario, with two conferences and top-six (of 16, ofc) goes to the playoffs with #1 and #2 getting the bye. I would probably get rid of the divisions - I hate that some teams are "frauds" because of soft schedules.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The problem with the argument from Mandel is that he's comparing the lower seeds in the NFL (a 32 team league where 37.5% of teams make the playoffs) to college, with it's 120 I-A teams where 45 teams would make the playoffs if it took just as many teams. Now, lets say that college took 8 teams for the playoff (the most common number it seems). That's 6.7% of teams. If the NFL did that, you would have 2.1 teams, so a nice Titans-Giants Super Bowl.
As other comments pointed out, none of the teams in the NFL get to open their season playing Arena League, or CFL, teams, which is about what the BCS teams do. Sure, the CFL or Arena team might win a game sometimes, but they're scheduled to make them money and watch them stomp on the little guy. If everyone in the NFL got to play 5 of those games (most BCS schools only have 8 league games, so 33% of their schedule can be cream puffs), then you'd assume most NFL teams would start 4-1 or 5-0. So, if the Cardinals go 8-3 in their other 11 games (as they still beat up on the NFC West for their required league games), suddenly they're a 13-3 or 12-4 team, which looks much more impressive than 9-7. However, all that's happened is they gave themselves some free wins to make it looks better so that boosters can show up and enjoy a late summer game where they stomp all over someone.
If we make all of the BCS teams (sorry to Utah here, for this example) and make them only play league games, or other BCS teams, do you think we're getting 11-1 teams every single year? If the conference champs from one year have to play the conference champs from other conferences the next year (So, Florida gets Texas, Penn State, and USC next year, with 1-2 of those on the road at least), are we going to get the same teams going 11-1 every year? No, we're going to get a lot more 9-3 or 10-2 teams, and someone going 11-1 or 12-0 is going to be incredibly impressive.
So, Mandel is a writer who I read, and usually really enjoy, but there are far too many differences in how college and pro teams schedule from year to year to make any comparison between their records and bowls vs playoff virtually meaningless. Now, lets say the BCS adopts some of the rules of the NFL (conference champs get to play each other the next year, no I-AA games, fewer MAC teams for Big 10 schools and WAC teams for Pac 10 schools, etc..) and winning your conference (like the Cardinals) gets you a spot into the BCS playoffs, then that 9-4 team coming into the playoffs will be FAR more impressive in that situation than it would under the current system with the free wins teams build in. I'd watch those playoffs, and the regular season, knowing that the teams that made it have truly earned their way in, no matter what their record is.
So, while we might have all thought the Cardinals sucked, we might just all be wrong, like we were with the Giants last year at this time. However, in his comparison between the BCS and the NFL Playoffs, they just can't be compared I don't believe.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
ChrisH :: Thu, 01/22/2009 - 5:37pm
As other comments pointed out, none of the teams in the NFL get to open their season playing Arena League, or CFL, teams, which is about what the BCS teams do. Sure, the CFL or Arena team might win a game sometimes, but they're scheduled to make them money and watch them stomp on the little guy.
This might be just crazy enough to work. Writers write about adding a game or two to the regular season, but I like the idea of eliminating the 4 pre-season games, each team gets their first four games at home against whatever 4 CFL or Arena League teams, or mixture, the NFL team can schedule, games played by NFL rules. You might see an upset every now and again, a player from the CFL or Arena League could get noticed, each NFL team gets more home games, and the season ticket holders who have to pay for the pre-season games now, would get to see games that counted.
Another idea is if the team wants to make the play-offs win more games, win the division.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
ChrisH :: Thu, 01/22/2009 - 5:37pm
As other comments pointed out, none of the teams in the NFL get to open their season playing Arena League, or CFL, teams, which is about what the BCS teams do. Sure, the CFL or Arena team might win a game sometimes, but they're scheduled to make them money and watch them stomp on the little guy.
This might be just crazy enough to work. Writers write about adding a game or two to the regular season, but I like the idea of eliminating the 4 pre-season games, each team gets their first four games at home against whatever 4 CFL or Arena League teams, or mixture, the NFL team can schedule, games played by NFL rules. You might see an upset every now and again, a player from the CFL or Arena League could get noticed, each NFL team gets more home games, and the season ticket holders who have to pay for the pre-season games now, would get to see games that counted.
Another idea is if the team wants to make the play-offs win more games, win the division.
Forgot to close the emphasis tag. Sorry about that.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
(Hopefully this ends the italics madness.)
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
If the format had been different, the Cardinals would have played differently. This is like complaining about the Electoral College AFTER a candidate with the popular vote loses the election. If popular vote had been the criteria, the campaign would have been waged entirely differently.
The Cardinals played by the rules. If the rules had been different, the players would have played harder, and you can certainly bet the coaches would have schemed differently during those no-longer-meaningless games.
What really cheeses me off is the difference in how the Giants were treated last year, and how the Cardinals are being treated this year. Or consider this: how would people have reacted if the Eagles had been in the Super Bowl? Would there be any moaning about the death of the regular season if we had an Eagles-Steelers Super Bowl?
I think not, but they had exactly one-half more of a win than the Cardinals.
Look -- the last time this team was playing meaningful regular-season games, they were 4th in weighted DVOA. What's so odd about them in the Super Bowl?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Your argument implies that the Cardinals had nothing to play for after winning their division. However, winning the NFC West with a 9-7 record only guaranteed them the four seed. Entering Week 12, the Cardinals were 7-3, just one game back in the race for a first round bye. To say that they had no motivation and therefore lost four of their next five games - three of which were by at least 21 points - is simply a false statement.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The last really "meaningful" non-division game the Cards played was against the Giants, where they lost by less than 10 points. After that, they knew that they weren't getting a bye (bad tie breaks against the Giants and Panthers) and that they were winning their division (had a magic number of one with several weeks left). They didn't start getting blown out until after they had essentially clinched a division title AND had clinched that they weren't getting a bye. You can argue that the 3 vs. 4 seed wasn't determined, but there's not really enough difference between the two spots to warrant a team showing all of its blitz packages and trick plays during the regular season home stretch.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I'm a Jaguars season ticket holder, but FO is going out of its way to try to convert me into a Cardinals fan. Add in the sideswipe in the Cover-3 article re: how FO has more fans than the Cardinals do.
Amen, bravehoptoad. I suppose 9-6-1 would've preserved the Super Bowl's integrity.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Don't forget the Giants were only given respect for their playoff run in retrospect. The Super Bowl build up was very similar to this year. Do the Giants/Cards REALLY have a chance?
Look back no further than the "B.S. Report Podcast Super Bowl Preview Podcast." It's still high-larious.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The Cardinals (and Patriots last year) make the point that the "best team of the year" in NFL may not make it into (let alone win) the Super Bowl.
The Cardinals secured their spot in the playoff early (division qualifications - yippee!). They did not need to play (or practice) as hard. New England last year pushed hard and got tired and had numerous injuries and played worse as the last few games came up (and the playoffs, let alone what might have been their worst game in the Super Bowl).
There are really two parts of the NFL. Qualify for the Playoffs (a single elimination tournament) and win the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl champion does not indicate that this team was the best team. If every game in the NFL has the better team winning 51%-95% of the time (New England of last year facing KC or Saint Louis or Seattle or Detroit of this year might win 95%) then it is a far from certain even to win 3 games in a row. The sample size is small.
Personally, I think both systems could be improved or changed to something that I would prefer. For instance, a Classic Bowl + 1 could work in the short term (while contracts through 2014). I doubt it would have given Utah a chance to win it all, but maybe it would. Maybe Utah would have played against Florida in the Sugar Bowl, who might then face either Oklahoma (who would have played Bama or Cincinnatti or someone) or USC (who crushed Penn State in the Rose Bowl) or USC would play Oklahoma. That would just give an extra quality game before the BCS does its magic to determine the top 2 teams.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
This seems like a lot of whining about an anomaly in the system that occurs, what, every 30 years? Usually the NFL playoff system produces results as intended, in that 6 teams with the best records from each conference go on to the playoffs. Didn't happen this year, which is statistically improbable but certainly possible.
Its more of an input error, not an output error. The NFC and AFC West were stacked with weak clubs, the NFC South, East and AFC East seemed to have a disproportionate number of very good clubs. The playoff system was developed under the assumption that from year-to-year, the best teams would be evenly distributed among the conference divisions, which is for the most part a safe assumption.
If the league doesn't like it, then they should reorganize the divisions and the conferences to reflect perceived team strength. I think tampering with divisions on a regular basis to enforce an even distribution of strong teams is a much worse idea though, and would routinely produce wackier results.
As for college FB - I can't take any sport seriously in which the coaches schedule their own games. Have scheduling regulated by the NCAA to enforce some semblance of schedule parity, and then we can talk bowls vs. playoffs.
Aaron's quote undermines brilliance of FO methodology
I'm glad some people are so incensed with the Cardinals' Cinderella story that they'd interpret it as a buttress for a sports evil as great as the BCS. Only a couple of obvious problems:
1. Blatant unfairness is far worse than occasional upsets (sorry Utah).
2. Having the vast majority of your teams playing dead rubbers every week is the ultimate devaluing of a product.
3. Super Bowl champions often win the year before or the year after their highest DVOA rating. Instead of suggesting championships are increasingly luck-driven, this argues strongly for the need to build a consistently powerful organization.
With all due respect to Aaron and the amazing FO brand, his email to Peter King is hyperbolic mainstream hand-waving and does a lot of damage to FO's genius. In fact, Aaron appears to be using the perception of the two 1 vs. 6 upsets to help make his case despite the fact that his own stats suggest these weren't upsets.
The regular season DOES have a HUGE predictive capability, and FO is often the only place to see it.
Wild Card Round
1. FO readers know that Baltimore is a huge favorite over home field Miami. Baltimore wins easily.
2. FO readers know that San Diego and Indy have virtually identical DVOAs and thus a San Diego home win is not an upset.
3. FO readers know that Philadelphia's DVOA is significantly better than home field Minnesota and therefore victory is not an upset.
4. FO readers know that Arizona and Atlanta are not that far apart in DVOA and both have a high variance. Cardinals win is mildly surprising but not shocking.
Divisional Round
1. FO readers know that Baltimore has a higher DVOA than Tennessee and that weighted DVOA increases the gap. Therefore #6 seed over #1 seed is not an upset even with homefield factored in.
2. FO readers along with the general public know the Steelers are a big favorite at home. No surprise.
3. FO readers know that Philadelphia has a better DVOA than the Giants and that weighted DVOA increases the gap. Therefore #6 seed over #1 seed is not an upset.
4. FO readers and general public expect huge Panther victory. Unfortunately for Panthers and pundits, nothing on earth has a higher variance than Jake Delhomme.
Conference Championship Round
1. FO readers know (and general public intuits) that the Steelers are #1 in weighted DVOA. With home field, their victory is not a surprise.
2. FO readers know that Arizona has a huge home field advantage and a huge variance. Schatz points out that the Eagles still have a higher road DVOA than the Cardinals home DVOA, making the Eagles mild favorites.
There is only one game in the playoffs that can be characterized as a stunner based on FO metrics: Arizona at Carolina.
One surprising outcome in 10 games hardly supports Aaron's email that this might be "bad for the NFL" nor does it support Peter King's notion that these are simply the two hottest teams.
Re: Aaron's quote undermines brilliance of FO methodology
They ARE the two hottest teams. They're the only ones left.
Re: Aaron's quote undermines brilliance of FO methodology
I still can't get over Aaron's quote. It seems to suggest that predictability is of high (possibly ultimate?) value in determining the worthiness of a crowned champion.
Fairness would seem to be a much more important value. The reason the vast majority of people hate the BCS is the rampant unfairness involved (and the fact that, contrary to what BCS-ers would have you believe, without a playoff, the vast majority of college football games count for, in Mandel's words, bupkis).
If fairness is the most important criteria, here's what the NFL does right and does wrong:
Right
1. Byes for the #1 and #2 seeds - A single-elimination tournament provides less shelter for teams who've had excellent regular seasons than best-of formats. Therefore, the NFL gives the top 4 teams byes. While Wild Card teams have done well as of late, these byes give top teams a MASSIVE mathematical advantage in advancing to the Super Bowl.
Wrong
1. Ignoring overall records in awarding playoff spots - The exclusion of New England in '08, Cleveland in '07, and Kansas City in '05 is just as arbitrary and capricious as the decision to exclude Utah, Texas, Texas Tech, USC, and Alabama from national championship consideration (well, not that capricious, at least the NFL exclusions are based on obvious rules and not politics).
2. Failing to recognize actual regular season accomplishment in awarding home field - That the Cardinals have won their playoff games is not a problem in the least. That they hosted two of those games suggests a structural flaw. The Cardinals finished 9-7 against the DVOA-rated 27th hardest schedule, hardly a regular season resume that suggests they should host in the playoffs.
3. The creation of heavily unbalanced schedules that skew regular season results - While many fans and commentators lean on the oft-quoted "We are what are record says we are" mantra, sophisticated fans know that the difference between the Cardinals schedule and the Eagles schedule makes the Eagles 9-6-1 a much greater accomplishment than the Cardinals 9-7. Some unfairness is unavoidable in sports scheduling, but there's no reason to go out of your way to increase the unfairness.
Possible solutions?
1. Increase the schedule to 18 games. Not only would this be a bonanza for NFL owners, players, and fans alike, it would eliminate much of the unfairness. NFL teams could play 6 games against their own division and 12 games spread across three other divisions. This would have a dramatic effect on the equality of schedules.
2. Allow wild card teams to be seeded ahead of divisional winners. This would dramatically decrease the opportunity for "less deserving" teams to make the Super Bowl. It would also increase the number of "live" games, games that affect playoff positioning. It is a real blow to the integrity of the sport to have teams battling for playoff position going against teams resting their starters. At least a few of these games could be eliminated in this fashion.
3. The NFL could also set 10 wins as an automatic playoff qualifier (up to 8 teams per conference). The fact is that while the playoff tiebreaker follows an easy logic, it is not a logic that promotes fairness when taken in the greater context of 8-8 and 9-7 teams making the playoffs. Allowing a 7th and potentially 8th team would decrease the advantage of the top seeds, but since DVOA suggests that the difference in a #1 seed and a #3 seed (or even a #6 seed) is often strength of schedule, it is obviously more important to allow deserving teams into the playoffs than it is to protect the advantage of top seeds.
That so many people would be frustrated with the Cardinals playoff success instead of celebrating one of the only true Cinderella stories of our times suggests not that people no longer root for an underdog, but that people are beyond frustrated with structural flaws in their sports that promote unfairness. It is the unfairness in both the BCS and the NFL playoff selection and seeding process that make people question whether or not the outcomes are bad for the sport.
Re: Aaron's quote undermines brilliance of FO methodology
Solution #2 Seconded and Amen'd. Although my Giants' "Road Warrior" status last year would have been affected, since they would have hosted Tampa in the wild card.
The current whack-@ss seeding has created this problem too often in the last few years.
For you to win a wild-card already means that you have at least one good team in your Division who you had to play twice. To finish behind that good team and still have more wins than another Division winner should earn you something, as that is difficult to do - seemingly more statistically difficult than winning a division.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I think the NFL playoffs are great and hate the bowls system and the BCS. Just my 2 cents. I also think PIT ARI should be an enjoyable game and could care less that ARI played poorly down the stretch.
Maybe while we are at it we should take the Patriots 2001 Super Bowl away too, they are after all a historically weak Super Bowl winner, and were two score dogs in that game.
Re: Cardinals Make Case for fewer NFL divisions
this is a bit off subject, nevertheless: the Cardinals and more broadly the NFC West and AFC West made a case for too many divisions. If there were 4 divisions instead of 8 there would be less chance of a 9-7 team getting two home playoff games.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I also do not understand a statistician being bothered by a high variance. As noted above, the only strongly surprising outcome, via FO stats, in the Cardinals' current position, is their stomp of the Panthers, and even that fades once one examines Delhomme's track record of occasionally sucking like a plutonium-powered Hoover. If one was at all paying attention to individual match-ups, the Cards win over the Eagles was even less surprising than the mild upset FO stats suggested the Cards' win was.
The BCS sucks because, as noted above, it leaves in place an incentive for traditional powers to deliberately attempt to schedule extremely noncompetive games. Perhaps some folks like the predictable 73-7 wins over the likes of The Citadel, but most football fans don't. The BCS also makes it extremely unlikely that even an undefeated non-BCS team will compete in the championship game. No undefeated NFL team needs to worry about that.
A properly constructed eight team playoff would end the incentive to schedule creampuffs, and add the incentive to try to schedule as difficult a non-conference schedule as possible. It would make the regular conference schedule better, because there. would be no chance that a team which didn't win it's conference could play for a national championship. Hell, start the season on the last Saturday in August, and one could even have the last Saturday in December open, in case some conference wanted the option to have an extra conference playoff game in case of some weird three team tie, as in this year. Have the quarterfinals played on seeds 1-4's home fields, with seeding determined by highest quality non conference wins, play the semis on Jan 1st at two of the traditional bowls, and the final game a week later.
Properly promoted, this would eventually match the NFL's playoff ratings, and be an absolute money factory. The idiot BCS college presidents, even sharing the revenue fully with two other conferences each year, or even all 5 other conferences, would eventually wonder how they ever lived without all the money they would be rolling in.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
It is impossible to have a properly constructed playoff system in college football period. There are many if not most times when the two best teams in the nation are in a single conference and there are plenty of times when they do not play each other in the regular season. Its possible for say Michigan and Penn State to be the clear cut best teams in the nation with undefeated records under your system one gets screwed. In this case worse than the BCS at least with the BCS they know they have to be one of the two top ranked teams. Where as your system a shitty 3 or 4 loss Big East team gets their place.
Also, a playoff system would induce more cup cake schedules. Why take a chance losing to even a mid tier team when USC can drop Norte Dame and play SDSU at home instead. Non conference will always be one of the tie breakers. So again say UM has the best team but losses to a quality ND by 3 pts on the road while Penn State plays creampuffs and goes undefeated. One team has a 11-1 record Penn st has 12-0 and gets a spot based on tie breaker.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
So, a flawed system where a multitude of top teams compete for the championship should lose out to a flawed system where two teams vie for the title?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Of course, if the NFL had a BCS type system, the Giants and Titans would be playing in the Super Bowl. Is that really better than the Steelers and Cardinals? At least the Cardnials managed to win a playoff game this year.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
What an unbelievably bad idea. It would completely ruin pro football. Almost every team's season is over by week 8. Worst idea I've heard for the NFL in a long time. Please never adopt the college system, err, joke of a system.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
quite possibly the most specious reasoning I have heard in a while...then we would have a Giants-Jets super bowl every year.
College Football is terrible it is the only sport that doesn't decide things on the field. Why would u want the NFL to become a giant popularity contest? Idiots shouldn't decide who plays for a n.c. or who is best.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
fuck this article! and fuck this myth that the college football season is sooooo exciting.
the nfl regular season, as is, is one of the most exciting things around. week after week we hang on every game, even those among crappy teams, endlessly dissecting unique plays and performances (the ed hochuli blown call was talked about for weeks, for instance).
college football has only a handful of games that get any real national attention throughout the year, and a bunch of other regional rivalries that will always matter to the people in those regions no matter the records. most of the national discussion i hear revolves around how college football's season may or may not suck.
the nfl playoffs are the greatest time of the year, and it is a total myth that the best regular teams aren't making it to the super bowl. who really was better than the cardinals in the nfc? they not only beat three of the best four regular season teams, but they looked like the better team in each game. the afc actually held pretty true to what you'd expect. baltimore, tennessee, and pittsburgh were probably the three best teams and they not coincidentally had the three best playoff runs.
but in college football, utah, usc, and texas came off looking as good as florida and oklahoma when all was done. what did this supposedly exciting regular season really do other than give every fan a huge case of blue balls?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Please no. It would ruin the NFL. The idea of watching sports is to be entertained. You would rather watch 1 Giants-Titans game than the whole playoffs thus far??? Who cares if the Cardinals aren't the best team, upsets are awesome. I really don't understand your problem with this Aaron. Is it just bitterness over the Pats losing to an inferior team last year? Because most people enjoy unpredictability and the fact that anyone can win rather than having the whole season become meaningless halfway-through to 90% of teams.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Forgot to close the emphasis tag. Sorry about that.
Maybe it is closed now?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
If you want to get all uppity about it.
The NFL should switch to a baseball type schedule and expand the league by 2 teams. 34 teams, 17 to a conference. Round robin play. within your own conference only. Top 2 get first round byes, the next 4 sort it out. Tiebreakers would be based only on which team won their regular season matchup, and there would be no overtime in the regular season, ties at the end of regulation count. All records would be directly comparable within conference as they all played the same teams. If more than 2 teams are tied, use a common opponents approach til you get to 2 and then see which team won the regular season matchup.
Or you could just expand the schedule to 18 games and keep the current alignment and number of teams. Play your division twice each, and the rest of the conference once.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Interesting. My only concern regarding a 34 team league is that its already apparent (IMO) that there is barely enough talent to go around with 32 teams. This last year we've had some of the worst teams in history (Lions, Bungles and Rams) and this is supposedly the era of parity.
I'm also a proponent of a shorter regular-season schedule to reduce some of the impact attrition has on the outcome of the regular season. 16 games is probably a touch too many, 14 games seems adequate for the regular season. By reducing the # of games you of course increase the value of those games in the playoff picture. But that ain't never gonna happen.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Hopefully I just closed the emphasis tag.
Are you fucking kidding? The playoffs are a playoff for a reason. That's the whole point. You play well enough to GET into the playoffs. Then it is DO or DIE. It isn't ABOUT who's best. Ever heard that the playoffs is the second season, where everyone starts 0-0? And if you lose, you're out? That's what it is! You're arguing for a freaking BCS to be applied to the NFL, for Chrissakes! So you're saying it makes more sense to have pundits and computers VOTE on the two teams to play for the championship, instead of having, you know, the TEAMS play the games?
I am a long-time reader of FO. And in this, I am SO, SO dissapointed.
--
Arguing for a system where division winners aren't necessarily the top seeds, that I can see an argument for, but I'm not sure where I stand on that one. But as for the NFL+BCS combo... seriously, I'm kind of angry at FO. Angry and sad. DVOA, DYAR, they tell us who played better. But they don't and likely can't tell us who's GOING to play better. Matchups, sample size, and the simple fact of that while past performance is a great indicator of future performance, IT IS NOT PERFECT.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Before I lose credibility, *disappointed.
collapsable 'plus one'?
College Bowl 'plus one' sounds good to me...or maybe further polling could determine if a 'plus one' is needed on a year-by-year basis? perhaps 'plus one' could expand or contract depending on the # of 'true' contenders, as determined by polling? Seriously, the BCS is so weird and unique as is, if there is anyplace where you can do some serious year-by-year jiggering this is it.
yeah, that's what we need...more polling.
But I don't know how you could say the regular season is 'devalued' by a 'plus one' format. You still have 4 spots for 100-plus teams, meaning you can't lose more than one game and hope to be there, in all likelihood. That still gives every game big-time meaning.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Man, this is just like the brazilian soccer major debate: Playoff or round-robin?! Certainly, the majority of brazilian journalists would say that NFL should have a 62-games season, and the champion to be that team with most wins at the end of the season. The problem is football season has only 22 weeks.
There are plenty of ways to determine a champion. All of them have flaws. NFL has found theirs and are relativily succesful. One-game playoff will be always about upsets, good and bad days, good and bad officiating. NFL doesn't want its champion to be the best every year; they want to have emotion, excitement, surprises. Who can deny that they have it?! The truth is justice in sports are boring...
Do you want some change in NFL? I just can think in one. Like in Europe's UCL, put the playoffs in the next season. Regular season (let's called it Divisional Championships) would finished in week 20. The WildCard games would be on October (week 7); Divisional, on November (week 12); Conference, on December (week 17); and the SuperBowl, the dead last game of the season (week 22). As it have proven year after year, playoffs are a different championship anyway.
The biggest problem in the NFL is this "Super Bowl is the only thing that matters". It isn't. Or at least it shouldn't be. In MLB, for instance, teams celebrate the divisonal title as they were world champs. Putting the playoffs as different tournament in the next season, would solve that for Football.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Actually, the idea of a "bye week" would certainly desapear because a minimum of 30 teams would get a least one. In this "next year tournament" system there would be necessary 21 weeks (20 with games), instead of 22.
---
Imagining this is possible, it needs a year of transition, so the next year playoff tournament would be like this:
Week 6 (WildCard)
NFC: ATL(#6) @ NYG(#3); MIN(#5) @ CAR(#4)
AFC: IND(#6) @ TEN(#3); MIA(#5) @ SD(#4)
Week 11 (Divisional)
NFC: WCwinners @ PHI(#2) or ARI(#1)
AFC: WCwinners @ BAL(#2) or PIT(#1)
Week 16 (Conference)
Week 21 (SuperBowl)
---
And you name it this new playoff tournament as you like.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
For every team like the cardinals, who lays off the last 4 weeks, theres a couple of teams like the Pats and the Dolphins, who are still playing good football at the end of the season for one reason: They still have a chance.
You go to a BCS system, and those teams lay down instead of the cardinals.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
BTW, the best way to make a "Plus-1 BCS Bowl" is to go back to the old Bowl system and make the two Best teams - among those Bowl winners, and according to BCS - play against each other for the National title in an extra game.
No Playoffs...
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The article totally misses the main point of a playoff: to determine a champion. The purporse of having a playoff is not to determine the best team, because the best team doesn't always win, it's to determine an undisputed champion. The Patriots were clearly the best team in the NFL last year and the Giants weren't even the best team in their division. But the Giants won and they were the champions.
If you want every game "to count" or whatever, then don't have playoffs at all. Just play the regular season and declare the team with the best record to be the champion.
The fact that the Cardinals are in the super bowl doesn't invalidate the regular season - they still had to qualify for the playoffs. And then once they did that, they had a fair shot to win the championship on the field, just like every other playoff team.
IMO, the fact that "lesser" teams like the Cards this year and Giants last year are doing well in the playoffs is because there is more parity in the NFL these days. There isn't a whole lot of difference between a 9-7 team and a 12-4 team. Look at a team like the Jets - they could have won 12 games if a few plays went the other way, and they could've lost 10 games if a few plays went the other way.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Here is the main flaw in the article's argument vis-a-vis BCS vs NFL playoffs, Arizona earned the right to be in the Championship game by knocking off three quality opponents in the playoffs. The BCS wouldve awarded them the spot in the title game even without those three wins. Why? Because if this was college football Arizona wouldve scheduled cupcake opponents, ran through its own division and nabbed a spot based on an undefeated season without really playing anyone. ESPN morons wouldve waxed poetic about the vaunted Cards' offense, even though once beaten teams like Philly, the Giants and the Panthers played tougher schedules and were on paper better teams. In the article, you should refer to them as the Arizona Buckeyes!
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
While I would never want to see an NFL BCS and agree with the sentiment of liking playoffs, the author of the article does have a good point that the college system forces the good teams to play every week as "do or die". No slacking off because you've clinched your division. (And for the record--I still don't buy that Arizona was slacking off. They displayed a level of ineptitude against New England that was only possible by a deeply flawed team, not one that was taking it easy. If that was taking it easy, then those players don't have an ounce of pride or competitiveness, which I refuse to believe).
The chief problem, as some posters have mentioned, is that the structure of the NFL playoff system is unfair. It is possible, all though not guaranteed, that weaker teams will make the playoffs at the expense of stronger teams. This generally happens when entire divisions are weak.
The best solution is to have bigger divisions. While the 8 4-team divsions are nice from a scheduling standpoint, it means that you only need three particular teams to happen to be bad in order for your division to be "easy" and to get a home playoff game, even if you're only average, while you only need one of three teams to happen to be good to end up fighting for your playoff life even if you're good. Figure on average, in any given year, each team has a 50% chance of being below average (kind of the definition of average)--there is a 1/16 chance that any given division in any given year will have four below average teams. Which means that, on average, once every two years you will have a really undeserving team get not just a playoff birth but a home playoff game. The flipside of that logic is that once every two years on average you will hav ea division with four above average teams, which means at least one good team (and possibly as many as three) will get excluded from the playoffs from that division.
I've become a proponent of going to four eight team divisions, where the division winners make the playoffs with a first round bye, the division #2's and four wildcard teams would make the playoffs and play on wildcard weekend. It would greatly diminish the chance of coasting to a playoff birth on the basis of an easy schedule, of teams having clinched resting their starters, give some teriffic late season games, and reinforce great rivalries. The only downside is that it would make it impossible for teams in different divisions to play each other as often as they do now (each team is guaranteed to play each other team at least once every three years, which would be difficult in a four division format). But does anyone really care if the Buccanneers hardly every play the Chiefs? After all, barring the World Series, there is practically no chance of the Seattle Mariners and the Florida Marlins playing, but do baseball fans particularly mind?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
(Hopefully this ends the italics madness.)
I think those who argue in favor of a BCS-like system are operating under a false assumption: that there is a "best" team.
Sure, in some years, there is a team that is clearly better than anyone else (2007 Patriots, 2001 Rams, 1991 Redskins, 1985 Bears), but those are exceptional cases.
The reality is that you can't simply order NFL teams 1-32. Selecting the "best" two or four or eight or sixteen is an impossible task. Therefore, you need a playoff system with qualifying factors set prior to the start of the season (win your division or be one of the two non-division winners with the best record) in order to crown a champion. The "best" team may not win, but at least all teams had a shot.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
In my opinion, there are two criteria by which to judge a potential post season. Do the participants find it fair, and do the fans find it entertaining? The answers for the NFL are most of them and most of them. The answers for the BCS are some of them and some of them.
I love this site, FO is miles ahead of the mainstream media, but some of you guys (Schatz) just need to make peace with the fact that sometimes the NFL is really unpredictable. That doesn't make what you're doing any less interesting or valuable; in fact, to me, it makes it more interesting and valuable. If the better team always won, what would be the point of playing the games? If it was totally random, what would be the point of analysis? It's the combination of the two that keeps me interested.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Great points. And another thing is that when you only play a 16-game schedule, there aren't enough games for "good" teams to separate from "average" teams. Looking purely at won-loss records, there isn't a large enough sample size to say that an 11-5 team is really much better than a 9-7 team. In a sport like baseball which plays 10 times as many games, there is a much higher confidence level that a 110 win team is better than a 90 win team.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The biggest problems with the BCS are the fault of humans, mostly in the form of hack sport writers.
It was the hack sports writers that wanted to even crown a national champion in a sport that has 100 plus teams from across the nation with widely different budgets and goals for their teams playing vastly different schedules. So they started the polls. Than there was the controversies in the 90's that lead to the BCS but the hacks still wanted their voice heard so their inserted themselves there. Than they wanted more power over who was chosen so every year the computer polls lost more and more of their influence to the point they are as Bill James said the scapegoat.
The biggest problem is that the teams do not know what they have to do in order to "qualify". That is mostly due to the human polls where each person has their own criteria for their rankings that they never explicitly state nor are the held too. At least with the computer polls they use the same criteria every week.
A playoff system would be no better. Because of the nature of the game and field it will always require a selection committee to decide who is in. To give some examples based on requested playoff formats.
4 teams or any plus one. A team like Utah this year would just not qualify. At the end of the regular season they where ranked 6th meaning they would not qualify for the playoff. And lets be honest about this if there was a plus one system they would not have been ranked 2nd in the nation and team like USC or Texas would play Florida. This system also gives us the benefit of pushing powerhouses to play cupcakes.
8 team playoff. Any system would have guaranteed spots for the conference champ of the Pac 10, Big 12, Big 10, SEC and probably the ACC and even Big East so that leaves at most 4 at large but likely just 2 or 3. The only way Utah makes it this year is if Both the ACC and Big East champ does not get an auto bid. And there is not an 8 team playoff system that would allow Boise State in.
16 team playoff. This will never happen but to play in fantasy land for a moment. A regular season game would have to be dropped meaning teams not going will be out a few tens to hundred of thousand dollars. If each conference gets an auto bid teams like Troy and Tulsa get in despite them being at best the 6th best team in the ACC this year. You will also have the kids playing a playoff game during finals or going head to head with the nfl playoffs.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
"16 team playoff. This will never happen but to play in fantasy land for a moment. A regular season game would have to be dropped meaning teams not going will be out a few tens to hundred of thousand dollars. If each conference gets an auto bid teams like Troy and Tulsa get in despite them being at best the 6th best team in the ACC this year. You will also have the kids playing a playoff game during finals or going head to head with the nfl playoffs."
Why would they have to drop a game? The FCS plays a 12 game schedule and then has a 16 team playoff. And nobody seems to care about their playoffs interfering with finals.
And if you're not going to treat all the conferences equally then kick the non-BCS ones out of the FBS.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Here is the simple answer, FCS is not even remotely the same thing as FBS. The more complex answer. In the lower divisions (with a rare exception) there is less pressure to win. The schools do not use the AD to make money. The players are seen and treated as students first and athletes second. They get about as much press coverage as high school football in suburban New York or Chicago if that much.
FBS players on the other hand have 2 24 hour networks and dozens of publications following their every move. Many if not most of the players would not have been acceptated to the school if not for their ball playing ability and to make grades actually need time to study for finals. With a playoff they will have to have practice during that week and of course they will have about a hundred mics in their face. The pressure they are under besides this is immense. And of course the teams that would make the playoffs will tend to have the most future pros that now have to risk 3 more games a year that they do not get paid. In a 4 year college career these games could add up to an additional season of free play. Most of the players can not afford the insurance policies to protect themselves from injuries that will cost them a pro career and none are allowed to buy ones that protect their draft slots from slipping.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Actually the FCS playoffs are nationally televised. Obviously they don't get as much coverage as the FBS games would get, but the point is there is no reason other than the refusal of the BCS schools to share revenue with non-BCS schools.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The CUSA champ beat the ACC champ head to head this season.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The CUSA champ beat the ACC champ head to head this season.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Here's my idea for a 16 team playoff, and how it would have played out this year. Basically, you take all of the conference champions and fill in the at-large spots with the highest ranked non-champs. For this, I used the BCS rankings to determine that. Play the first three rounds on campus, with the championship game rotating between the Orange, Sugar, Rose, and Fiesta bowls. In the years that they don't host the title game, they get their picks of the teams who lost in the semi and quarter finals. The other 30 bowls get to pick from the same crop of teams that they are picking from in our current system.
Either eliminate one of the bye weeks or get rid of the conference championship games. Play the playoffs during December, with the finals being as close to New Years' Day as possible. During December, most schools are out from the middle of the month on, so there is not a lot of class time missed. Additionally, we're not talking about very many teams playing a large number of games. Right now, high school kids play more games than Division I-A athletes. I-AA plays more games, as do II and III--and in Division III, they don't have scholarships, so the academic line is nonsense.
But on to the proposal (which I cut and pasted from an email that I sent to some of my coworkers PRIOR to the bowl games):
Part of this is going to be flawed, because Georgia Tech was the highest ranking team in the BCS from the ACC, but didn’t play in the CG because of tiebreakers. So they don’t make it.
ACC-VPI
Big XII-Oklahoma
Big East-Cincy
Big Televen-Penn State
CUSA-ECU
MAC-Buffalo
MWC-Utah
Pac 10-Southern Cal
SEC-Florida
Sun Belt-Troy
WAC-Boise State
Wildcards: Texas, Alabama, Texas Tech, Ohio State, Texas Christian
Seeds:
1) OU
2) Florida
3) Texas
4) Alabama
5) USC
6) Utah
7) Texas Tech
8) Penn State
9) Boise State
10) Ohio State
11) Texas Christian
12) Cincinatti
13) Virginia Polytechnic Institute
14) East Carolina
15) Troy
16) Buffalo
Which gives us the following matchups:
Buffalo at OU
Troy at UF
ECU at Texas
VPI at Bama
Cincy at USC
TCU at Utah
Ohio State at Texas Tech
Boise at Penn State
TCU and Utah are in the same conference, so we’d have to find a work around for that—or would we? I would also consider a clause that requires that a wild card cannot host a conference champ. That would make ECU host Texas, and VPI host Bama.
How it would likely play out is this:
OU over Buffalo
UF over Troy
Texas over ECU (regardless of location)
Bama over VPI (close game, though)
USC all over Cincy
TCU over Utah (I think that TCU is playing better at this point)
Penn State over Boise State
Texas Tech over Ohio State (though this would be close)
So that gives us:
Penn State at OU
Texas Tech at Florida
TCU at Texas
USC at Bama
Leading to OU, Florida, Texas (this would be a darned good game, though. TCU plays some serious defense), and USC.
Final four:
USC at OU
Texas at Florida
At this point, it wouldn’t even matter. Those would be some terrific matchups, and any possible championship at that point would be great. In this scenario, I have some of the qualities of March Madness with a bracket buster/Cinderella team (TCU), the strong darkhorse (USC), and the traditional powers (Texas and OU). You can’t ask for much more in a post season. And you know that people would watch the heck out of those games and advertisers would pay top dollar for that.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Nice work, though I disagree with the wildcard-can't-host-conference-champ rule. If you're going to do that, you need to seed all conference winners ahead of all wildcards, or else you get a situation where a better wildcard (Alabama) plays a road game, while a worse wildcard (Texas Tech) hosts one. That seems unfair to me.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Here is why it is insane to allow the non bcs auto bids.
The best MAC team played the 92nd hardest schedule and that also happened to be the hardest in the conference and they still lost 3 games.
The winner of CUSA played the 109th hardest schedule and lost 3 games and the hardest schedule in the conference was the 64th hardest and that team won 1 game and lost 11.
The winner of the Sunbelt played the 117th hardest schedule and lost 5 games. The hardest schedule again was the worst team with the 89th hardest schedule and they where 1 and 11.
The winner of the WAC played the 94th hardest schedule and actually only lost in a bowl game. The hardest schedule was 68th by a team that went 3 and 9.
And now the fabled Mountain West of Utah fame. They basically tied for the hardest schedule (2 worse than the best) at the 56th hardest. TCU had a whooper themselves with the 69th hardest.
To put this in perspective all but 3 teams in the Big 12, ACC, Pac 10, and SEC had harder schedules than all of the above teams. The Big 10 normally has SOS in a similar harder range. While these conference do not.
All of this is too say these lower conferences do not even remotely play in the same league as the BCS conferences. If a team wants to play with the big boys they need to either move to a bigger conference or play a strong OOC. Or what they can do is spend money on the programs to have them become competitive other wise why should they get a free ride on the backs of Texas, the Florida schools, OSU, UM, USC, ND, UG, and the rest of the schools that pus asses into the seats and viewers in front of the TV?
College basketball can get away with putting in lower conferences because there are so many slots available and they are a way to give the top 12 teams a "bye".
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
Troy played Ohio State, Oklahoma State an LSU this year. What the hell else are the supposed to do?
All of FBS schools are in the same division of college football. Either they all get treated the same or they don't. If they do, then all teams get a shot at winning the championship. If they don't, then you kick out the ones that aren't going to be treated equally.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I was totally gonna fight this guy the other day. It turns out I have better stats than him, so we just declared me the winner. Turns out that I was right to call his mom a whore.
Also, I want SI royalties for the BCS reference (audibles thread)
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
A similar thing happened at school to my kid. He had this crazy idea he should have a shot at winning the spelling bee, but I explained to him that picking the two with the best test scores was all that was required.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
How much of this angst, for lack of a better word, is because the team that's in the Super Bowl is the Arizona Cardinals (a thought that, even now, seems surreal)?
If New England had won a weak division at 9-7 and made it to the Super Bowl does Mandel write this article? I say no.
If Utah HAD made the BCS Championship game this is the kind of uproar we would have received from the BCS conferences and powers that be. Arizona is about as close to a have-not that there is in the NFL.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The NFL team does not need a BCS system, as the NFL's system works for the NFL. However...
Every year, no matter what, some ridiculous, conjured up "flaw" in college football's system is paraded around. Is that "flaw" really any worse than having a 9 - 7 team that scored 427 points and allowed 426 points in the regular season being a game away from the championship?
What college football does is after the regular season it selects the best two teams after the regular season, and has them play for the championship. They'll never do it and I'm not really advocating it, but from a pure sports would it have been so terrible if the Giants and Titans had a one-game playoff (Super Bowl) right after the season?
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
If its such a flaw why didn't the Falcons, Panthers or Eagles do something about it?
The problem with the BCS is that it doesn't take the two "best" teams. The problem is it takes two teams which lot of people think are the "best", based on unsure criteria, bias, short-sightedness and general human fallibility.
Only not always, given that there are unwritten rules about how undefeated teams must always trump one loss teams, and one loss teams must always trump two loss teams, etc, even when everybody knows that the team with more losses is probably better. Except of course when that undefeated team is from an unholy "non BCS" conference and is therefore assumed to be inferior regardless of their talents or resume.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
would it have been so terrible if the Giants and Titans had a one-game playoff (Super Bowl) right after the season?
Yes. 80% of the fans would have stopped caring weeks before the regular season ended.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
The biggest problem with the BCS is not that it fails to crown a worthy national champion. Many can argue that every past winner of the BCS was indeed the best team (or one of the beast teams) in the counry. The issue is that in selecting only 2 teams to compete, you essentially eliminate a vast number of FBS teams from national championship contention before the season even begins. Utah won every game they played, in both regular and post season. They could not been more successful. But because of their conference affilation and schedule they had no shot at the title game. This would have been true for monay "mid-major" programs. How can you say a playoff will devalue the regular season when many teams do not have a prayer before they even play a game?
I won't argue that OU or Florida's schedule is equal to Utah's. They are much harder. Having 1 loss with Florida's schedule is probably more difficult that going undefeated against Utah's. But if this is the case, then doesn't college football become a scheduling competition for the less prestigious teams? And tell me which big schools would sign up to play Utah late in the season. Any system that eliminates a portion of its participants at the season's start is inherently unfair.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I don't believe Utah was eliminated from consideration before the season began. Oklahoma and Florida both had sterling one-loss seasons, and their resumes were more impressive when the regular season ended. Florida played TEN bowl teams, plus Tennessee and Arkansas. Oklahoma played in possibly the toughest division ever, and blew out Cincinnati, TCU, Nebraska and Missouri.
Utah just happened to pick the wrong year to go 12 - 0, just like Southern Cal picked the wrong year to lose one game.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
What do you mean Utah wasn't eliminated before the season began? They won every damn game this season and still didn't get a sniff at the national title. What the hell were they supposed to do, dance? They may have been the best team in the country. They may not have been. But they never got the chance to prove it. No matter what they would have done, they would never have gotten a chance to prove it. They spanked Alabama, who was #1 the last 5 weeks of the regulat season. Florida only squeaked by Alabama. Utah should have had a chance. To deny this is ridiculous.
Re: Super Bowl-Bound Cardinals Make Case for BCS System
I agree. I don't think anyone could logically argue that Utah should have been in the BSC title game over OU or Florida based on resume alone. Or over Texas or USC for that matter. My point is: what more could Utah have done? Win every game by 50 points? Would even that have been enough? Fact is, Utah isn't in the Big 12 or SEC. Even with their best efforts they'll never have a schedule to match a traditional conference team. But if ANY FBS team runs the table, they need to at least get an outside chance at a title. For example, the winner of the Patriot League gets a automatic bid to the NCAA basketball tourney. Do they have a realistic chance at winning? No way, but they certainly earned the chance. Hence the necessity of a football playoff, in whichever format suits you.
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