Watching Boise State kicker Kyle Brotzman react to his pair of missed field goals was as gut-wrenching a moment as any sports event can provide. The anguish and responsibility he clearly felt as the Broncos’ 23-game win streak and hopes
Watching Boise State kicker Kyle Brotzman react to his pair of missed field goals was as gut-wrenching a moment as any sports event can provide. The anguish and responsibility he clearly felt as the Broncos’ 23-game win streak and hopes for a BCS bowl bid were extinguished by mere inches must have given even the most exuberant Nevada fan a moment of pause.
As bad as I felt for the kid, I admit that I did have a sense of relief as time passed. The loss knocks the Broncos out of the discussion for the BCS Championship Game and lowers the number of national undefeateds from four to three — Oregon, Auburn and TCU.
The reason that I took some solace in the loss is that one of my biggest pet peeves is the whole “We need a college football playoff!” outcry that comes about every season.
We don’t need a playoff.
Seriously.
I don’t say we don’t need one because I don’t want to see it happen. I’d have a smile from ear to ear if the NCAA announced it was moving to a playoff system. As a fan, I’d love to sit and watch the best teams go at it for a few weeks to determine a champ.
The reason I’m not screaming for it to happen is that, contrary to what most continue to insist, it would not present a more “fair” way of deciding the title.
There are very few seasons where more than three teams end the year with a legitimate argument to play in the national title game. Sometimes, yes, there is one team that gets the short end of the stick and can claim to be just as deserving as the chosen two.
Other times there is only one undefeated team and the controversy comes when deciding who that second candidate is from a slew of one-loss squads.
And sometimes there are two obvious choices and everything works out. Nice and neat.
Since the inception of the BCS in 1998, there have been two regular seasons that ended with four undefeated teams, none with three, three with two unbeatens, six with just one perfect record and one year (2003) where nobody was without a blemish.
All three times that the lone unbeaten team played in the national title game, it came out on top. So usually when there is one clear-cut dominant school, it hasn’t really mattered who that No. 2 team ended up being.
2003 was probably the worst-case scenario for the BCS, with three one-loss teams and no unbeatens. LSU beat Oklahoma for the BCS National Championship, but USC, which was No. 1 in the AP poll, topped Michigan and won the AP national title.
There have been other issues. In 2006, Boise State went 12-0 and got a Fiesta Bowl bid, while one-loss Florida went to the BCS title game against Ohio State. But the Gators had the final word with a 41-14 pounding of the Buckeyes, while the Broncos played one of the greatest football games of all time in their 43-42 overtime win over Oklahoma. So that pretty much worked out for everyone.
In 2007, for the first time, an unbeaten team — our Hawai‘i Warriors — was kept out of the national title game in favor of two one-loss teams. While that seems wrong on the surface, it’s difficult to argue UH belonged with the elite after getting pounded 41-10 by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
In 2008, Utah may have had the biggest gripe to date, going undefeated and seeing two one-loss teams play for the championship (Florida and Oklahoma).
And last year, there were four unbeatens as Alabama and Texas played for all the marbles and Boise State and TCU went against one another in the Fiesta Bowl.
The reason I suggest that a playoff system would not be more “fair” is that we currently have a system that ranks everyone, then determines the top two. It’s been very rare that more than one team is dissatisfied with its final placement.
If out of all 120 Division I football programs, at the end of the season one feels it was slighted, that’s a pretty solid percentage.
If we were to move to a tournament, how many would be included? Eight?
So the sixth, seventh, eighth-ranked teams in the country would get to play for a national title, while the ninth, 10th, 11th-ranked teams would not. To me, it’s infinitely more difficult to distinguish between teams ranked anywhere from five through 15 than it is to distinguish between one through four.
How about 16 teams? Well, then it becomes even more dicey when leaving some out in favor of others. If I list teams that came into this week 11-22 in the BCS standings (Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M, South Carolina, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Florida State), had the first six been so much better than the final six to deserve a chance to play for a national title, while the others had not?
The more teams we include, the more we end up slighting.
If we shoot for just the top two, there is likely to maybe be one that says “What about us?”
If we go for the top 16, there are likely to be 16 right behind them with hands on hips.
Additionally, playoffs don’t equal “fair.” Just because teams play it out, doesn’t mean the best team gets the crown.
I know, that seems like blasphemy. But it’s the dirty little secret of all sports. (Well, one of them.) We are determining a champion, not the best team. There is a distinction.
The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series after going 83-78 in the regular season and just 25-36 in their final 61 games. Meanwhile the New York Mets and Yankees each had the best records in baseball and neither reached the World Series.
Did we determine the best team just because it was a playoff system?
The NCAA basketball tournament is rarely criticized, and rightly so. It’s the best event in all of sports. But since it went to 64 teams in 1985, a non-No. 1 seed has ended up winning it all nine times. So those were nine years when a team not considered to be in the top four over the course of a full season was deemed the champion once we threw everyone into a one-and-done situation.
Fair?
Additionally, if we were to have a playoff system, the urgency and excitement of the incredible comeback wins we saw Friday from both Auburn and Nevada would be somewhat diluted. Auburn would still be among the top teams had it lost to Alabama, so little else would be at stake. Instead, we saw a team vying for its championship life show us just how worthy it actually is.
The entire season itself already is a playoff.
Would an end-of-the-season tournament for all the marbles be entertaining? Sure.
Fun? Absolutely.
More fair? Definitely not.
David Simon, sports writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 237) or dsimon@kauaipubco.com.
