The College Football Playoff – Expect Controversy

I’ve heard this story before. We have a system in place that is going to right the college football wrongs, give us a system that everyone can support, and finally end the decades of controversy that has plagued college football fans since the days before the advent of the forward pass.
The last time I heard about a fix to end all fixes was with the introduction of the Bowl Championship Series. Before that it was the Bowl Alliance and before that, it was the Bowl Coalition. This isn’t a knock on the playoffs. If you want to read about that, you can read it here. 
http://cfbroundtable.com/2014/college-football-playoff-lost/ Each one of the above mentioned systems was an improvement on the last. I believe that the majority of fans will feel that the latest installment to fix college football will be an improvement over the BCS. I am not so sure they will believe that in the early years.

The BCS takes a lot of knocks and most of them are deserved knocks, however, by the time the BCS came to an end, it was the best system produced in terms of providing national championship matchups. When the BCS provided controversy in the later years, that controversy was unavoidable. In 2011, any combination of LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma State, or Stanford would have been controversial.

The BCS ran about as smooth as it could possibly run in those later years but in the beginning, it was the equivalent of a backfiring 1974 Pinto, (as Joel McHale would say, look it up kids).  Initially, the BCS relied heavily on computers to produce the championship matchup. I once proposed an alternative to the BCS computer system.  Simply simulate the entire season via the Playstation 2 and a current copy of EA Sports' edition of NCAA's College Football.

The BCS clunked along. In 2001, a second ranked Oregon team was left out in favor of Nebraska. Nebraska got the nod to play against Miami and was blown out. Margin of victory, which had been a major component in tabulating BCS points, was minimized to and fix the issues in 2001.  In 2003, the BCS engine nearly seized up. Controversy was so strong in 2003 that the BCS barely survived. In 2003, margin of victory, though minimized, was still a factor. This meant that all of your nice, respectable coaches were forced to run up scores for fear of being left out of the national championship game and top tier bowls. Prior to the Big 12 Championship Game, (they used to have those), Oklahoma had amassed such a large lead in BCS points that Oklahoma could afford to lose the Big 12 Championship Game . . . and the Sooners did lose . . . and they lost big. Oklahoma stunk it up in Dallas losing to Kansas State 35-7. It didn’t matter. OU's NC ticket had been punched prior to kick off. Thanks IBM. Oklahoma was matched against the LSU Tigers and USC was sent to the Rose Bowl. LSU won, USC won and for the only time in the BCS era, we had a split national championship.

The fallout of the 2003 season was that the AP writers successfully demanded that their poll not be used as a BCS factor. The margin of victory was done away with, and the computers were minimized and given deference to the polls. In short, the folly of thinking that a computer could somehow do a better job than former coaches and sports writers in picking the top two teams was done. And they all lived happily ever after . . . .

Well not quite. 2004 created more controversy. However, it was the modern BCS controversy that we have grown to know and detest. An undefeated Auburn was left out of the national championship picture. The BCS did the best it could in 2004, this was simply a problem, much like 2011 or 2012, that the BCS wasn’t designed to fix. Too many teams, too little slots.

The new College Football Playoff is designed to fix the last major issue that the BCS never could have fixed. Instead of two slots, now we have four slots. Also, the new playoff system has given a better avenue to teams outside of the Power Five conferences. If it all stopped there, we probably would have a decent system but once again, the power brokers have attempted to remove the sports writers from the equation. Why the major conferences try to fix college football inequities by cutting out the polls is a bit of a mystery. For the most part, the polls and those that contribute to them, haven't really been the problem. In their place is a committee akin to the committees we are used to seeing in college basketball. There are factors that the committee will use but how one committee member gives weight to a factor may not be the same as how another committee member weighs the same factor. The committee is made up of individuals from various backgrounds. Some have been immersed in college football their whole lives and others have no tangible relationship to it at all.
Ideally, we picture a playoff system where both major polls have the same top four teams ranked and the playoff pits #1 vs. #4 and and #2 vs. #3 with the respective winners facing off for the championship. However, we are already being prepared that the committee’s top four teams may disagree with the polls’ top four teams. It works in college basketball because the committee is placing 64 teams. Any teams typically left out are at or near .500. The college basketball committee works because of quantity. Imagine if the NCAA basketball playoffs only could place four teams or even eight for that matter. Every year would be rocked in controversy. It is perplexing why the college football power brokers want to put more weight on an unknown committee and no weight on pollsters. At best this seems odd and at worst seems like an invitation to post season disaster.
It doesn't take the Long Island Medium to figure out that the early years of the college football playoff will be bumpy. It wouldn’t be surprising to see a future where the committee is nixed or limited and the polls are again a major factor. I also won’t be surprised if we have a split national championship in the near future. USC’s 2003 AP Championship was in part an acknowledgement of what USC had done and also part protest of what the BCS had done. It worked. It forced the BCS to completely overhaul itself in the off-season.

If it seems as if I am preaching doom and gloom, I’m not. I think the Playoff will work the way it was intended and that years from now, a version of what we will see in 2014, will be run like a fine tuned engine. It may even work that way in 2014, 2015, and a year or two beyond. However, somewhere in the near future is another 2003. The flaws are in place and it’s only going to take the right scenario to bring those flaws to the surface. Here’s hoping that when it happens, it’s not my team or yours getting the short end of the stick.