How to make the Bowls meaningful.

First off, I’d like to point out that I exposed the EA sports franchise as being poor prognosticators, as of the simulations I did, only 11 were correct. For those scoring at home, that’s around 34%. Also, if you’re scoring a blog at home, you probably need to get a life.
In any case, the biggest lesson we learned was that the Big Ten wasn’t as good at the top as everyone thought. Just below the top, however, your Wisconsins and Penn States of the world weren’t so bad. Somehow, this led to Fox prattling on about how this all meant we should have a tournament, which in truth, is exactly the opposite of what it meant, and demonstrated Fox’s general broadcasting malfeasance. But that’s for a different post.
We had some of the best bowls in years this year, from Boise State’s compelling win over Oklahoma to Boston College’s last minute victory over Navy, but all the talking heads seem to mention is that we don’t have a national champion because we don’t have a tournament. But, wouldn’t a tournament just mean you are crowning the champion of the tournament? Really, that’s all we’re doing in March Madness. We’re just awarding the winner of this tournament, rather than a rightful national championship to the best team in the land. There is no way that a team that finished third in their own conference should own that title. But I digress.
Despite what media says, a tournament would be less fair, less interesting, and completely unfeasable. First off, let’s consider this. The 8 team tournament everyone seems to get behind is inherently flawed, given that there are eleven conferences, meaning at least three conferences will be left out every year. Why would they even play their games if winning the conference wouldn’t even net them a spot in the postseason? Furthermore, in cases such as this year, people would be clamoring for teams like Michigan to get thrown into the tournament, leaving out even more conferences. If we took the top 8 teams this year, according to the BCS, 5 conferences would be included. That would be less than half.
So if we’re going to include all the conferences, as well as include our Michigans and LSUs, that means we have a minimum of 16 teams for this tournament. This means that, since there are all these spots available, typically for major conference teams, big, late season match-ups are less meaningful and less exciting, since, hey, the teams are already in the tournament. The thing we still have with the Bowls and the national title game, is that we are still crowning a season champion. If you have tournament, the teams don’t necessarily even have to play the full season, and they can pull off the national title.
All this means that the regular season will be less interesting. On top of that, the bowls are set out to provide the best matchups to provide the best games. In a tournament, with the seeding, you are going to get a heck of a lot of awful games and maybe three good ones, or, as much as we get currently with the BCS now anyways.
Besides that, everyone talks about how athletes playing college sports aren’t really missing out on anything by missing as much school as a tournament would lead to. Sure, I’ll accept that assessment, without pointing out that maybe 10 players on the best teams and fewer on the less talented will actually see a future playing professional football, so maybe school is a good idea for those other kids, but I’d also like to point out that college football draws a lot of other fans from the student body. Kids will travel three states to watch their team during the regular season, so one can only imagine the entourage during a playoff. And a college football stadium, which can seat 60,000 fans, leaves much more space to pack in more fans than a basketball arena, such as during the NCAAs which can fit around 15-20,000.
Of course, nobody is going to buy any of what I just said. Nobody cares about the showcase for these teams, and the reward for the kids who put in 4 hard years at Rice or East Carolina. People outside of those schools care only about a “National Champion”. So here are two simple ways to fix our current system so we get a more legitimate national champ can be determined.
First, you add a NCAA mandated non-conference game that will be selected at random. This will give us a better assesment later on of which conferences are the best, which conference is most deserving of a team in the national title game. Right now, major teams are so worried about that damning upset, so they schedule cupcake schedules, which leave outsiders confused as to exactly who the best two teams are going into the bowl season.
Second, don’t have polls until around 8 weeks into the season. Early season polls bias the voters into thinking some teams are better than they are, and puts schools like Rutgers or Boise State into an unfair, early season hole. later starts to polls mean a more accurate assesment of the quality of a team, and how they rate against each other.
I’m not entirely convinced that the bowls need fixing, but if we’re going to tinker to find the supposed national champion, then, in my opinion, those are the first two things that need changing. – Ryan