The BCS is dead! What now?
The BCS (1998-2014) is dead. Or it will be. So said a group of consensus-building conference commissioners and overseeing school presidents, who made the announcement Tuesday that college football will have — at long last — a four-team playoff to determine its champion.
Well, “dead” maybe isn’t the correct term. The BCS will still be around for two more years. Let’s just say it has been diagnosed with a serious case of “you’re-going-to-die-soon.” So now we just have to wait for it to expire.
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ANYWAY, here are the finer points of Tuesday’s announcement about the postseason:
- College football’s champion will be decided by a four-team, postseason, seeded playoff.
- This format will begin in the 2014-15 season.
- The semifinal games will be rotated among six bowl sites. The Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta will be four sites, with two more to be determined (the Cotton Bowl should make a strong push).
- The championship game will rotate among neutral sites. It will be managed by the conferences and not be branded as a bowl game.
- A selection committee will select and rank the teams for the playoff. There are no automatic qualifiers. The criteria considered will be won-loss record, strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether or not a team is a conference champion.
- The semifinals will be played on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day.
- The championship game will be played on the first Monday in January that is six or more days after the final semifinal game is played. That means the first five years the championship game will be on Jan. 12, 2015; Jan. 11, 2016; Jan. 9, 2017; Jan. 8, 2018; and Jan. 7, 2019.
- The new format has a 12-year term, going through the 2025-26 season.
- The revenue split is still under discussion, although the committee said in a press release that it would reward conferences for success on the field, accommodate expenses and reward academic performance of student-athletes. (I’ll believe that last one when I see it).
What remains to be decided? The aforementioned revenue split. The new format does not yet have a name. (I hope it ends in “S” so the “BC-Mess!” headlines are not a thing of the past too.) Oh, also the makeup of the selection committee, the procedures they’ll use and which bowls will participate as rotating hosts. Nothing a few dozen more meetings won’t solve.
So what does this all mean? I wasn’t in Washington, D.C., for the announcement, but it doesn’t mean I can’t opine. I like how our columnist Aaron McFarling will do the occasional article with a fictional person asking him questions. Let’s give that a try.
Q: Wow, big day for BCS-haters, right?
A: Yes. This was the first logical step in making the college football postseason a little more enjoyable. Could it have included more teams? Yes. Could it have played the semifinals on campus so it’s easier for fans to travel? Yes. Could it have cut the bowl games out of profits by taking control of the semifinals like it did the championship? Yes. But including two more participants was the important step. In doing so, you’ve lowered the number of teams that have legitimate gripes about not being able to play for a national championship. And given the breadth of the college football landscape, with so many teams from different parts of the country playing a limited number of games and even fewer in head-to-head competition, I think the sport needed to increase its access to more than just two teams playing for a national championship. Let’s put it this way: I doubt you’ll see a major conference champion be left out of a playoff if it is undefeated at the end of the year. You couldn’t say that about the BCS.
Q: Yeah, right. This is just setting up for the SEC, Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten to hog all the postseason spots.
A: I wouldn’t go that far. Yes, those conferences, by and large, would have produced the most participants in this four-team model had it been used in the past, but access is there for teams that have good seasons. And I think the ACC, despite its lagging status among the major conferences (it’s safe to say it’s No. 5 right now), would unquestionably send an unbeaten champion to the four-team tournament. It just hasn’t had one in years, or even come close to having one. The league hasn’t had a conference champion with fewer than two regular season losses since Maryland in 2001.
Right now, the SEC, Pac-12, Big 12 and Big Ten deserve the right to be considered for more than one team in the playoff. Their elite teams have earned it on the field. (OK, maybe not the Big Ten of late.) And that’s what you like to see in football: teams eliminating hypothetical arguments by achieving something on the field.
Q: So you’re OK with the potential of two or three teams from the same conference getting into the playoff?
A: Yes. As long as they’re deserving. And there are fluke years where that’s the case. Alabama and LSU, no matter what format you used, deserved to be in consideration for the national title last season. And it just so happened they were in the same division. It happens. Not often, but it happens. Taking the best four teams at the end of the regular season ensures the integrity of the postseason. If they would have limited it to only conference champions, you have weird seasons like last year when standout teams wouldn’t have gotten in because of arbitrary rules. That’s worse than multiple worthy teams from the same league getting into the playoff.
Q: Isn’t this just setting up for more controversy when an unbeaten team like Boise State is up against a one-loss, major conference team for one of the last spots?
A: Yes, the system isn’t perfect. And it will never be. I for one would have liked to have seen an eight-team playoff to avoid (or limit) situations like that, but I guess you have to take what you can get. (Maybe in 14 years.) Still, I’d rather be having that argument about the fourth spot of a playoff than the second spot, which is what is under the current setup. The further down the rankings you go, the less of a gripe teams will have.
Q: So does this give the little guys more access to the playoff?
A: Well, yes and no. Yes in that there are two more spots open. But no in that I think those spots will largely go to teams from power conferences. Look at the criteria again. Strength of schedule is a big component. And teams outside the power conferences aren’t just going to get in because they’re undefeated. This is less of a concern now that some of those former outsiders like Utah, TCU and Boise State have joined BCS-level conferences. You’ll always have an out-of-nowhere unbeaten season like Tulane in 1998, but I don’t think anybody actually thought the Green Wave was actually worthy of playing for a national title that year. Not with the schedule it played. I don’t think anything will change in the new system in that regard.
Q: Is a selection committee such a good idea?
A: I think so. Some have argued to keep a mathematically-based system for choosing the teams. I don’t mind some sort of RPI-like metric for the committee to take into consideration, but I think it was a good idea to get away from the BCS rankings. For starters, the math involved wasn’t real math. It was pseudo-math, through no fault of the programmers who came up with them. The BCS overseers demanded that margin of victory be taken out of the equation in the name of sportsmanship, even though the programmers said it made their formulas less accurate (less data is not a good thing when math is involved). That is not the basis you want for choosing your postseason participants.
As for the committee, I still think that’s the best way to decide teams. It adds a human element, and that’s certainly open to criticism, but it’s needed in certain situations. Take, for instance, the Stanford and Oregon rankings last year. The Ducks beat the Cardinal handily, in Eugene no less. They won their conference too, yet through the quirks of the BCS rankings (and because they challenged themselves early and lost a neutral field opener against eventual title game participant LSU), the Ducks were ranked fifth while the Cardinal was fourth. That sort of dilemma has come up before. And the committee would ensure that in situations like that, the right team comes out on top.
Q: Balderdash! The committee can’t help but be biased. And politics will come into play. You mean to tell me Notre Dame wouldn’t get an invite to the postseason ahead of Virginia Tech just based on the ratings potential?
A: Let’s keep the language clean. This is a family blog. And no, I don’t think that would happen. But that’s only provided the selection committee has full transparency with its picks. It has to have set criteria. It has to be consistent. It has to be made up of a cross-section of knowledgeable college football followers. And above all, it has to be held accountable and explain its picks. If you do this, and require the committee to justify its selection on clearly-defined criteria, I think the stakes are too high for any funny business.
If the process was open to questioning, an unjustifiable pick would get torn apart in this age of Twitter, blogs, Dan Wetzel and TV talking heads. It’s part of the reason the BCS was unsustainable — the never-ending drumbeat of negativity surrounding everything it did (the primary reason, of course, was the boatloads of money the schools were leaving on the table by not having a playoff). Keep these things in full view of the public eye and there’s a minimal chance that the backdoor shenanigans so prevalent in the old bowl selection process would take place.
Q: So who should be on the committee?
A: It has to be representative of all parts of the country. And it has to have a good number of people, so one or two members can’t have too much sway. (I’m thinking at least the size of a jury. That seems to work out well in our legal system.) And these people have to be dedicated to watching the games and keeping up with what’s going on throughout the season. Former coaches? Sure, provided they pay attention throughout the year. Athletic directors? Yeah, although they’d probably have to recuse themselves when talking about their own schools. National media members? Yes. They get a good sampling of games from across the country throughout the season.
But this has to be an ongoing process. They can’t get thrown into a room at the last second and come up with four teams. I think the NCAA basketball tournament sets a good precedent in that regard. Are there biases in that group? Yes. But people are going to see biases wherever they want to. As long as there is a good enough sampling providing different perspectives from all around the country, I’m OK with the human element being involved. No system is perfect, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
June 27, 2012 - 12:00 AM
you showed a few days ago how vt might have stacked up. i think this is a step in the right direction and can only lead to a larger event like they do in the rest of college ball.
Will conference championship games still be played?
Great job Aaron, I mean Andy! Seriously, that prob was the best format for addressing the questions.
Going to 4 teams allows a discussion for 8 at the end of the term. Going from 2 to 8 was too extreme for these guys. Over time, a few controversies on schools getting left out, and the opportunity to increase TV/Sponsor revenue yet again will get us to 8. Hopefully this will also slow down the conference raiding/growth, as conferences realize they don’t need to be huge to have a shot.
I don’t care what they do as long as they make Strenght Of Schedule the #1 item to even get looked at in selecting the final 4 teams.
Nice all the way around.
Love the “Balderdash!” interjection. Your fictional Q-guy is much more sophisticated than mine.
The best part of this is not that there’s a playoff, the best part is that the dates of the (formerly BCS) bowl games gets dialed back to Jan 1st, with (hopefully) only one bowl/championship game after that date. Nothing is more dulling than having the Sugar Bowl on Monday night, the Orange Bowl on Tuesday night, the Fiesta Bowl on Wednesday night, ad infinitum.
We all know after twelve years they’ll go to eight teams, because greed drives college sports. It is nice that they prolonged the expansion that far, though. I think four teams is a good number.
Anybody want to lay an over/under on Jerry Jones getting the first championship game?
One last comment – I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, to hear that Aaron makes up his own questions for his columns.
I’m not sold on the selection committee as the sole decider of the final four. You say it’s okay for the human element to be involved but then say they should be the only decider. As humans, it is in our nature to be biased. Sure, there are varying degrees but bias is something we either embrace or struggle with constantly. Clearly few people liked the BCS system which led to as much controversy as it was supposed to correct and it perpetuated a system of where the champion was not really decided on the field. But in my opinion the BCS formula removed a lot of bias (though it contained significant human judgement through the polls). Allow a selection committee but I believe an unbiased computer generated ranking system should also be a part of that committee. For instance, how is SOS determined. Does the jury of 12 decide? With Boise it’s pretty much a no brainer but if it comes down to 2 sec teams who have virtually the same conference schedules? We should never allow a bunch of people say we think team A had a harder SOS than team B so team A gets in. Let the numbers decide that. To err is human. I just think it will continue to be a flawed system as long as we say, we are going to finally have a true championship and then allow 12 guys decide who gets to play.
Well done, Andy. +100 points for the use of “balderdash” in the blog post.
I am thrilled that the bowl games is going to be discarded in the favor of a playoff. I think, someday, the playoff will expand to 8 teams when the power that be see how much eyeballs are going to be watching the playoff.
I do agree, however, there will always be controversy. The basketball tournament have “snubs” and “huh, why are they in?!” gripes.
Still, I think it is a move that is a 100 years overdue and it’s about time!
Aaron, I think my fictional guy might be British. Which makes his interest in college football even stranger.
As for the SOS, yes, I think there should be some sort of numeric metric for that. Something like the RPI for basketball, an objective way to compare schedules. But I think it should just be a tool for the committee to use.
who cares… even if by some chance VT is good enough to make the semifinals, there is no way Beamer is going to let us win the game with his atrocious play calling and bungling.
Aasron, I agree with your opinion that it would be better to have an 8-team playoff rather than just 4 teams, and I think that the field will be expanded to 8 within a few years after everyone has gotten comfortable with a 4-team playoff. 8 would be the optimal number, IMHO.
But still, this is a great day for college football!
Problem is, the new deal goes through the 2025-26 season. It might expand someday, but not until then unfortunately.
Nice Jeremy. I’ll bet you’re just loads of fun at parties, aren’t you.
Idiot.
Naaah … If they decide they want to modify the deal to expand the field to 8 teams, they can easily do it. The fact that the original contract runs through 2025 won’t stop them. Contracts are re-negotiated all the time.
Andy love the Q&A formt
My mind hazes over as the years go by but to the question that included the word Balderdash! and then VT and ND in the same sentence. I remember a time and I am sorry I cannot furnish the specifics but the Fiesta Bowl (does someone smell something rotten) took ND over VT and the only reason that they did was fan base. VT had the better record! As to the use of the word Balderdash in the question we know it was not Nappy. Since I live in SC and only use the electronic version of RT what is Mr. King doing now days. I so miss the video with Messieurs King and Doughty.
Haven’t you guys heard? The world’s going to end on Dec. 21 of this year, so the playoff isn’t going to matter.
Just kidding!
AB: Is there going to be a one unified ranking system during the season like the BCS was (after week 4)? Or is it going to be the AP Poll and Coaches Poll?
Yes, I copy/pasted this on AMac’s blog too. I’m short on time today.
I’m not ready to call this 4-team event a “playoff” yet. It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not a playoff yet.
To me, you earn your way into a playoff, you’re not voted into a playoff.
I still think it needs to be limited to conference champions. Yes, I know situations happen like last year where the PERCEPTION was that LSU and Alabama were the 2 most deserving, but anyone can quickly show data to prove that Oklahoma State had done more on the field than Alabama during the season. OSU just wasn’t perceived to be as much of a darling pick as Alabama was.
I just don’t think it makes sense for a team to not be capable of winning their conference, but have a chance to call themselves a national champion just because they get voted Prom King.
SCHokieFan – The season you’re remembering was 2000, Michael Vick’s last year at VT. VT only had one loss (against Miami, who played for the national title) and that one loss came because Vick was out with an ankle injury. You’re right though, ND was 9-2 and had no business in that bowl game, and it showed when they lost to Oregon State 41-9.
The difference between ND and VT in 2000 and the teams that will be picked in the playoff is the national attention that will be made.
ND getting the Fiesta nod was just a bowl looking out for its best interests, disregarding records and such. This committee won’t be able to do that without a you-know-what storm raining down on it.
Again, I think the stakes are too high and publicity too great to mess around with this.
As for the polls, they’re really meaningless now. The coaches poll is a component in the BCS rankings. I don’t know what purpose it has now. The AP poll will stick around because it’s been around forever and is something to talk about. But it’s not more irrelevant now than it was when it decided to drop out of the BCS formula.
hokie24, I agree that Oklahoma State did more on the field to get a shot at the national title. The future setup will give teams like that a chance. Or at least two more.
But when you start saying conference champs only, in weird years like last season it doesn’t work out. The top four last year would have been LSU (No. 1), Oklahoma State (3), Oregon (5) and Wisconsin (10). A two-loss, 10th-place team would have had a shot at the national title! That can’t be allowed to happen.
I think in the majority of years, conference champions will probably make up the top four. Having the committee just ensures that in weird years, you can apply a little bit of logic for including deserving teams that just so happen to play in a loaded conference.
Andy, the concept of only allowing conference champs to be eligible should be a given.
A two-loss, 10th place teams SHOULD have a shot at the national title if they were willing to man up during the regular season and play a tough OOC schedule. This setup just facilitates more of the same – the power teams ducking any respectable OOC game. They will want to protect that overall record, in the event they finish 2nd or even 3rd in their division, in hopes of gaining enough beauty contest votes to get into the big pageant.
Look at the vast majority of SEC OOC games. LSU, this past year, was a serious exception.
Quite honestly, LSU got screwed this year. The beat Bama – and shouldn’t have had to play them again. Remember who else they beat – Oregon and WVU – those teams played in a couple of big bowls themselves.
A true playoff of conference champions would encourage teams to toughen up on stronger opponents to get ready for the conference schedule. That’s what makes college basketball so great – those November and December games between very high profile teams.
College football in September will continue to be nap time.
I completely agree that there can be situations where one conference can be more loaded, but I’m not sure that I can call a team “deserving” of a national title when they couldn’t even win their conference, no matter how loaded a conference might be. Again, playoffs (to me) aren’t supposed to be about perception. It’s not supposed to be about who we THINK is better, it’s supposed to be about who proves it on the field that they are better.
“But when you start saying conference champs only, in weird years like last season it doesn’t work out. The top four last year would have been LSU (No. 1), Oklahoma State (3), Oregon (5) and Wisconsin (10). A two-loss, 10th-place team would have had a shot at the national title! That can’t be allowed to happen.”
Well hang on… how are you defining “10th place?” Again, that number is just perception (voting), right? And even though I don’t like the Big10, Wisconsin was a champion of a major BCS conference… why couldn’t that be allowed to happen? They won their conference championship, something that Alabama couldn’t do, so what would have been so bad with Wisky having a chance for more? Alabama didn’t even PLAY for their conference title, but somehow it was ok for them to have a chance at the national title over a major conference champ? We have to get away from the power that perception has in college football. College football fans have this problem that we all believe that we know, without a doubt, which teams are the best. Just because groups of us may agree on who we PERCEIVE as the best doesn’t mean that we’d ever be right about who most “deserves” a title shot.
The reason that I think having conference championships as a requirement is a good thing is because conference championships are absolutely decided by wins and losses on the field (except in weird, rare 3-way ties that require a 5th step tiebreaker like a few years ago in the Big12).
Hey, I’m a Wisconsin grad, so I’m familiar with the Badgers, and even I would think they didn’t deserve a shot at the national title. They lost to a mediocre Ohio State team. That should disqualify them right there. And for the record, Alabama would have destroyed Wisconsin last year. No doubt in my mind.
You say Alabama didn’t earn it on the field, but that’s not true. The Crimson Tide handled everyone it played pretty easily all year but lost an overtime game to the unanimous No. 1 team in the country at the end of the year.
How is that less impressive than a team like Wisconsin winning what was a mediocre Big Ten? You can say that’s how we perceive it to be, but using rational thought and different metrics that weigh the relative strengths of each league paint a pretty clear picture of who had the better year.
I’d be all for conference champions getting auto bids in an eight-team setup. With four teams, though, I think it runs the risk of leaving deserving teams out. Not all conferences are equal and I think the selection committee has to recognize that fact.
I don’t disagree with your thoughts on how Wisconsin would get clobbered by Alabama one bit, Andy.
But… I don’t think Alabama’s regular season resume was really any more or less impressive than Wisconsin’s was. I agree, I think Alabama would have pounded Wisky on the field head-to-head, but that’s not the question.
Alabama played only 4 D1A teams with regular season records over .500 last year. They didn’t play some kind of monster schedule. They played LSU and Arkansas, but other than that, their schedule wasn’t a world beater. I perceive the SEC to be stronger than the Big 10, but when you dig down at who Alabama actually played, they did not play a schedule full of titans.
It may seem clear to all of us that the SEC in general is stronger than the Big10, and I wouldn’t disagree. But when you look past that quick perception, you see that Alabama, while they were certainly a hell of a team last year, may not have had the world-toppling resume that we’d quickly assume. Wisky’s resume might not have been much (if any) better, but Alabama’s resume wasn’t blowing many teams away.
“With four teams, though, I think it runs the risk of leaving deserving teams out. Not all conferences are equal and I think the selection committee has to recognize that fact.”
I understand your intention, but statements like this are part of the problem. This sort of statement would lead us to believe that a selection committee is capable of “correcting” the errors that the on-field results give us. No selection committee should believe that they are smarter than on-field results. Some sort of on-field result needs to be a requirement to make a playoff actually work.
I agree with you that Bama didn’t have the most sterling resume last year. In fact, I thought OSU deserved the spot in the BCS title ahead of them. But I do think Bama was the better team of those two. I’m just glad in future years both will be able to compete for a national title.
Again, I’d rather argue about who is team No. 5 than who is team No. 3.
I understand the need to schedule the championship game on a Monday night and squeeze every hotel dollar out of the thousands of travelling fans but the NCAA will be missing out on some of the millions who would have tuned in on Saturday or Sunday night as part of a social event like the Super Bowl.
Actually, I think an NCAA football championship game on a Sat night would eclipse the Super Bowl in popularity but having it on Monday night will make it just another big sporting event…on a Monday night at 9 ET.
The problem is that the NFL has already staked claim to those Saturdays and Sundays with its playoffs. College football doesn’t want to compete with that.
Let the corruption begin….
This system creates more problems than it solves. Yes it provides the “opportunity” for more teams to access the MNC but it greatly stacks the deck against them.
The most important factors – what to do with revenue from the NC game, the size and make-up of the committee and the selection criteria have not be decided but we do have a “new and better system” for deciding the National Champion. Sounds like a piece of legislation that was passed in a hurry with the specific details for the legislation left to be sorted out later. The devil is always in the details.
The revenue flow will be key to the success of this system. It has the potential un-level the playing field.
I hope I live long enough to hear SEC & Big 12 coaches and fans howl about the “unfairness” of the system. This whole thing was designed with them in mind.
“Again, I’d rather argue about who is team No. 5 than who is team No. 3.”
I agree. I just hope that we soon see a conference champion requirement. Seems to me like the BCS would want that, seeing as they are called “BCS Conferences.” I would think that they would like to be able to say that “you can’t play in our BCS Title Game unless you can win a championship in one of our BCS conferences.”
Andy, you make a good point, arguing over who is #4 or #5 is better than over who is #2 or #3, that’s for certain.
However, I think it is a better situation if we are worrying about who #8 or #9 is, because neither one stands much of a chance in a 3 game run, and if things are at set at 8 teams, it then has become a nice playoff.
It has been very, very rare that #65 (or whatever # it is now) has had a shot in basketball – VCU perhaps was the latest, and maybe only exception. The further down the line the cutoff is, the less likely there is a concern a deserving team got excluded.
But, I still think most of those 8 should be conference champs. At least guarantee the PAC 12, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, and maybe the BE if it can survive and be consistently strong – and that leaves 2 slots open for ND and any other deserving “at large” teams.
A football playoff isn’t brain surgery, yet we didn’t even see the scalpel on this thing.
I’m curious if you think the new playoff arrangement will have any effect on conference membership stability, or is the actual championship independent of the overall/multi-sport television contracts?
Also, any unintended consequences of this shift that you foresee?