I’ve got a real post ready for tomorrow, so Thursday is Rant Day this week. There’s been a lot of talk this week about how this would be a great year to implement the four-team playoff that’s coming to college football for the 2014 season. I suspect part of that reason is because people are recognizing that Florida boasts a more impressive resume than either Alabama or Georgia, and that Oregon is an elite team that lost an overtime game to a division rival. Therefore, a four-team playoff featuring Notre Dame, the eventual SEC Champion, Florida, and Oregon would be great.
On one hand, of course it would be great. I’d love to watch Notre Dame face Oregon and perhaps see Alabama and Florida face off (no, you couldn’t make me watch Florida-Georgia II). But that’s only because college football is great. In fact, this year — like almost every year — stands as a good example of why the four-team playoff system is doomed to create controversy and do little to increase fairness. Let’s start with…
Winning your division = Bad
We saw this last year, when Alabama ended the year as BCS #2 and therefore had locked up its spot in the national championship game, while LSU still had to go play in the SEC Championship Game. In this particular case, I don’t feel too bad about the fact that Florida would be given a free pass to the four-team playoff while Georgia has to go play Alabama, but only because Florida has faced a much tougher schedule.
But what if instead of what actually happened — Florida beating South Carolina, South Carolina beating Georgia, and Georgia beating Florida — the order was reversed, and Georgia beat South Carolina, South Carolina beat Florida, and Florida beat Georgia? In that case, Florida would likely be #2 or #3 in the BCS, while Georgia would sit pretty at 4. And Florida would go play Alabama for the right to win the SEC… with the loser being left out of the playoffs. That’s patently unfair. Being the third best team in your conference could be preferable to being the second best team. This is a lock to happen at some point during a four-team playoff. This is also going to be a bigger problem generally as conferences get bigger, because conference schedules will become unbalanced. The Big 12 has a round robin where everyone plays everyone, but in a 14-team conference, you can easily see a better team end up with a worse record than an inferior team due purely to scheduling.
Oregon-Stanford
It is being conveniently forgotten that Stanford actually won the Pac-12 North. In fact, we have an exact reversal of what happened last year, which many screamed was unfair to Oregon. Lest you forget….
In 2011, both Oregon and Stanford went 8-1 in the Pac-12. Oregon beat Stanford head-to-head in Palo Alto (but lost to USC), so they won the division and then the conference. Stanford had a soft nonconference schedule while Oregon traveled to Dallas to play and lose to LSU in the season opener. So Oregon was 11-2 (but Pac-12 champs) while Stanford was 11-1. After the regular season, Stanford was 4th and Oregon was 5th in the AP, Harris, and Coaches Polls, and also in the BCS. This struck many as unfair, because the Ducks were essentially the better team but had a brutally hard non-conference game, a de facto road game against the #1 team in the country.
Fast forward to 2012. Oregon and Stanford both went 8-1 in the Pac-12. This time, Stanford beat Oregon head-to-head — in Eugene — so they won the division and perhaps the conference (we’ll find out on Saturday.) Oregon had a soft nonconference schedule while Stanford went to South Bend to play the #1 team in the country. Stanford will finish 11-2 if they beat UCLA, while Oregon finished 11-1.
Should Oregon go to the hypothetical four-team playoff instead of Stanford? If not, why not?
Three 11-1 teams in one division – AKA the 2008 Big 12 South
In 2008, Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma all went 10-0 against the rest of college football and 1-1 in their three-team round robin. The same scenario nearly presented itself this year in the SEC East: in fact, had South Carolina defeated LSU, all three teams in the SEC East would have been 11-1 with wins over each other (it was this precise fact that caused Georgia to vault Florida, as without USC in the mix, the Bulldogs held the tiebreaker over Florida). How do you leave one or two of these teams out?
If the 2012 Gators were more like the 2011 Gators, the problem would have simply emerged in the SEC West, instead, as Alabama, Texas A&M, and LSU would have all been 11-1 with wins only over each other. This scenario is a lock to emerge at some point, and will cause significant controversy.
Oregon-Kansas State
No formal criteria exist to guide the pollsters, and no one knows what factors a selection committee will choose to weigh most. But why would Oregon get a spot over Kansas State? There are compelling reasons to argue for both.
If you would choose Oregon over Kansas State, chances are you heavily support one of these factors:
— The “eye” test; Oregon looks like a better team
— Favoring the “best” team over the “most deserving” team; Oregon ranks 1st in the SRS and 2nd in Jeff Sagarin’s Pure Predictor Ratings
— The best “worst game” – the Ducks lost in overtime to a very good team
— Pre-season polls/inertia: Oregon started the year 5th, Kansas State 22nd
Those are all legitimate ways to break a tie among one-loss teams. But so are these, which all favor Kansas State:
— Strength of schedule: Kansas State has the harder SOS in both the SRS and Sagarin’s ratings, and that’s before including the Texas game
— Conference champs: KSU will win the Big 12 if the Wildcats defeat Texas; Oregon won’t even win their division
— Best win: Kansas State won in Norman against a very good Oklahoma team; Oregon’s best win was against…. Oregon State
Oregon is the winner of the beauty pageant, but Kansas State’s resume is at least as good as Oregon’s. Perhaps you want to drop Kansas State for its awful showing against Baylor, but I don’t think the criteria of “best ‘worst loss'” is going to be consistently applied. The simple fact is if Kansas State was left out in favor of Oregon, Wildcats fans would be correct in feeling screwed. Had Florida State defeated Florida this weekend, they would probably have vaulted both Oregon and Kansas State, but would that make any more sense? How would we pick one out of FSU (conference champs but weakest schedule), KSU (conference champs but worst loss), and Oregon (best team but not even division champs)?
If you wanted to heavy on conference winners, you could pick Notre Dame, the SEC Champion, Kansas State and Stanford, assuming the latter two win this weekend. If you wanted to pick based simply on the best teams — i.e., the Vegas test or the SRS/predictive method — you’d pick Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon, and … maybe Kansas State, maybe Florida, maybe Georgia. If you wanted to go based on resume, it would be Notre Dame, Florida, the SEC Champion, and Kansas State. If you wanted to go popularity test, it would be Notre Dame, Florida, the SEC Champ, and Oregon.
What if Ohio State was eligible this year? They would join the SEC Champ and Notre Dame, but picking that fourth team would be tough. At that point we would start looking at Florida’s warts. Does it matter that they scored only one offensive touchdown against an FCS school and won 23-0? That against a Sun Belt team, the Gators trailed by a touchdown with under two minutes left? That they were tied with a bad Bowling Green team midway through the third quarter of a game? That at home against Missouri they were tied entering the 4th quarter?
How much does the “eye test” count here? What’s worse — losing in overtime to Stanford or winning only after trailing with 2 minutes left against Louisiana-Lafayette? What’s better, winning in College Station by 3 points or winning in Corvalis by 24? Does it matter that we already have one SEC team in the picture — should that count when deciding who gets the fourth spot?
A four team playoff is great for college football because it gives us three times as many playoff games. But it’s going to do almost nothing to eliminate the controversy and bias that’s always been a part of the sport. No real solutions here — that’s for Saturday — but just a rant that picking four teams is going to be as silly and arbitrary most years as picking two teams.