Any given saturday.
What makes a team better than another team?
At the most elementary level, it is all about wins and losses. A playoff is structured, for example, to advance teams that win and to eliminate teams that lose, with the goal of eventually determining the best team. While possibly flawed, the playoff structure is fairly uncontroversial.
Given this, I don't understand why college football still has the worst possible method of determining which team is "better" let alone "best".
Take the Big XII controversy.
Texas and Oklahoma have identical 11-1 records. Since Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field, possibly the best indicator of which team is "better", you would think Texas would be advancing to the Big XII conference finals.
Wrong.
The tiebreaker is determined by the team with the higher BCS rankings. Ironically, it wasn't the Harris or USA today polls, which seem more prone to realpolitik and shady backdoor dealing, which pulled Oklahoma ahead. Instead it was the six computers that placed a premium value on Oklahoma's "strength of schedule."
To me, that is the equivalent of handing the Patriots the Super Bowl trophy because of the team's overall season.
If the NCAA can't even come up with a sufficient means to select a conference champion, why should we entrust it with selecting a national champion?
At the most elementary level, it is all about wins and losses. A playoff is structured, for example, to advance teams that win and to eliminate teams that lose, with the goal of eventually determining the best team. While possibly flawed, the playoff structure is fairly uncontroversial.
Given this, I don't understand why college football still has the worst possible method of determining which team is "better" let alone "best".
Take the Big XII controversy.
Texas and Oklahoma have identical 11-1 records. Since Texas beat Oklahoma on a neutral field, possibly the best indicator of which team is "better", you would think Texas would be advancing to the Big XII conference finals.
Wrong.
The tiebreaker is determined by the team with the higher BCS rankings. Ironically, it wasn't the Harris or USA today polls, which seem more prone to realpolitik and shady backdoor dealing, which pulled Oklahoma ahead. Instead it was the six computers that placed a premium value on Oklahoma's "strength of schedule."
To me, that is the equivalent of handing the Patriots the Super Bowl trophy because of the team's overall season.
If the NCAA can't even come up with a sufficient means to select a conference champion, why should we entrust it with selecting a national champion?
posted by d l wright at 12/05/2008 09:04:00 PM
1 Comments:
NCAA football is like U.S. capitalism. It's a nice illusion of a meritocracy, but those who end up on top are usually there due mostly to circumstance and priviledge. Any true competetion would threaten that priviledge, so. . . let's not go there.
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