Friday, January 02, 2009

The Case for Playoffs in College Football



The case for a playoff system in college football was made clearly last night in the Rose Bowl. The Trojans had six possessions in the first half and scored on five of them against Penn State. Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said it clearly “There will be no empirical evidence, however, for the sprung-to-life notion that USC is the best team in America, as that [title] will allegedly be determined in next week’s Florida-Oklahoma sprint-off. This is an unending shame, that college football, such fabulous theatre, ends not in a championship tournament but just another tiresome argument.” Yesterday's victory gave the Trojans a 24-9 record in the Rose Bowl.

The BCS is a joke. Pretty much everyone, except some of the southern coaches, believes it to be so. About a month ago a post on the internet made that point clearly by suggesting that the BCS would have ranked Germany No. 1 after WWII based on their only one loss and tougher schedule.

One other note about the Pac 10 - a lot of commentators have argued that the Pac 10 is a weak conference. That is nonsense based on this year's bowl results. The five teams from the Pac-10 went 5-0 in their bowl games. Here is how the conferences looked at January 1.

No comments: