The Playoff/Plus-One Fallacy

The clamor continues for a fix to the current BCS mess. As ESPN writes, there is a proposal for 8-team playoffs, or a plus-one feature to the current system.

I am not going to dismiss these issues out of hand, but in my mind they ignore the ROOT cause of why people are so dissatisfied with the BCS.

You can’t fix the BCS, you can’t create a playoff system, you can’t find a true national champion in college football until there is some sort of schedule and conference reform.

Why are some people pissed off that Ohio State made it to the title game? It’s because the Buckeyes played in a weak conference and supplemented that league schedule with three in-state non-BCS cupcakes.

Why do some people get pissed off at the SEC? It’s because some SEC teams don’t play out of conference road games and because many schedule seven or eight home games to boot. Furthermore, the SEC, Big 12 and ACC play a conference championship game, which can give a team an extra boost while allowing a conference crown to be claimed without playing a round-robin schedule.

It’s not the BCS that is broken. It’s the data we use to calculate the rankings that are askew. How can we possibly sort out the best team when some play markedly easier schedules and others have built-in advantages? There is no level playing field when it comes to picking a champion and yet we insist that it is the post-season that is to blame and not the regular season.

This mess would not be fixed by a playoff or a plus one. It would merely transfer those same issues to another championship process. An eight-game playoff between eight teams who took starkly varying routes to get there would not be any more fair than the current BCS.

So what to do?

First, how about some schedule reform? Try these on for size:

1. You have to play six road games to be eligible for the national title. Some say that making money is more important for a school athletic department. Fine. If a school wants to make money, let it schedule home games to its heart’s content. It just won’t be able to win a title as a result. A choice would then have to be made and then we’d see which is more important–money or glory.

2. You must play against a minimum of 11 BCS conference teams. Want to schedule a creampuff from 1-AA? Go ahead. But your other two opponents out of conference better be legitimate teams from BCS conferences.

3. No more conference championship games. Each conference should have a round robin approach where every team plays all the others. Theoretically, you could have 12 conferences with 10 teams each in college football (this would require conference realignment). From that group you would have 12 true champions. With those 12 you could have a BCS, a playoff, a plus one, or whatever your heart desires. But it would be fair and virtually unassailable.

I realize some of these solutions are pipe dreams, but they would directly address the actual root causes of the current dissatisfaction.

So the next time someone advocates a playoff or a plus-one, ask them if they support schedule reform as a first step. Then you’ll know how serious they are about crowning a true college football champion.