Here's your championship football tournament
For those -- mostly media -- types clamoring that we MUST have a college football playoff in Division I-A to find out who REALLY has the best team, check out the Final Four. Were George Mason, Florida, LSU and UCLA the four best teams in the country this year?
No. A playoff doesn't guarantee the best team will win. NOTHING guarantees the best team will win. In fact, I can't think of anything better than the BCS to do that, a combination of human and computer rankings.
For those who think a college football playoff would duplicate the excitement of March Madness, you aren't thinking. There won't be 64 football teams in a playoff, and there won't be the same type of upsets. George Mason would never make the final four in football.
No. A playoff doesn't guarantee the best team will win. NOTHING guarantees the best team will win. In fact, I can't think of anything better than the BCS to do that, a combination of human and computer rankings.
For those who think a college football playoff would duplicate the excitement of March Madness, you aren't thinking. There won't be 64 football teams in a playoff, and there won't be the same type of upsets. George Mason would never make the final four in football.
posted by Anonymous at 8:30 PM
2 Comments:
Brian's point there won't be 64 teams in a possible football tournament is the very reason why it would produce more of a true national champion than the basketball tournament.
At most, a football tournament would have 16 teams. No 7-4 or 6-5 team would ever be close to selection for a football tournament.
Look at this year's basketball tournament. No. 16 seed Monmouth was 19-15. No. 15 Davidson was 20-11.
The best of the best would be invited to a football tournament. The most losses a team would have is two.
Take the conference champions from the Big East, the ACC, the SEC, the Big Ten and the Pac-10. Hand out a few at-large bids for those MAC, WAC, independent (Notre Dame) and the other mid-major champions. Mix in the second place teams from the major conferences and you've got your 16 teams.
Shrink the basketball tournament to 32 teams and you'd have more of a true representative of a national champion.
Fine. Make it 12 teams then.
Take the conference champions from the Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 12 (forgot it in my first post), Big Ten and the Pac-10. There's six seeds right there. If there's an independent team worthy (Notre Dame), that's No. 7. Add a couple of runners-up from the major conference and/or a mid-major champ and that's your field.
Let a tournament committee hand out the at-large bids and do the seeding like they do for the basketball tournament.
I got news for you. There's controversy when the seeding comes out for the basketball tournament. There's always a half-dozen teams who whine they should have made it in. Does that mean we shouldn't have a basketball tournament because there's controversy or teams feel left out?
There'd certainly be more excitement in the football tournament than the basketball tournament. The Duke-Southern first-round game wasn't exactly riveting. Either was that Arizona-Wisconsin game or what about Florida-South Alabama.
What if Notre Dame met USC in the football playoffs or LSU finally met USC in the playoffs? You don't think Notre Dame meeting USC again or LSU squaring off against the Trojans wouldn't be excited. They'd certainly be more exciting than UCLA-Belmont.
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