GreenSooner
1/9/2009, 11:34 AM
No this is not another "why don't we have a playoff?!?" thread. But it is a thread about one particular aspect of the BCS that hurts college football in general, the Big XII as a conference, and OU as a program.
The current structure of college football builds in pretty strong disincentives against playing top-flight out-of-conference competition. In various iterations the BCS has effectively minimized the number of truly powder-puff opponents a team faces by penalizing I-A/"BCS Division" schools for playing I-AA/"Playoff Division" schools.
But the costs of playing excellent out-of-conference competition are very high. A loss early in the season can effectively knock a team out of competition for the MNC. That's why there are so few games like this year's USC-tOSU tilt (or the UT-tOSU game during the year UT won the MNC). OU's out-of-conference schedule this year was, I think, pretty typical of what a strong out-of-conference schedule in the present system usually looks like: a couple very solid Top 25 schools (TCU and Cincinnati), a lousy team from a BCS conference (Washington) and a cupcake (UT Chattanooga, which was, admittedly, added to the schedule as a late replacement for a slightly better program that cancelled on us). There are no powerhouse schools on that schedule. No Florida, no Alabama, no USC. Admittedly some of this is a matter of timing. Games are often scheduled years in advance. Washington is probably worse than could normally be expected; TCU signficantly better. But even in years in which we've scheduled a 'Bama, only one such school will appear on the schedule. And again, under the present system of determining a MNC, this makes sense.
But this is not a good thing. First, it's not a good thing for college football, which would definitely benefit from more clash-of-the-titan type games. College football games featuring two excellent teams are good for the game in and of themselves.
Such games would also improve the Big XII conference (and we're not alone). At any given point, teams within a single conference seem to gravitate toward a particular style of football. The old Big 8 was run and option oriented. The Big XII today is dominated by spread offenses. This convergence of styles is the result of a kind of common-opponent feedback effect. Quite understandably, teams design their offenses and defenses to combat their conference rivals. The result is a kind of stylistic convergence.
The problem is that these teams, carefully developed to defeat conference rivals, are sometimes ill-equipped to beat excellent squads from other conferences. And the feedback that provides that information usually comes only at the very end of the season in the bowl games.
Certainly OU's team would have been stronger had they played two or three of, say, Florida, Utah, USC, or Alabama during the regular season. And such games would be great for fans around the country. But it's hard to argue that it would be a good idea to put together such a schedule under present circumstances.
So the question is: what do you do to create incentives for teams to play such games?
Although I'm all in favor of a playoff system, this is one case in which simply going from the BCS to a playoff wouldn't be enough.
The current structure of college football builds in pretty strong disincentives against playing top-flight out-of-conference competition. In various iterations the BCS has effectively minimized the number of truly powder-puff opponents a team faces by penalizing I-A/"BCS Division" schools for playing I-AA/"Playoff Division" schools.
But the costs of playing excellent out-of-conference competition are very high. A loss early in the season can effectively knock a team out of competition for the MNC. That's why there are so few games like this year's USC-tOSU tilt (or the UT-tOSU game during the year UT won the MNC). OU's out-of-conference schedule this year was, I think, pretty typical of what a strong out-of-conference schedule in the present system usually looks like: a couple very solid Top 25 schools (TCU and Cincinnati), a lousy team from a BCS conference (Washington) and a cupcake (UT Chattanooga, which was, admittedly, added to the schedule as a late replacement for a slightly better program that cancelled on us). There are no powerhouse schools on that schedule. No Florida, no Alabama, no USC. Admittedly some of this is a matter of timing. Games are often scheduled years in advance. Washington is probably worse than could normally be expected; TCU signficantly better. But even in years in which we've scheduled a 'Bama, only one such school will appear on the schedule. And again, under the present system of determining a MNC, this makes sense.
But this is not a good thing. First, it's not a good thing for college football, which would definitely benefit from more clash-of-the-titan type games. College football games featuring two excellent teams are good for the game in and of themselves.
Such games would also improve the Big XII conference (and we're not alone). At any given point, teams within a single conference seem to gravitate toward a particular style of football. The old Big 8 was run and option oriented. The Big XII today is dominated by spread offenses. This convergence of styles is the result of a kind of common-opponent feedback effect. Quite understandably, teams design their offenses and defenses to combat their conference rivals. The result is a kind of stylistic convergence.
The problem is that these teams, carefully developed to defeat conference rivals, are sometimes ill-equipped to beat excellent squads from other conferences. And the feedback that provides that information usually comes only at the very end of the season in the bowl games.
Certainly OU's team would have been stronger had they played two or three of, say, Florida, Utah, USC, or Alabama during the regular season. And such games would be great for fans around the country. But it's hard to argue that it would be a good idea to put together such a schedule under present circumstances.
So the question is: what do you do to create incentives for teams to play such games?
Although I'm all in favor of a playoff system, this is one case in which simply going from the BCS to a playoff wouldn't be enough.