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Agree to Disagree

Norman Leahy

The economy is in the tank. The bad guys overseas are still making noises (and throwing shoes). Wherever we look, things are bleak, cold and uncertain.

In other words, it's the perfect opportunity to change the subject and, not being one to let the gloom get in his way, the president-elect has decided that one area needed his close attention is … college football's BCS system.

As he told the folks at 60 Minutes "If you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear, decisive winner. We should be creating a playoff system." And more, "I'm going to throw my weight around a little bit."

Well, compared to the collective groveling of corporate executives for federal handouts, wrangling over a college football playoff does have a nice ring to it.

And wouldn't it be nice to kick useless bowl games and their increasingly inane corporate sponsors to the curb so we could find out who that one best team really is?

Sure. And below Division I, that's exactly what they do (who doesn't love the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl anyway?).

But is this really a topic the federal government and the president should be worried about? Of course not. If the market demands it, then a playoff system will be created to divine the real number one.

But waiting for markets to work – be it on banks, car companies or sports – isn't one of the government's strong suits. No politician gets credit for just standing there. They have to do something.

And do something they have. Repeatedly. We've had hearings and legislation regarding baseball (and its famous exemption from anti-trust law). We've even witnessed the spectacle of congressional hearings on why there wasn't a major league team in Washington, DC (Tom Davis obviously had nothing better to do that day).

So why should college football be any different? Let Congressional obsess over baseball. White House denizens favor contact sports. Former collegiate player Richard Nixon famously called a play – a reverse to the wide receiver -- for the Redskins in a 1971 playoff game against the Forty Niners. It lost 13 yards. Jerry Ford played for Michigan, Ronald Reagan played for Eureka College, and even Bill Clinton had a thing for the Arkansas Razorbacks. It takes guts, guile and skill to make it to the White House. No wonder presidents follow a game that displays the same characteristics on almost every play.

But being a big fan is one thing. Throwing the presidential weight around to change how the game's champion is decided is another.

It's not just that the NCAA is a private institution, and ought to be allowed to set its own rules – even if it's something as opaque as the BCS. It's also that government's are, and ought to be, limited in scope and power. If you can cite where in the Constitution that any branch of government has the power to regulate football, cricket, or checkers, I'll gladly cede the point. Otherwise, get over it and hope your alma mater has a better luck next year.

If only it was that easy.

Governments are forever looking for ways to intrude, poke, prod, and generally impose themselves on any number of activities utterly unrelated to their given authority. That's the nature of the beast. Much to our continuing discomfort.

I would suggest that if Mr. Obama is really, really upset at how the BCS works, he not get the wheels of government involved. Rather, I would hope he would, like every other frustrated fan, scream about the bowl pairings for a bit but then invite everyone over for a cook out on the South Lawn to catch the games on New Year's Day anyway. Sure the White House chef may not know how to cook the brats just right. And heaven knows the ghost of "Lemonade Lucy" Hayes wouldn't approve of a beer-fueled halftime party on the White House grounds.   But it's a new era and all that.

As for me … I could care less about who wins the national title and really, really don't have the time or inclination to debate the finer points of the BCS. It's not a perfect system, or even very good. But the point of bowl games and national championships isn't so much about victory as it is having a few, blissful hours of low brain activity where nothing else matters except how many snacks are within arm's reach.

Let's leave it that way.

Thad Williamson

This is probably the greatest week in Richmond's college football history.   This Friday night the UR Spiders take the field against Montana to play for the championship of the Football Championship Subdivision (aka I-A, as I'll call it from now on). The winner of that ballgame in Chattanooga will earn the right to be called "national champions."

Richmond's title aspirations would have ended months ago had the Spiders been playing in the big money part of Division I, all because Richmond dropped two tough games to a pair of other top ten teams, James Madison and Villanova. While playoff system in I-AA does reward success over the course of the season, it reserves the ultimate prize for the team that plays best at the end of the year.

There are three clear benefits to this system. First, it provides some tremendously exciting football. Everyone at UR will long remember Eric Ward's game winning touchdown pass in the final seconds this past Saturday against Northern Iowa, but the most dramatic play of that game in my book was a 4th and 2 the Spiders converted moments earlier to keep the game alive, on a quick out pattern to fullback Shawn White.

That was do-or-die stuff, and it made for gripping viewing.

Second, instead of pretending that a computer or poll voters can decide who amongst roughly similar teams is the best, it gives the teams a chance to decide the issue on the field. Is Richmond really in the abstract a better team than James Madison, Villanova, Appalachian State, Northern Iowa, or Montana? It's impossible to say.   What the playoff system does allow us to say is which team was best on a given day, on the field.

Third, the system produces an unambiguous champion, with no room for whining by those left out.

Compare all this to I-A ball's increasingly ridiculously Bowl Championship Series, which has produced yet another controversial, if not absurd, outcome this year.

No one can doubt that Oklahoma and Florida have awesome teams this year and that the "national championship" game will be an entertaining spectacle. But neither can anyone begrudge folks in Austin, Texas for feeling more than a little bitter about being left out.   Texas lost one game this year, an epic defeat to Texas Tech that amazed just about everyone who saw the game.   That loss was enough to shut Texas out of the final game, even though the Longhorns beat Oklahoma by ten points on a neutral field.

Nor can anyone safely deny that Southern Cal is probably just as good a club as Texas, Florida, or Oklahoma. All four schools have exactly one loss. But a system designed to protect the bowl status quo has left it to computer rankings and poll voters to pick which of the four gets to play in a "national title" game.

That ain't right.

It's past time for I-AA to get beyond the archaic bowl and poll system and let the best teams prove on the field who should be champ. At the same time, the NCAA should take the opportunity to cut down on the bloated bowl season. (There are now 34 bowls, and I'd venture to say that in at least 20 of those games the only people who care are the teams involved and the folks in Las Vegas.)

Here's how a new system should work. The NCAA should, as it does in basketball, appoint a committee to evaluate the 119 I-A teams. That committee's primary task would be to pick the top 8 teams for a playoff, guided by objective criteria such as record and strength of schedule. (Use of computer polls as a tool is fine, but human judgment should have the final call.) Conference designation should not help or hurt a school, however. If one year the SEC has 3 or 4 teams in the top 8, that is fine. (This year three teams from the Big 12—Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech, would have been picked.) Likewise, being champion of a mediocre football conference like the ACC should be no ticket into this very big dance.

The committee's second task should be to pick an additional 40 teams to participate in postseason bowls. Criteria should be stiffened so that only schools with 7 wins against I-A opponents are eligible. Here, guaranteeing conference champions a slot in a bowl makes sense. Bowls with longstanding regional tie-ins to particular conferences should be allowed to keep those ties, so long as they pick teams within the top 48.

The first playoff round should happen roughly two weeks before Christmas, and should be played on campus sites. The four losers of those games should receive invitations to a holiday bowl game as a reward for a great season.

The four winners would advance to national semifinals to be played New Year's Day. Those semifinal games could also be called "bowl" games, and could be hosted on a rotating basis by the current Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta Bowls.

The final game, played a week later, should simply be called the National Championship game, and held at a rotating neutral site (probably an NFL stadium).  

This system would have several virtues. It would allow truly outstanding teams the chance to prove who is best on the field. It would create a lot of excitement (and money). It would allow 24 of the existing 34 bowl games to survive (the two semifinal bowls, the two bowls involving quarterfinal losers, plus twenty more bowls involving teams #9-#48), and there would be much higher interest in those remaining games. Bowl invitations would become meaningful again, not a job security program for coaches of big-conference teams with 6-6 records.

It also would produce some terrific football and some terrific memories. Can you imagine a future in which more time is spent discussing and recalling dramatic moments of playoff football games rather than debating what would have happened if Texas or Southern Cal (or next year's equivalents) had gotten their chance? In which more attention is paid to what actually happened as opposed to what might have or should have happened?

That would be change football fans can believe in.