A BCS That Actually Works!
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by user DNL
The BCS -- or "Bowl Championship Series," as it is misnamed -- is supposed to be a "better" way to determine a college football national champion. "Better," of course, means better than the "let's all vote and see what happens" style that occured pre-BCS.
The track record of the BCS is, in a word, terrible. Auburn, a powerhouse school from a powerhouse conference, went undefeated a few years back -- that is, they did everything they could do -- and did not even have a chance at a national title. Both USC and LSU, even with the "no more split titles!" of the BCS system managed to, yes, split a title. This year, a cadre of one-loss teams (and one undefeated minor conference team) all have a colorable claim on the second slot for the BCS Championship Game versus Ohio State, but only Florida will get there.
You can take the actual college football landscape and take away the following:
- We all want a tournament. We're also never, ever going to get our tournament. There are plenty of reasons -- some good, some bad -- for this. But it's 100% true.
- "All" does not include traditionalists who think the Pac-10 and Big Ten should play each other in the Rose Bowl.
- "All" also doesn't include university presidents, who are foolishly trying to lie to themselves when they argue that "student athletes" are students first, and an extra week of crazy Nielsen ratings aren't worth it.
The BCS is, truly, a strange attempt at a two-team tournament, which for many reasons leaves us with a terrible aftertaste. In attempting to improve the system, we're left with the "BCS mini-tournament" -- one which aims to balance the need for tradition with the desire for an objectively determined champion. Keeping the above in mind, I've developed a format and a decent set of rules which, I hope, takes large strides toward fixing the Michigan/Flordia -- or Oklahoma/Auburn -- or Nebraska/Colorado -- or Miami/FSU -- or LSU/USC -- dilemmas. (Amazingly, they're all different!) Here it goes.
The Format
January 1 (or so): Five BCS bowl games. The Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, and Cotton.
January 8 (or so): One championship game. The participants of this game are, by rule, each winners of one of the BCS bowl games.
The details? Let's find out.
The Selection Process
First, select the teams. Six of the ten are done for us. Each of the six major conferences (with apologies to the WAC) get their champ in. The conferences are welcome to choose their champ via any method they see fit -- regular season record, AP poll rank, BCS rank (yes, we're keeping the rating system), championship game, lottery, "hey it's Minnesota's turn," whatever. Up to them.
The other four can be done a number of ways, and I'm not sure that any one way is better than any other. My initial inclination is to keep most of the BCS's current eligibility rules:
- 9+ wins against Div I-A schools;
- Top 14 in the BCS standings;
- No more than two teams per conference.
That's just to be BCS eligible. It doesn't get you in, but it can keep you out.
In making the other four selections, I'm going to keep some other BCS rules, with some changes. The rules are in order of importance; once we hit four "at-large" teams, stop because you're done.
- Take the #1 BCS team.
- Take the #2 BCS team.
- Take the top conference champ of a non-BCS conference, so long as the team is BCS eligible.
- If a team gets in via rule #3, and any independent is above it or in the top 8 of the BCS rankings, take that team. (NB that a similar rule already exists, but applies incorrigibly only to Notre Dame)
- Take the #3 BCS team.
- Take the next conference champ of a non-BCS conference, again, so long as it is BCS eligible.
- Take the #4 BCS team.
After that, it's up to whatever selection committee the BCS comes up with.
Typically, you'll probably have one or two, and maybe three of the at-large bids being assigned automatically. While some may object to the fact that my system still allows for a subjective selection (see Notre Dame over West Virginia this year), well, tough. Any system that bars Notre Dame unless it is, effectly, a top-10 team in the nation is doomed to fail, and not worth discussing.
The Matchup Rules
This is the difficult part.
We have our ten teams, and we want to effectively reach two goals: keep the traditional luster of the bowl games (especially the Rose) while simultaneously setting up a controvery-free title game. Yuck.
So, my rules? They're below. One thing to note: When they conflict, ordinal rank controls. (That means that if #1 and #2 can't both be met, forget about #2.)
1) If there are four undefeated BCS teams, or no undefeated teams and four one-loss teams, they must be paired off. The reason for this is both simple and obvious: We need to whittle down the number of teams which have a claim on the title game.
2) The Pac-10 champ faces the Big Ten champ in the Rose Bowl. Again, a simple reason: tradition.
3) If there are exactly two undefeated teams, they must not face each other. The two teams that play in the title game are in for a big, double payout. We want to reward these two teams for their superlative regular season, and by and large, any team that both runs the table and wins its BCS bowl will get this reward. (Note that this year is an exception, as a Boise State victory over Oklahoma would probably not get them a title game invite.) Note that the power of the Rose Bowl trumps this.
4) The SEC champ goes to the Sugar Bowl. I think that this bowl tie-in is the most historical, but it could be the ACC/Orange Bowl or Big 12/Fiesta. Whichever one is most appropriate goes here.
5) If there are exactly three undefeated teams, or exactly three one-loss BCS-conference teams and no undefeated teams, two of those three teams must play each other in a BCS Bowl. Three teams can't play in one title game, so we need to eliminate one. I put this rule here (as opposed to later) because of the USC/Oklahoma/Auburn fiasco of 2004. There is simply no way that, given the above rules, this can be violated.
6) The Big 12 champ goes to the Fiesta Bowl. In the 2004 situation, the Sugar Bowl would be Oklahoma/Auburn. See how that works?
7) The Fudge Rule. "When possible, the selection committee shall structure the bowl selection bids to lessen controversy in the selection of the title game." That needs explanation.
What we are going to get here, hopefully, is two de facto semi-finals games, unless tradition overrides. Note that tradition typically will override, but that's okay, because if it didn't, we'd have no tradition of which to speak.
The hypothetical situation? Let's take this year, but have Rutgers run the table and Arkansas beating Florida. The top four would be Ohio State, Michigan, and Rutgers. Hard to say who #4 would be, but it'd not matter. This rule would put Michigan and Rutgers into the Orange or Cotton Bowl. (Other rules would make it the Orange Bowl.)
To see how Rule 7 works, take the BCS teams and filter them through potential title game scenarios. I do that, below, and I think the matchups become self-evident.
8) Avoid rematches. This rule will have application later. I don't have it higher because of the Florida State/Miami problem a few years back, where FSU was BCS #2, Miami was BCS #3, but Miami beat FSU. Rule 7 would prefer that these two teams faced each other again, depending on other circumstances.
9) The Orange Bowl gets to select either the ACC or Big East champ, and if they can, must select both. Maybe this should be "The ACC champ goes to the Orange Bowl," but honestly, I don't really care. Whatever floats collective boats.
10) The Cotton Bowl gets the teams that are basically unable to win a title.' We're adding the Cotton Bowl mainly so that teams like Boise State don't get screwed, as otherwise, there are only two at large teams. And really, who is going to want Boise State over Michigan or LSU?
That's pretty much it. Let's apply it to this year.
The 2006-07 Example
- Rose Bowl: Ohio State v. USC. Pretty clear matchup, as Rule 2 applies.
- Sugar Bowl: Florida v. Michigan. Florida goes to the Sugar Bowl due to Rule 4; Michigan by Rule 7. The Fudge Rule -- it's alive!
- Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma v. Boise State. Oklahoma goes via Rule 6. Boise State via Rule 7.
- Orange Bowl: Louisville v. LSU. This is a mix of Rule 7 and 9, and is explained below.
- Cotton Bowl: Notre Dame v. Wake Forest. Rule 10, obviously.
For the Fiesta Bowl, I bet your initial inclination was OU versus ND, as a Boise State/Wake Forest matchup would make for excellent Cotton Bowl fodder. When I ran title game scenarios, though, it was clear that we needed Boise State to play the best of the two-loss teams not named LSU. I went with OU because they have the highest BCS rank (10) of the three, but I think a Boise State/Notre Dame (BCS #11) game, probably at the Cotton Bowl, is also acceptable.
The Orange Bowl poses an interesting problem. I think Rule 7 requires that we eliminate LSU (the top 2-loss team) or Louisville (the third eligible 1-loss team) from the mix. Of course, if, in my set up, USC upsets OSU, we could have a problem, with at least three teams with claims on the title game. We need more rules.
Your Championship Game
And here is where we add them in. More rules to determine who goes to the title game.
First, only five teams are eligible for selection -- the five that win the BCS games. So, even if Wisconsin shellacks the Indianapolis Colts in the Wikia Wiki Bowl (ahem), they're ineligible. Sorry, Badgers!
Of the five possibles, any "Big-Six" conference teams (or Notre Dame) that are undefeated get in.
The only way this rule is a problem is if there are five or more undefeated teams. But in that case, we're screwed anyway. I'm guilty of a Notre Dame exception here, but because ND plays a real schedule (as opposed to Boise State or Air Force), it's really unfair to treat them differently than, say, West Virginia or Wake Forest.
Space permitting, we use the following rules to grab teams.
- Take all the undefeated non-Big-Six teams and all the one-loss Big-Sixers. They're eligible, first and foremost. (That's why it's really important, above, that Louisville plays LSU and not, say, Boise State or Wake Forest.) If there aren't enough teams, repeat the process for two-loss teams (and one-loss minors), etc. Call this group "the hopper."
- Eliminate any team that lost to any other team in the hopper and did not defeat another team in the hopper.
- Eliminate any team who didn't win their conference if their conference champ is in the hopper.
- Re-run the BCS polls and computers at the close of the last BCS Bowl. Eliminate as many as needed to get down to two title game participants.
Put the title game at a rotating site among the four "original" BCS venues. The Cotton Bowl may not like this, but hey, we don't care.
2006-2007 Scenarios
The best scenario: Ohio State beats USC. Then it's almost certainly going to be OSU versus the Michigan/Florida winner -- which is what we all really want anyway. Note that because OSU isn't in "the hopper", Michigan isn't eliminated by Hopper Rule #2 or #3.
In this scenario, Louisville is the only other team with a wing and a prayer. They'd need to absolutely destroy LSU, thereby gaining traction either in the polls and/or computers, hoping to pass the Michigan/Florida winner. Unlikely.
The worst scenario: USC beats OSU, LSU beats Louisville, and Boise State beats Oklahoma. Because of my rules, we'd have a UM/UF v. Boise State title game. I'm not sure how awful that is, though, as going undefeated is tough, and adding in wins over Oregon State and Oklahoma should count for something. Bottom line: Boise State should have some way of winning a national title, and being the only undefeated, with wins over two top-25 teams, in a season with only one major conference one-loss team (sorry Wisconsin) should be good enough.
The other scenarios?
- USC beats OSU, Louisville beats LSU. L'ville plays Mich/Fl winner, absent some sort of Boise State surge.
- USC beats OSU, LSU beats Louisville, Oklahoma beats Boise State. Here, we have four teams vying for one spot. The Mich/Florida winner obviously gets a spot. But we have four two-loss teams trying for the other: USC, LSU, Oklahoma, and potentially Wake Forest. (If ND beats Wake, they're out, having lost to USC.) Now it comes down to the BCS, which is probably not a terrible result, and likely the best we can do.
There's an argument to be made that LSU shouldn't be able to go if Florida beats Michigan, but writing a rule for that is really, really hard. The resulting effect of that rule would mean that Michigan couldn't face OSU, and instead Louisville or (*shudder*) Boise State would have a cleared path to that game. We don't want that. We could write a rule that cut around this problem, but the fact is that it'd be too results-oriented, and cause problems down the line.
Another Application: 2005-2006
ESPN finally comes in handy! For some reason, a Google Search on "bcs standings" links to their BCS standings -- for last year. Perfect! -- BCS standings at the end of the regular season. The 05-06 season makes for a very good control set, because the BCS actually did its job that year. So, let's run it using my system.
The Ten Participants
First, we take the six BCS conference winners, with their records going in:
- Pac-10: USC (12-0)
- Big 12: Texas (12-0)
- ACC: FSU (8-4)
- Big East: West Virginia (10-2)
- Big Ten: Penn State (10-1)
- SEC: Georgia (10-2)
Our other four participants:
- TCU (10-1), because they're a conference winner who is BCS eligible.
- Notre Dame (9-2), because TCU got in, and ND was ranked above them (and in the top 8)
- Ohio State (9-2), because they were BCS #4.
- Oregon (10-1). I chose them because they were both the highest BCS team left, and the only one-loss team remaining out of the major conferences.
The Matchups
- Rose Bowl: USC v. Penn State. Rule 2 applies.
- Sugar Bowl: Georgia v. Ohio State. It's just a really good matchup.
- Fiesta Bowl: Texas v. Oregon. Incredibly, Rule 7 mandates this. Yes, Rule 7 requires that Ohio State gets screwed. Rule 8 also helps strengthen the argument.
- Orange Bowl: West Virginia v. Notre Dame.
- Cotton Bowl: Florida State vs. TCU.
The Scenarios
It's the winner of the Rose versus the winner of the Fiesta, and that's inescapable. Two undefeateds. Two one-loss teams. (Sorry TCU.)
The only other tam with a viable claim is Ohio State. They're #4 BCS, #4 in each poll, #4 by the computers. Yet they get get passed over for Oregon, who is #5 by all indicators other than the horrid Harris Poll (#6). Ohio State only lost to Penn State and Texas in close games; Oregon was blown out by USC.
But I'm okay with this. Ohio State already lost to two of the three better teams. Give Oregon the chance to do the same!
Conclusion
Unavoidably, at some point, the voters are going to have to distinguish between a group of very similar teams. But we can do a much better job than we are right now, all while protecting the integrity of the regular season and returning honor and meaning to the big bowl games.
What college football needs is not a tournament, which is a pipe dream in any event. What it needs is objective criteria which make sense, and which are written without the patchwork created by ex post bandages. The above should meet those needs.
I disagree because at some point, teams have to be eliminated, and being 3rd best in your conference is reason enough to be eliminated. The Badgers may be one of the five best teams in the nation, but they clearly are not one of the two best. And what I'm trying to do is figure out who are the two best.
The fact that Wisconsin didn't play the eventual Big Ten champ is their fault and the Big Ten's. Take it up with them.