Arguing For A College Football Playoff | AUSmoose's Blog

I read Stewart Mandel's piece against a playoff and I am still not convinced that a playoff isn't the best thing for college football.

Ok, so a playoff minimizes the idea that every game counts and rewards teams that get hot late in the season. However, these days its not just about winning every game, even with the current system. The BCS is not just about winning, but winning with style. And that is the problem: getting to the championship is starting to be a more subjective proposition where pollsters and computers look at things differently and then decide who is ranked above who. When you give it to the pollsters it starts to take the decision process off the field and out of the hands of the players. As Utah illustrated this year - you can still win out your season and not have a chance to show you deserve to be number one.

The BCS system doesn't place any more emphasis on an entire regular season accomplishments that a playoff system does. In fact it deemphasizes a 12 game resume. Even with a playoff system where a team has to be "hot" for 2-4 games, under the BCS system a team just has to be cold for one game. A good team can loose just once and be done. What's more loosing can be a matter of timing. Do you think Florida would have made it to Miami if that loss had come two weeks later in the season? In that respect the current system is no different from a playoff in rewarding teams that get hot late in the season (like Florida).

I think that the BCS works great when you just have only TWO teams that dominate the season. However, in the era of parity where there are a number of teams that are equally matched and had similar records over the regular season, the BCS system becomes more like a lottery where your two teams are decided on subjective values and biases from computers and human pollsters.

A playoff system may have its drawbacks, but if you believe in parity, then you have to believe that its better than the current system.

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January 24, 2009 10:41 PM ET

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You are correct. As it is now the entire season is a playoff...or at least has playoff excitement even if the final results are unclear until the season is entirely over.

josephplumber

Tampa , FL

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April 26, 2009 03:54 PM ET

you are right and at the same time you are wrong,if you will remember what we had before the bcs now that was tragic maybe it is time to start the evolution of the system but for now it,s what weve got,if you will remember hawaii made all those boastes about being unbeaten and that they could play with anyone in the country and it took two beatdowns to show them that they couldnt if this weak_ss utah team keeps it up they might get what they ask for i would love to see them try and play an SEC schedule for that fact i would love to see USC,TEXAS,OKLAHOMA,OHIO STATE, UTAH just got bye because of a weak schedule!!!!