While many college football fans are giddy for the BCS system of deciding a national title to be over and done with at the end of this season thanks to a 4-team playoff, they should be very careful on what they ask for.
Isn't the Playoff Committee that has been assembled just a smaller version of the voters/computers that have helped decide the title game in the BCS era? The 13-person committee consists of former players, coaches, and even a former Secretary of State. Do you honestly think that fans of teams in the BCS hunt are going to believe in the legitimacy of these people, who I presume have either all gone to universities with football or are currently in a position of power at an NCAA institution (or at the very least, have had a strong rooting interest in a particular team)?
For instance, one of the committee members is Tom Osborne. Do you think a fan of a PAC-12 team (let's say Oregon) will respect the opinion of the committee if one year, Nebraska (Osborne's former team) somehow edges out the Ducks for a chance to play in the playoff?
And what about the 5th best team in the nation (or 9th best in an 8-team playoff, etc.)? You think fans of bubble teams and the media talk too much/complain about the teams that don't make the March Madness tourney...and multiply it by about a hundred. With March Madness, 68 teams out of 351 NCAA teams make "the playoffs", including 37 "at-large" teams who fail to win their conference tournament (or conference in the case of the Ivy League), you have 19.3% of teams represented in the tourney....and you still have people complaining about a 19-14 team not making the tournament over a 21-12 team with perhaps a slightly less strong resume. Many fans don't subscribe to my theory of "if you've put yourself in that position of being considered a 'bubble team', then you can't complain if they don't make it," and I don't see that changing for the football version, which will initially have 4 of its 124 teams (as of this year), or just over 3% of the teams. Even if you make it 8 teams, it's still a significantly smaller percentage of teams in there as there are in March Madness. And w/ NCAA football arguably having a stronger hold over the country than basketball, imagine how ugly some of those message boards (which are ugly enough without the playoff) will be if the playoff committee slights their team's prospects of a chance at the BCS title. Imagine how much time ESPN and other sports media organizations will spend on the teams that didn't make it.
If we use the final records of teams in the top 15 of the BCS standings (the final standings before the bowl games) as a basis for the teams likely to be considered in the Top-8 discussion (assuming they eventually go to the 8-team format), here are the records of all the teams from the past 5 years (before their eventual bowl game):
2008: 12-0 teams (2)*; 12-1 (3); 11-1 (4); 11-2 (1); 10-2 (2); 9-3 (3) - 9 teams with 1 loss or less
2009**: 13-0 teams (3); 12-0 (2); 12-1 (1); 11-2 (1); 10-2 (5); 9-3 (3) - 6 teams with 1 loss or less
2010: 13-0 teams (1); 12-0 (2); 12-1 (1); 11-1 (5); 11-2 (2); 10-2 (3); 9-3 (1) - 9 teams with 1 loss or less
2011: 13-0 teams (1); 11-1 (4); 11-2 (2); 10-2 (5); 10-3 (2); 9-3 (1) - 5 teams with 1 loss or less
2012: 12-0 teams (2)***; 12-1 (1); 11-1 (3); 11-2 (3); 10-2 (5); 9-3 (1) - 6 teams with 1 loss or less
(stats above do not include any teams with these records outside of the top 15 of the final BCS standings before the bowls)
*neither of these teams (Utah and Boise State) even finished in the top 6 of the rankings and had no shot in hell of making the BCS title game.
**Of the 5 undefeated teams at the end of the year, only Alabama and Texas - the title game participants - received 1st place votes at the end of the season.
***Ohio State was not eligible for the title game due to NCAA sanctions
So using these records as a baseline for the title game, the cut-off for arguments will begin around the 10-2/11-1 mark. Is an 11-1 team going to make an 8-team playoff over 10-2 in every situation? I would assume not, but you know that fans of an 11-1 team would bitch if they got bypassed by a 10-2 team, even if the 11-1 team had a much weaker schedule.
Yes - I know no system is perfect, but I honestly don't think the new playoff system is going to be much better than the BCS system. You might be adding more teams and pleasing the critics of the current system that argue that the champion should be determined "on the field" instead of in the polls, but there's still the human element of the selection process that will be endlessly debated and cause more problems than it will solve. One of the few ways the committee could assist in lessening the debates perhaps is providing complete transparency in the process, showing who they selected (and more importantly, why), but even that won't make everyone happy.
People who hated the BCS set-up must be forgetting the days where the polls were the title was determined, with no guarantees of a #1 vs #2 match-up even occurring. At least in the current set-up and the playoffs, the teams featured in the final game of the year will have gotten there through some process that tries to determine the best team in the nation.
And no, I'm not a huge proponent of the bowl system and the 10 million bowl games they currently have in place. I just don't think a 4/8/16/whatever team-playoff will make the champion any more deserving than before. If they're going to expand the playoff, I hope they don't go past 6 or 8 to keep the importance of the regular season in tact.
I hope I'm wrong about the playoff system and it improves people's perceptions on the champion, even though pretty much every year in the BCS era, the best teams ended up facing off for the title. Prove me wrong, selection committee process. Prove me wrong.
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