In his most significant public policy announcement to date, President-Elect Barack Obama threw his support behind a college football playoff format to replace the current BCS system. Sarah Palin, perhaps sensing a media trap, said that she wanted time to study the issue.
Presidential politics aside, the emotion that this issue arouses is mystifying. For sure, the BCS system is not without flaws. But the idea that some sort of playoff is needed to produce a "true" or "deserving" national champion is just plain silly. Any playoff is going to involve human judgment in determining brackets. All sorts of subjective criteria are going to come into play. Inevitably the common opponent will be used as a measuring stick which has been shown over many years in many sports to be highly imperfect at best.
March Madness is held out as the ideal. Yes, as spectacle the basketball tournament is terrific but the idea that it rules out any doubt as to who the best team in the country is is absurd. A team that gets hot at the right time, gets a favorable draw, plays at a site close to home and avoids injury can go deep into the tournament even it lost in the second round of its conference tournament a month earlier. In the NBA, a team can be downright mediocre all season, then get it together in the playoffs as Miami did a few years ago. The examples are endless. Is there something magical about seven game series? Would nine be a truer test? Or eleven?
If you want to tinker with the college football format fine but not with the expectation you're going produce a perfect meritocracy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment