Thinking of the late great Bill Walsh during his time at Stanford is kind of like thinking of Paul McCartney with Wings, or Tony Shalhoub with … Wings.
Walsh’s most memorable years weren’t spent with the Cardinal, whom he coached from 1977-78 and 1992-94, bookending his storied stint with the San Francisco 49ers. His Stanford résumé doesn’t jump off the page, but Walsh did get his own short-lived line of video games (two) that have been inducted into my pantheon of awesome stuff I wouldn’t talk about on the first date. Launched in 1992, Bill Walsh College Football was great not just because it started the EA Sports NCAA Football series, but because it was concise and simple. You played as one of the top 24 teams from ’92 or as one of the top 24 all-time greatest teams since 1978 – “Why can Doug Flutie throw the ball only 40 yards?” – in a single-elimination tournament.
I had only qualm about the game that has snowballed over the years. Shouldn’t every team be allowed to play for a national title like in basketball and FCS football? (I know. It was the early-90s and video games could store only so much data.)
I was excited and somewhat anxious two weeks ago when BCS executive director Bill Hancock announced that conference presidents, athletic directors and coaches had agreed to pursue a four-team playoff. Excited because it could bring clarity to major-college football’s process for crowning a national champion; anxious because the new system could play out just like the myopic one I use to enjoy on my Sega Genesis.
I proposed my idea for the “right” postseason format two years ago: Take away the BCS National Championship Game and pit the winners of the other four major bowls in a tournament for all the marbles. Brilliant as it was that system was flawed for many of the same reasons that the current one is. Both of them are based too much on rankings, which are entirely based on perception.
I like that college football heads are open to a four-team playoff. What I don’t like are some of the proposed changes I’ve been hearing and reading about. One calls for a complete scrapping of the bowls – too drastic. Another calls for reverting back to the old system, with the national champion(s) decided by polls – too passive. But the one that really bothers me is the idea of having the highest-ranked teams entering the bowls decide the national title in a playoff format.
The problem isn’t the bowls or the bowls after the bowls. It’s the emphasis on rankings. So much of major college football’s postseason is decided off the field. This is a rare opportunity to amend that.
The current system lost its last shred of credibility this season. Yes, the best team did win it all, but how Alabama reached the national championship game undermined the biggest argument that the BCS proponents – if any – had. As it turns out, the regular season isn’t that important, at least not for AQ schools. They can lose a game, not win their conference or division titles and still play for the crystal football, as long as their rankings, inflated as they may have been early in the season, doesn’t suffer too badly.
In a perfect world, everything would be decided on the field. This isn’t a perfect world. There are no perfect systems, at least not when they involve selection committees and rankings. Somehow, someway, some team will get snubbed.
Computers and ballots ultimately denied Utah, then a member of the Mountain West Conference, of playing for a national title in ’04 and ’08, and TCU in ’10 (the Horned Frogs finished the season ranked No. 2 in the BCS), and Boise State in ’06, ’08 and ’09. The BCS threw the small-conference schools a bone by adding a fifth bowl in 2006. But it’s pretty clear that the ultimate prize is out of reach for them even if they go undefeated.
There’s no guarantee that a four-team playoff would change that. That’s why the heads of major college football have to remember the “little people,” so to speak, while they’re deciding on a new postseason format.
It’s a safe bet the Pacific-12 and Big Ten conferences will not agree to do away with the Rose Bowl Game, so let’s assume some sort of bowl system will prevail. It should include five major bowls (hello, Cotton) if only because that gives the undefeated Boise States and TCUs the best chance to be included. It should involve flexible bowl tie-ins, which can be rotated annually, say, based on how conferences fared the previous postseason. Winning a major-conference title – on the field – should still count for something. Teams that advance from the bowls, whether it’s to a plus-one game or to a four-team tournament, should be based on rankings released after the bowls, and the rankings should not be based on computers. For years, The Associated Press poll determined a national champion, and everyone went along with it. Why not bring it back into the fold?
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s simple; it’s concise, and it infringes little on the bowl traditions. Plus, it provides a better chance for every team to reach the national championship game.
What a concept.
