Secondary BCS Bowls

There are some complaints about tonight's Michigan and Virginia Tech playing in a BCS bowl. While in the past, I have defended the BCS championship game, I have not defended the BCS secondary bowl selection process. The BCS seems to have two functions:

1. Pit the two best teams in a National Championship game.
   
2. Make sure that the majority of the revenue is distributed fairly evenly among the big conferences.
   

Evenly means that Arkansas is not playing in a BCS game, and big conferences is why Boise State is not playing in a BCS game. Of course the "small" schools got passed over in the old bowl system and to some degree in the basketball tournament as well. Virginia Tech and Michigan were selected because they travel well. The focus on BCS bowls is also overblown. Because Arkansas was ineligible and Kansas State was passed up, we ended up getting a pretty good game between those two in the Cotton Bowl.

College Football Playoff Part V: 2009 Review

Many people feel that 2009 is the year that clearly shows that a playoff is necessary for college football. Maybe an eight-team playoff would have worked pretty well this year; however, it seems likely to me that the strongest team won. While there was some controversy regarding the fact that three undefeated teams did not get a chance to play for a national championship, that seems to suggest to me that a four-team playoff this year would have been a disaster. At least one of the undefeated teams would have to be excluded and Florida with only one loss to Alabama would also have had a pretty compelling case. In fact the winners besides Alabama were the fifth and sixth teams in the BCS and very well might have been the teams excluded from a four-team playoff. It is interesting that after the season all of the playoff talk now discusses an eight-team playoff as opposed to a four-team playoff. If a four-team playoff had existed, I'm sure playoff creep would have already crept in to an eight-team or sixteen-team playoff.

December Links

1. Jim Hamilton discusses the merits of a college football playoff. I particularly like his point 2 on the likelihood of (or dislikelihood of) a college football playoff ending up with the best team winning.

2. A discussion of the costs to stockholders of the Tiger Woods scandal, estimated by two UC-Davis professors. (H/T The Sports Economist) (For full paper. Warning: the paper has not yet been peer-review, and I have not fully examined it yet myself, either.)

College Football Playoff IV: Congressional Involvement

Congress has decided to try and force a playoff on college football I-FBS. Many blogs are opposed to Congressional involvement (for instance Coyote Blog, Market Power, Cranky Con, and Café Hayek). Some of those writers may actually favor a playoff but are opposed to Congressional involvement or think that it has more important matters to deal with. I am opposed to Congressional involvement both because I oppose their objective but also based on principle that Congress should stay out of it. However, if a college football playoff keeps Congress from having time for another Cash for Clunkers or similar program, I will make that trade.

Playoff Creep

One of my biggest concerns about a college-football playoff is the problem of playoff creep, i.e. that the number of teams would increase over time. A four-team or an eight-team playoff might end up with the best team winning fairly often, but a 16, 24 or 32 team playoff could have a very low correlation between the best teams and the championship teams. However, there is always going to be a debate about who should be the last team in, so there will always be pressure to include more teams. As further evidence of my point, the NCAA basketball tournament is considering increasing the number of teams from 65 to 96. As a fan of William and Mary, I probably should applaud this as it may be the only chance for my team to finally get to the NCAA tournament. Well, maybe they won't need help this year. Regardless, I think this proposal would have a huge negative effect on the importance of the regular season.

The four key effects on the importance of the regular season:

1) The big conference teams will be able to get in with a lower number of wins. Assume that all of the teams that made the NCAA tournament plus all of the NIT at-large teams plus NIT automatic bid team Davidson would have made a 96-team tournament in 2008. Then add in three additional teams, which using the NCAA's methodology, I guess to be Cincinnati, Houston and Nevada. That would mean the seven BCS conferences would get the following number of teams into the playoffs:

ACC: 9 of 12

Big 10: 9 of 11

Big 12: 9 of 12

Big East: 11 of 16

Pac 10: 7 of 10

SEC: 7 of 12

Only five BCS conference teams with a winning record would have missed out. Three of those teams were in the relatively weaker SEC (Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Alabama), and the other two were barely above .500, Seton Hall (16-15) and NC State (16-14).

2) The potential 1, 2 and 3 seeds will have less to play for. The key gains for being a 1 seed as opposed to a 2 seed are that you avoid playing the likely other best teams in the country until the Final Four (other 1 seeds) and that you get an easier game in the first round. There has never been a 16 seed to beat a 1 seed and only four times has a 15 beaten a 2. Part of the reason is that the 1 and 2 seeds should be the best teams in the country, but another reason is that the 15 and 16 seeds are substantially worse than even the 14 and 13 seeds. There is a tremendous drop-off in quality of teams moving from 13 to 14 to 15 to 16. The last upset by a 15 seed was in 2001, and one reason for that is because the committee has gotten better at seeding the low seeds. The top teams get a real advantage by getting a top seed, playing a much weaker opponent and it gives them a little incentive to play well during the season. However, if the tournament expands to 96 teams, the 1 seeds will play the winner of the 16-17 game, which will now be a much better team. Last year, it would have included teams such as Kansas State, Kentucky and Tulsa. The old 15 and 16 seeds would now be 23 and 24 seeds and likely out of the tournament by the time the top teams play. The difference between being a 1 or 6 seed would drop considerably.

3) The mid majors would actually increase their at large bids. My projections of last year's tournament would have added at-large bids for the WCC, CAA, MAAC, Southern and MVC (2 teams) conferences. Those conferences had no at large bids last year. The mid-majors' regular season might actually influence their likelihood of playing in the tournament.

4) There would be a big difference between being an 8 seed and being a 9 seed, since the 8 seeds would have a bye and the 9 seeds would not. Teams at this borderline would have an incentive to win their last games to avoid an extra game.

If the key factor is making the regular season meaningful, reasons 1 and 2 argue against increasing, while 3 and 4 would argue in favor of increasing. It seems to me that the first two reasons are more important than the last two. Reason 4 only applies to a particular type of middling team. Reason 3 could be lessened if the committee would select a few more mid-majors for a 64-team tournament. In particular, the large conferences, which get the most attention, would have a particularly reduced importance to the regular season.

College Football Playoff Part III: A Great Link

A few weeks ago, I got a link to a great website that discusses the pros and cons of a playoff in college football, the National Championship Issue. There are a series of articles on a possible playoff. The introduction can be found at:

http://thenationalchampionshipissue.blogspot.com/2009/05/arguments-for-against-di-college.html

and an index of the arguments:

http://thenationalchampionshipissue.blogspot.com/2007/05/index-of-arguments.html

College football playoff, part II: Examination of a 4-team playoff

As a follow-up to my earlier post on my article on a college football playoff, I will be expanding on the issue of a four-team playoff.

There are a number of issues related to problems with a college football playoff. Here are the key ones for me:

1. Tradition of the bowls
   
2. The fact that college football is different is a plus
   
3. Expanding the playoffs would not necessarily improve the chances that the best team would win
   
4. The regular season matters more in the current system
   
5. The optimal number of playoff teams is not going to be constant
   

That last point I will expand on in a later post.

In many respects there is already a playoff system. It is just a playoff with two teams. So there has already been a little bit of destruction on points 1 and 2 with the creation of the BCS. In terms of fairness, I think a legitimate argument could be made that a four-team playoff might be optimal in terms of "fairness". It only has two rounds, so the probability of the best team getting upset is not extremely high. In general the regular season would still matter. However, even here there would be exceptions, such as the upcoming SEC championship. If Alabama and Florida win out, so that either team's only loss is to the other, I think they would have a pretty compelling case for inclusion in a 4-team playoff. If 2 out of the 3 of Boise St., TCU and Cincinnati lose out, the loser of the SEC championship game would almost be guaranteed of going to a four-team playoff. That result would seem to make that game pretty anti-climactic. If Boise State, TCU, Texas, Cinci and the SEC champion are undefeated there would still be at least one undefeated team missing out on a four-team playoff. The argument in that scenario would be that the optimal number of teams in the playoffs this year would be six. Even in the season most mentioned for needing a playoff, 2004, there were three contending teams (all with one loss), and then a mishmash of teams with two losses. A three team playoff might have been optimal in that year but even then there would be controversy over who got the bye week.

These cases all point to the likelihood that the playoffs would ever-be expanding. A four-team playoff excluding Boise State and TCU would lead to calls for an eight-team playoff so that those teams could be included. Then the ACC and Pac-10 would call for an automatic bid, since they'd be missing out on the post-season, and a sixteen-team playoff with eight automatic bids would be created. The Sun Belt, Conference USA, the MAC and Notre Dame would then want their own automatic bid, and the play-offs would be expanded to 24 teams.

My one compromise solution would be a +1 system. The bowls would go back to the old system of conference tie-ins, i.e., the Rose Bowl with the Pac-10 and Big 10, and the Sugar Bowl with the SEC champion. Then a week later there would be a National Championship game between two of the bowl winners. The system would bring back a lot of the tradition of the bowl games, allow the regular season to mean something, and give the smaller conference teams a chance to prove themselves in a bowl game to see if they are worthy of playing for the national championship. Also, it would hopefully limit the amount of playoff creep by keeping the bowls in place.

Would a college football playoff be fair?

Tim Kane and I have a new article at RealClearSports arguing that a college football playoff would be less "fair" in determining a national champion than the current system. I hope to have a couple of smaller follow-up posts here in the next couple of days.

Tim is a friend of mine from graduate school who blogs regularly at Growthology.