College Football

I mentioned for the last two seasons that the BCS rankings in college football made more sense than anything else that was planned, where the top TWO teams,  determined by sophisticated polling, simply went against each other at the end to determine the national champion. I reasoned that nothing else would be any better (other than a plus-one bowl if more than one team was undefeated at the end of the season.) I said if there was a play-off system in place, lots of very good or great ONE LOSS TEAMS would still miss the tournament, creating even more controversy and more hurt feelings.

Guess what?

I was right.

The four top ranked teams won their last games this week. Three of those teams have one loss. The single team that is undefeated, last year's national champion Florida State, did not look very good in most of their wins against weaker opponents this year. As a result you have a controversial top four. AND other one loss teams like number 5 Ohio State, and number 6 Baylor, who also had great wins yesterday, are clinging to the hope that the selection committee today will still somehow include THEM in the final four, while removing at least one of the other slotted teams.

I laugh.

Of course this was going to happen. If you had an eight-team tournament you would have even more teams upset with the selections. With a sixteen team tournament, you would have to start including two-loss teams, thereby leaving out dozens of two-loss teams from the tournament.

Before you know it, you'd have a season-long tournament, where every game mattered for every team, and every single loss potentially could disqualify you from a chance at the national championship.

Which is what college football DID have for the last several seasons.

And it was great. Too bad I was the only one who noticed.

Be careful what you wish for.