\"defense of BCS\" post

[KnuckleStang]

Saw this on the TCU board. It's really long, but interesting. This person is basically defending the BCS (which I hate as much as the next guy), but anybody with a moderately conservative sensibility (like myself) might have trouble disaggreeing with a lot of his points.

"Defending the BCS
By Charles Babb
Date: Jul 27, 2003


Yes, I have been one of the many voices crying in the wilderness that this is an unfair system. Yes, I have ranted about the screwed up computer rankings and quirks that have cost two teams dearly, denying them a shot at the title game (Ohio State in 1998 and Miami in 2000). Yes, I have even railed against the assassination of the traditions and am still disgusted over the Orange Bowl and Rose Bowl matchups in 2003.

Now comes my darkest hour. I am here to defend the Bowl Championship Series.

I am defending it because 44 Division I-A presidents have declared war against it.

In case you have not heard, last week the president of Tulane called a meeting to voice displeasure with the status quo. Participating were presidents from universities whose football teams play Division I-A football whose conferences are not directly involved with the BCS.

Allow me to say that I honestly do understand their contention that they feel they are locked outside of the BCS. I understand they view this as a possible anti-trust issue and are considering parading out their favorite lawyers and law officials to threaten the NCAA and power conferences. I understand their contention that they think they have been unfairly excluded. I understand that they believe this is limiting their revenues.

I just disagree with those charges. Not only do I think research unequivocally shows the contentions are illegitimate, but I also believe that they should consider carefully their next move. If these presidents and their allies are not careful, they will kill their golden goose and end up dining on a cold dish of ashes.

Playing the Game of Monopoly

The non-BCS schools seem to believe that they have been unfairly excluded from the top tier bowls. The implication is that the big, bad BCS boys all sat around in fat leather seats in some musty conference room and smoked Cuban cigars while scheming on how to create a monopoly. I can picture it in my mind’s eye:

“Eureka,” shouted Roy Kramer, “I have the perfect plan!” Devilishly evil grins upon their faces, Jim Delaney and John Swofford cackled in delight and rubbed their palms together, “Tell us more Roy.” Roy leans forward and begins to whisper, while first shock and then pleasure floods the faces of the other commissioners. “It is a bold plan Roy, but it will work. We will use it to crush those hapless teams forever…Muahahahahaaaa…”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The BCS was devised in order to provide a championship game for Division I-A college football without creating a playoff. Its inception had and still has absolutely nothing to do with excluding the minor conference teams. Under the original system (and its ugly stepchild known as the Bowl Alliance), the Big Ten and the Pac Ten sent their champions to the Rose Bowl. This meant that despite their unblemished record, teams like Arizona State in 1996 and Penn State in 1994 were pretty much stuck hoping the other undefeated team would lose and hand them the national title. Fans tired of this and under immense pressure, the bowl officials and school presidents decided to finally do something about the matter

The BCS and the Major Conferences as Scrooge

Another, somewhat related allegation is that the major conferences (Big 10, Big 12, SEC, Big East, and ACC) excluded the lesser teams and conferences (MAC, Sun Belt, WAC, Mountain West, and Conference USA) in order to hoard the money.

The statistic most thrown around to disprove the motivation of greed driving the major conferences is that in the previous 20 years only one non-BCS team has been in one of the BCS Bowls. Digging deeper, the statistics reveal a picture so sharp that it cuts to the bone. The Rose Bowl has not seen a non-BCS conference member play on its hallowed field since Southern Methodist in 1922. Since 1950, the Orange Bowl has invited only Santa Clara (1950) and Navy (1961). Since its inception in 1971, only Louisville (1991), Wyoming (1976), and Brigham Young (1974) have played in the Fiesta Bowl. Finally, the Sugar Bowl has only been sweet enough to offer Air Force (1971), Wyoming (1968), and Navy (1955) a slot of the non-BCS teams since 1950.

Do the math.

Only 8 non-BCS teams (out of 364 possible) have played in any of the top four bowls since 1950. While they might make up 46% of the Division I-A football population, these teams have claimed only 2.19% of the BCS bowl slots in the last 52 years. Even worse, three of those were service academies, and Santa Clara no longer plays Division I-A football. That leaves only four teams - three of which were in the Fiesta, the least prestigious of the BCS bowls. Until recent years, the Cotton Bowl was far and away more prestigious. That means that only one non-service academy, current Division I-A team (Wyoming), appeared in the 300 slots available with the true giants of the BCS - the Orange, the Rose, and the Sugar Bowls.

Just one team out of 300 openings.

What this means is that BCS or no BCS, the bowls themselves are not interested in teams from the other conferences. If they were, then they would have been inviting them all along. To the bowl committees, selecting one of these lower conference teams is about as attractive as driving a rusted out Chevy Nova with one working headlight to the prom. Thanks but no thanks.

No matter what they say or would have anyone believe, it is not the major conferences but their own mediocrity and lack of attractiveness to the big bowls that is condemning them to a second tier status.

The Blame Game

Third, the anti-BCS presidents are making noise that this exclusion is one of the sources of their revenue problems. The 44 presidents seem to be acting on the notion that if they could just land in one of those bowls from time to time, it would be the magical elixir to sooth all of their budget woes.

I vehemently disagree.

There is an old saying that he who lives in a glass house should not throw stones; these presidents first need to peer inward and examine their own athletic departments and fan base before they level such explosive charges.

Consider the physical facilities of Division I-A football schools. The average stadium size for teams in the power (BCS) conferences (along with Notre Dame) is 66,265 with a 2002 attendance of 59,467. Meanwhile, the average size of a non-BCS team’s stadium is 37,846 (which is helped immensely by over half a dozen teams playing in facilities used by Bowl games). The attendance for these programs? They averaged an embarrassing 23,424 per game. If these programs would like more revenue, perhaps they should start by getting more fans to attend their own home games.

Further, these schools need to look at their enrollment numbers for some of the answers to their questions. Much of the economic disparity between the have’s and have-nots can be traced to some pretty simple numbers. Ohio State, Texas, Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee, Florida, and a host of other large schools all boast undergraduate enrollments of at least 25,000 (and the majority have over 30,000). Add the graduate students, and it is not unusual to see numbers that approach 50,000 students at Ohio State or Texas. Meanwhile, places like Arkansas State (9,275), Idaho (7,946), and Tulane (7,701) are all attempting to compete on the same athletic field. These relatively small schools dream of some day having an athletic program worthy of BCS consideration with accompanying revenue. I am in no way trying to be rude when I say - am I the only one who sees a serious flaw in this ideal? Just for argument’s sake, what if you were in bus

[Hoop Fan]

Nice long article, with a lot of tidbits of logic, but in the end its bullcrap because it fails to address the main problem. Why do Baylor, Rutgers, Vandy and others have a shot at the national championship next year but BYU,TCU, and SMU do not? The latter 3 have all won national championships, Heismann winners and top 10 finishes modern era. Many other schools like Fresno outdraw many BCS schools at the gate and in tv ratings, if thats the criteria Mr Babb believes is key. The fact is the BCS, and its predecessors, have lead to an arbitrary and capricious "system" of play. And he forgot to mention that college football is not just a business. State universites are publically funded, not-for-profit organizations last I checked. This guys article pisses me off the more I think about it.

[EastStang]

I agree that until you explain that question, it is inherently unfair. In his analysis of bowl games, he made passing mention of the more presitigious Cotton Bowl and mentioned Navy, but then left off the fact that Houston appeared in three and SMU in one during the last 25 years. I suspect that in the early 60's, TCU might have appeared in a couple. I would not be surprised if Baylor had the fewest Cotton Bowl appearances of any team in the SWC (other than Rice). As I have said before, you still need to give the Big Schools a lion's share of the pie, but you at least need to let the non-BCS schools have a taste now and then. The other inaccurate factoid is that the way the computer rankings of non-BCS schools is done, a team can go undefeated and not have a shot at a BCS bowl because by being in a Non-BCS conference, their conference wins will be downgraded, and their conference losses exaggerated. Hopefully we'll beat Baylor and they'll pull off some upset this year of a major team, then we'd get upgraded.

[OldPony]

Just a 1 word rebuttal of the article from an 11-0 team: TULANE

[ponyboy]

The guy dismisses the answer before he even gets going. The only fair way out of this mess is a playoff. It too is not without its inherent problems -- how do you fairly decide the playoff pool, for instance -- but it's the only thing close to an equitable, sporting answer.

[Sam I Am]

Of course an NCAA playoff is the only accepable answer tot he BCS since every other sport and all other football divisons have one. How can the NCAA argue against itself in this matter?

[GoRedGoBlue]

His MATH is correct on the teams not being in those four bowls, but there were OTHER bowls that hosted highly ranked teams as well...

Here's what I wrote Blackistone.

1) We could agree that ratings numbers and actually ability on the field
should dictate who gets to play in the premier bowls. However, the BCS
schools are using the fact that they have de facto tie-ins to these premier
bowls, and that the non-BCS schools do NOT, to compete (recruit) for
athletic talent -- the very athletic talent that determines whether you have
the ability to compete at the highest level. If the BCS schools could sware
that they do not use this 'advantage' to their recruiting advantage, then
they are safe, but...(wink wink) we know they do ('Hey, you want to play for
TCU? Or come here to UT and play for a National Championship...we're a BCS
conference!').

Therefore, the BCS is anti-competitive.

2) The BCS has been hyping that in the 20 years prior to the BCS, only one
team in a conference outside the current BCS conferences played in the four
BCS bowls: Fiesta, Rose, Sugar, and Orange (159 out of 160 teams).

First of all, of course the ROSE BOWL (40 teams=20 years x 2) only allowed
the Pac10 or Big10 to play. Second, exactly half (60) of the remaining
slots were designated by conference affiliation. Third, many of the teams
that DID play in these bowls, weren't members of the BCS conferences back
then (Miami, Penn State, etc.). And finally, those four bowls didn't
represent the only premier bowls that had top teams or national championship
games (see the Holiday Bowl with BYU, Cotton Bowl, Peach, etc.).

3) Perhaps over 1/2 of the BCS teams actually have no real ability to
compete for the national championship (see Baylor, Vandy, Rutgers, etc), yet
benefit from their BCS affiliation while the non-BCS teams that are perhaps
much better athletically than they are struggle handily to meet athletic
budgets -- all the while graduation rates at their schools are more in line
with general student graduation rates than their BCS counterparts (OU at
20%, Ark at 16%? while SMU at 83%, Rice at 90%).

4) Finally, as for adding a 5th BCS bowl, or 'guaranteeing' one slot to a
non-BCS conference, or enacting a playoff, what good will it do when they
give the WAC champion the 5th bowl year after year, or give 14 of the 16
playoff slots to BCS schools? And they make the 2 non-BCS playoff schools
have to play #1,#2 year after year and lose, therefore "validating" the BCS
contention that the non-BCS schools are not as good.

And yes, they should toss the current system. Short of a fair playoff, I
vote to bring back the the OLD bowl system, where perhaps 3 or 4 games on
January 1st meant something, and if you were ranked #3, or even #4, you
could STILL win the national championship, depending on what happened that
day.

We all wanted to watch ALL of the big games back then, on one day, not just
the top 'games' scattered across a week of primetime programming.

[KnuckleStang]

The playoff IS what is needed, I agree. A 16 team playoff, with automatics to all major conference champions, and fill the rest with at-large bids. The at-large would probably all be BCS schools, but still, I would be happy with that. At least it's fair. Every game in the tournament is a bowl. There would be no attendance problems, because the games would all mean something. This will never happen, but I dream of a day when it does.