College Football Needs New System, But Following The Crowd May Not Work

Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE

Andrew Mills/THE STAR-LEDGER via US PRESSWIRE

Consensus is that a playoff is the way college football will go — must go.

“Every other team sport has a playoff.”

Among those team sports deciding its champion is the National Football League, culminated via the most celebrated of title clashes, the Super Bowl. The 2011 season’s Super Bowl champion are the New York Giants. The 9-7 New York Giants. The New York Giants that scrapped, clawed, barely reached the postseason.

The Giants possess the Lombardi Trophy, but are they worthy representatives of the game’s best?

The phenomenon of hot-at-the-right-time is becoming increasingly common. The last two Super Bowl winners were teams that needed the final week just to make the postseason, the latest in more mediocre fashion than the previous. The reigning World Series champion had the worst record of the eight playoff qualifiers. Last year’s NCAA Tournament winner finished eighth in its conference. Third seeded Dallas Mavericks and Boston Bruins were the best regular season finishers among the major team sport champions.

Well, aside from 2011 college football champion Alabama. Yet, the Crimson Tide are the most controversial of all the current team champions. That’s peculiar.

The Giants went on an impressive run to reach the Super Bowl, knocking off Atlanta, Green Bay and San Francisco: all on the road. The culmination was Sunday night’s defeat of AFC’s No. 1 overall team, the New England Patriots. There’s no disparaging such a run, but those four wins equal 20 percent of the Giants’ overall body of work. And the other 80 percent was pretty damn mediocre.

The highlight of the Giants’ 9-7 regular season was a defeat of New England three months ago. A season sweep of New England proved New York had the advantage in that particular match-up, thus was the superior team. Then again, New York was swept by Washington.

Take a moment and let that sink in — the NFL’s “best” team lost to the routinely awful Redskins. Twice. And Alabama is the more controversial champion for gaining emphatic revenge against a team it lost to in overtime.

Don’t consider this a defense of the Bowl Championship Series. The flaws of the BCS are no less glaring on Feb. 6 than they were Jan. 6, no less frustrating in 2012 than they were in 2002. The system desperately needs retooling, but following the model of every other team sport isn’t the way to go.

College football’s regular season is sport’s most exciting, because every Saturday has a playoff atmosphere. The problem is that how those playoff-like games are weighted. The lack of consistency is an issue, and the facet of determining a champion that needs restructuring. Alabama was most likely the best team in college football, thus a deserving champion. However, Oklahoma State could stake similar claim and never had the opportunity.

A playoff model that amounts to a carbon copy of the NFL may placate the casual fan masses that have become the pro game’s base, but does little to improve the championship process.

Any postseason in the college game must be for the Oklahoma State’s and not the Kansas State’s. A No. 12 KSU that was blasted by Oklahoma and lost to OSU gets in as the last entrant, gets hot at the right time — or say, faces a team whose primary offensive weapon is injured — and wins it all.

Few would argue K-State was worthy a shot at the college football championship…and the Wildcats won 10 games with four fewer tries than the Giants needed for nine.

A system that gives everyone deserving a title shot is sorely needed in the college game, but what everyone else is doing isn’t necessarily the answer.

Tags: BCS, Featured, NFL, Playoffs