BCS Playoffs? What Would Have Happened

If you are a college football fan like me, you are always asking and debating whether or not to have a playoff. From the first college game in 1869 between Rutgers and what is now Princeton to LSU’s drubbing of Ohio State this past January, it’s hard to believe that this is the only sport format in North America that doesn’t have a playoff system to define it’s champion.

Call it tradition, call it elitist football programs trying to keep their money in-house to preserve the status quo, call it what you may, the aging bowl system has been around since 1902 with the first Rose Bowl and even with the implementation of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, little has changed in the way college football has determined its champion. I remember when the BCS was instituted they stated that they would determine a clear #1 and #2 to have play in a true national championship game. I found it kind of odd that only six conferences were included in the BCS conferences though (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, & Pac-10). They had put together two human polls and a computer ranking of the schools as well as taking into account strength of schedule and losses, intended to avoid a split national champion that occurred when Michigan was declared champion by the AP poll while Nebraska was declared champion by the Coaches poll in 1997. It was also intended to try take away the human bias of the polls to determine a champion without changing the bowl system currently in place.

The original configuration was pretty ingenious of the six “major” conferences…except for the fact that they kept “tweaking” the system, changing the way the rating system worked again after the AP declared a different national champion than the BCS in the controversial 2003 season where OU lost its only game so far that season in the Big 12 championship game but still remained at #2 to play one-loss #1 LSU while leaving one-loss #3 USC to play Michigan in the Rose Bowl. LSU won the BCS championship game while USC won against Michigan in the Rose Bowl which was good enough for the press to vote them national champions. Even with that sort of chaotic ending to a season, the 6 “major” conferences were still unwilling to take a look at instituting any sort of playoff, just changing the formula to have less emphasis on the computer rankings and strength of schedule and more on the human polls, the very thing that the original BCS was supposed to reduce. In the latest season with so many worthy two-loss teams that could have played one-loss Ohio State in the finale, like red-hot teams Georgia, USC, and Oklahoma or even the eventual champion LSU, there were many fans and press calling out for a change in the system. As a fan, I would have liked to see any one of those teams play for a chance at the title, especially my Sooners of course (I’d rather see them in the championship game than in another Fiesta Bowl if you ask me).

That change did not happen, as earlier this month the BCS conferences convened and decided not to take up a proposed “plus-one” format where two of the BCS bowls would act as a semi-final matchup where #1 vs. #4 and #2 vs. #3 would meet and then the winners of those two would meet in the BCS championship game. But what if they actually voted and approved of such a measure?

Surely, the “plus-one” format would only be a transition into a playoff system. What would be an ideal playoff system for the formally Division I-A college football? The Meat decided to take a look at that and see what a college football playoff would look like. With the help of my future brother-in-law Kevin, we took a look at what we think it would look like, trying to appease to both the hardcore college football fan as well as the heads of the BCS conferences.

We pretty much looked at what we could do to keep a lot of the same elements in the current bowl system alive as well as implementing the playoff. We figured 16 teams would be ideal for big-time college football. Anything bigger would be unimaginable and would take longer than the winter break these kids get from school. To keep the BCS system to appease the conference heads, we would use the existing BCS rankings to help determine which teams get in, that way no one can complain about a committee choosing who gets to play like in the March Madness of college basketball. Same rules apply to getting into the playoffs as getting into a BCS bowl: must win conference for automatic bid for the following conferences: ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, Pac-10. Notre Dame must finish in the top 12 to be eligible for the playoffs. At-large bids are given out to remaining teams from the BCS conferences finishing in the top 16. Any team belonging to a conference outside the BCS must finish in the top 16 to get an at-large bid into the playoffs. With the preservation of these rules, it would be hard for the BCS conferences not to take this up.

For fun, just to see who would have ended up on top, Kevin and I set up a bracket with the teams in the top 16 of the final 2007 BCS rankings and will play out those games on EA Sports NCAA Football 08. The next entry will outline the top 16 and the matchups as well as the results of that first round.

The Curse of the University of Phoenix Stadium

Last Sunday an average of 97.5 million people watched as the heavily favored and previously unbeaten New England Patriots lose to the hot New York Giants in this years’ Super Bowl. A record viewership saw another favored team lose to an underdog at the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. But little did that humungo group of people know that the Patriots loss is a curse (and Boston sports fans are kind of familiar with curses).

The Patriots become the third team in a row in four games to lose a game where the stadium is used in a neutral-site, championship/bowl type atmosphere. I initially noticed this since my University of Oklahoma Sooners lost not one but two Fiesta Bowls at the exact site back-to-back years now, both years being favored to win. Although it serves the Arizona Cardinals as a pretty nice home (the Cardinals were 6-2 this season at home, but not really sure how many of those games they were actually favored to win), it does bring up an interesting set of circumstances when the facility is used as a neutral site. Although it is really too early to call it a curse, the evidence is compelling.

We’ll start with the 2007 and 2008 Fiesta Bowls that Oklahoma played.

The first was the legendary game against Boise State. Depicted beforehand as a “David vs. Goliath” matchup, the 11-2 Sooners were a 7.5 point favorite to the 12-0 Broncos. A curious match featured two teams from distinctly different pedigree: OU is blue blood, elite program going through one of the most challenging year given the Bomar issue and losing their Heisman-worthy star AD mid-season; while Boise a Cinderella story, coming up from obscurity and playing in a conference of mediocrity to land in a BCS bowl. This game was seemingly an upset by midway through the third quarter when Boise led 28-10, but the Sooners miraculously not only tie the game but take the lead on an interception with about a minute and a half to go. But the fates were on the side of the Broncos that night, as not one, not two, but three trick plays (two of which were on fourth down) gave them the victory and downed the first favored team on this field.

The second Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl at University of Phoenix Stadium was more of a choke-fest than anything else. Favored 6.5 points to the 10-2 West Virginia Mountaineers, the 11-2 Oklahoma Sooners were looking to take advantage of the broken-shell of the Mountaineers. With their devastating loss to arch-rival Pittsburgh in the regular season finale as well as the defection of head coach Rich Rodriguez to Michigan, West Virginia seems as if they were going to be lost in the distractions of the layoff period before the bowl game. I guess the Sooners banked on that happening, at least that’s the way it looked when they finally played the game. OU was crushed handedly by then interim and now official head coach Bill Stewart and his Mountaineers squad 48-28. At times the Sooners looked almost like they were going at snail’s pace compared to the WV speed spread option attack.

And those were just the Fiesta Bowls. There were two championship games played so far in the stadium: the 2007 BCS National Championship and the Super Bowl XLII.
Going into the BCS game, the Ohio State University Buckeyes were 12-0. Fresh off an epic 42-39 victory over rival and then #2 Michigan Wolverines, as well as a Heisman Trophy win for QB Troy Smith and about two months between playing any sort of real football games, the Buckeyes were a 7 point favorite to the 12-1 Florida Gators. The game was more or less supposed to be a game to crown the Buckeyes, as no other team from a big time conference had gone undefeated. Other than the kickoff return for a touchdown by Ted Ginn Jr. to start the game, Ohio State was dominated in all phases of the game. The Gators trampled the Bucks 41-14, making not only Ohio State look slow, but creating an unreasonable assumption that the entire Big Ten conference was slow especially compared with the SEC that Florida resides.

Another team supposed to be crown not only a world champion but the best of all time, the Patriots, fell victim to being favored in this stadium of favored-team slaughterhouse. Some had a feeling the 12 points New England was kind of high, seeing as each of their three championships won this past decade had been within 3 points. Most thought it would be a close game, but none thought New York would pull through a victory.

That is, until Eli Manning miraculously fights out of a tackle, scrambles and finds David Tyree 30 yards downfield. The pass almost seemed perfect for interception, as it floated forever. Tyree leaps up to grab it out of the air as the Patriot defenders helplessly try to knock the ball out of the leaper’s hands. As Tyree falls to the ground, he grips the ball between his hands and his head. Some are now calling it one of the greatest plays in Super Bowl history, turning a special teams receiver into a legend, a underachieving quarterback to a big game star, and turning a team of destiny to a team of failure.

If this indeed is a curse, wrecking the New England Destiny Patriots is the peak of such a curse. Inevitably the curse shall be broken, as most curses are, but for now this one will haunt not only college teams in their bowl games, but the 2007 “Perfect” Patriots. And being an OU fan, since the Fiesta Bowl is designated for a Big 12 Champ not going to the national title game, I hope OU breaks the curse soon or makes it to the title game.

Oh, and the University of Phoenix Stadium is in the running to host the 2012 Super Bowl. We’ll see if the curse is broken by then.

Other Notable Curses:

Susan Lucci – Not sports related, but impressive 18 years going without a Daytime Emmy even after being nominated almost every year. Wasn’t until 1999 where she won her first Emmy. She has won one other one since then.

The Curse of the Billy Goat – During the 1945 World Series, the Chicago Cubs kicked out a Greek immigrant and his goat. The gentleman curses the team and leaves the country and the Cubs have not been able to even advance past the league championship. The last time they won a World Series was in 1908.

The Curse of 1940 – New York Rangers owner burns the mortgage of Madison Square Garden in the Stanley Cup, desecrating the sacred trophy. Rangers don’t win the Cup until 1994, 54 years after. With Mark Messier’s legendary picture of being given the Stanley Cup in manic laughter and signs from fans like “Now I Can Die In Peace,” the curse was thought to be broken. The Rangers since then have been a perennial disappointment, being one of the highest spending teams and probably the most underachieving team in the league.

The Madden Curse – Since EA Sports has started putting someone on the cover of the yearly Madden NFL Football game, each player featured on the cover has seen a significant decrease in production, a season ending injury, or both. Curse started when San Francisco 49ers runningback Garrison Hearst had a career season in 1998, rushing for over 1500 yards. On the 49ers playoff run, Hearst was injured in the game against the Atlanta Falcons, ultimately ending their chance to win the game and the 49ers playoff streak as the next year Steve Young retires due to concussions and the Niners fail to make the playoffs for the first time in 17 years.

The Heisman Curse – In the 2000s, only two Heisman winners have won their following bowl games: Carson Palmer and Matt Leinhart both from USC. And overall, most find it hard to follow up and find success in the next level in the NFL.

The Curse of the Bambino – At the end of 1919, the Boston Red Sox sell Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, turning the Yankees from cellar-dweller to the most successful sports franchise of all time and the Red Sox from best in the majors to the team that always falls short of winning the World Series. The curse was blamed for every major mishap including the famous in-field error by first baseman Bill Buckner. The curse ended in 2004 when the Sox not only came back from 3-0 in the ALCS against the Yankees to win the AL but then swept the Cardinals in the World Series. They won their second in four years in 2007.