I Like You Just the Way You Are....

The NFC Championship Game this year featured the Arizona Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles. Both teams barely played above .500 football in the regular season. Philadelphia didn't even win its division finishing just 9-6-1. The Arizona Cardinals suffered one of the worst beatings of the regular season, 47-7 in its second-to-last game against a team that didn't even make the playoffs. One of those teams was bound to be among the final two standing in the NFL's so-called championship. Yet people want this for college football?

The BCS has all kinds of flaws that need to be worked on, but looking at the NFL playoffs points to why there isn't a legitimate solution for college football. Let me put something on the table right away. Whatever playoff format is chosen, if and when we come to that day, won't remain intact. If we're talking a plus-one, eventually and in fairly rapid order you can count on that expanding to an eight team tournament, and in all likelihood a 16-team tournament. This expansion is inevitable and there's no way to stop it. A plus one won't stay that way because someone will sue and demand their place at the table, and eventually every conference champion will need to be included, not just of BCS schools but non-BCS schools. Theoretically this isn't such a problem since the best teams should advance, but in reality that's not how it works.

You see there isn't a Cardinals fan alive who, with a straight face at the end of the regular season, would have said they had the best or second-best team in the NFL. The playoffs should in theory advance the most superior teams, but instead because they're played with just one game between teams, anything can and usually does happen. Instead of order and something that promotes superiority and the best possible championship, you get what amounts to a roll of the dice.

I once read a book titled "The Hidden Game of Baseball", this book once calculated that the difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game. Over a long season the luck evens out, and the skill shines through. But in a series of three out of five or even four out of seven, anything can happen. In a five-game series, the worst team in baseball will beat the best about 15% of the time. Which explains why two teams not among the NFL super elite and certainly not among the elite of the entire NFL, found themselves within 60 minutes of a Super Bowl appearance.

Don't get me wrong the NFL playoffs are exciting and mean well, but are not structured to reward superior play and ability. If you played this year's playoff out again, the outcome would likely be remarkably different within the same assemblage of teams. And if you played it again, same thing. Luck and circumstance overriding actual ability.

One thing I enjoy about college football is that while it may not get the exact one or two teams right at the end of the season, it will bring together two of the three or four best teams out there, as evidenced by 12 games worth of play instead of performance in just one. Neither model is perfect, but college football's gets much closer to answering that nagging question "who is best?".

A college football playoff could potentially seat for example the 2008 ACC or Big East champions, Virginia Tech and Cincinnati as its so-called best teams, given just how much variance is introduced through a playoff. To me that makes the whole process meaningless and random. In exchange you also end up carving into the greatest regular season in all of sport to accommodate the inevitable playoff expansion because I enjoy the fact that every game during the season matters. This is a horrible trade-off that doesn't really come any closer to determining a legitimate champion than the BCS.

At some point the critics who argue for a playoff have to step back and take a look at how college football is structured and realize just how near-impossible it is to legitimately and fairly crown a champion. There are 119 teams of varied ability and style, some of whom are in 12-team divisions, playing a 12-game regular season including anywhere from three to five non-conference games. The one way to strengthen a playoff is to have teams play a lengthy series of games between themselves. This is impossible for college football given the academic limitations and demands in place.

It's unfortunate, but in the meantime the game has done about as well as it can to determine a championship and does it without eroding the only truly compelling regular season in all of major sport. So my apologies, but people like our new President Barack Obama couldn't be more wrong about a need for a playoff in college football. I understand their concerns, but it won't work how we would want it to work, and it would take away from the best part of the game.