From what I hear, Bill Hancock is one of the nicest men around but that didn’t stop John Feinstein from going schoolyard bully in his most recent tirade against Hancock’s endorsement of the BCS. From Feinstein’s perspective, the BCS is so flawed that it’s not even worth considering as a viable option.
A few thoughts on Mr. Feinstein’s perspective…
1. Feinstein asserts that the idea of having a playoff system would contribute to more injuries is not only, “…just wrong, it’s absolutely hypocritical.” His argument is that since college football agreed to add a 12th game, plus some conferences have a 13th with a championship game, plus the bowl game takes the potential total to 14 – which is only 2 less than the NFL. Feinstein goes on to make a lazy statement by saying that, “So claiming the BCS Presidents care at all about injuries is absolutely untrue.”
2. There are two flaws with Feinstein’s statements. First, he has no factual information about that more games would not lead to more injuries. In fact, the idea of more games not leading to more injuries goes against basic common sense. What is one of the major concerns with the NFLPA in expanding to an 18 game schedule? That’s right, injuries. Rosters would have to be expanded and perhaps a second bye week included in order to accommodate the increased injury rate. It’s common sense.
3. The second flaw in Feinstein statement is comparing the college football schedule to the NFL schedule. As the old cliche goes, “it’s not apples-to-apples”. Seriously John, are you really comparing the rigors of the NFL for the first 14 weeks to that of the average college football team during the same time span? They’re not even close.
4. I have to agree with Feinstein, the “missing too much class time” argument is extremely hollow from the NCAA. I mean really, do college basketball players even go to class? If the NCAA were serious about using this as a legitimate argument, they would a) decrease the number of basketball games that can be played in the regular season, and b) and enforcing stricter academic requirements (which they are doing indirectly through the APR ratings).
5. Feinstein makes a common argument about the quality of the bowl system after the implementation of a playoff system when he says, “Not only is this wrong, the opposite is true—the bowl system would be enhanced.” His logic is that more bowls (e.g. Cotton, Gator) are included in the early playoff rounds and therefore receive a greater amount of prestige than what they currently have.
6. Feinstein is wrong. The problem with this argument is that it completely throws away the traditional match up the bowls were intended to create. I don’t ascribe to the idea that “progress” is always better when sacred things are involved. For an example, the formation of the Big 12 was great on paper except that it completely destroyed one of the best rivalries in college football (Nebraska vs. Oklahoma). Part of the reason why college football has become the best sport in America is because of the rich tradition. To sacrifice that tradition in the name of progress is to sell one’s soul. The BCS has already diluted the traditional match ups of the bowls (e.g. the Rose does not always feature the Big Ten champion vs. the Pac 10 champion), and so to say that the Rose Bowl would be enhanced when it does not include these two teams is just false. (As an aside, I will concede that the 2005 Rose Bowl featuring USC and Texas was better than the typical Rose Bowl match up, but that game was a once in a lifetime match up and should not be expected every year or even every decade.)
7. Feinstein again says that the regular season has no meaning because there are certain teams who have outstanding season, even undefeated seasons, who will never have a chance to play for the national championship. John is wrong on so many levels here I’m not sure where to begin. First, John proposes for Bill to do what he considers the unthinkable, “I’d love for Bill to walk into the locker rooms at Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State and explain how much meaning their undefeated regular seasons had.” What John is doing is preying upon Bill’s ill-advised statement to Dan Patrick on his radio show when he was caught off-guard and answered the same basic question, “I would tell them you had a nice season” (I’m paraphrasing). Of course Bill’s statement came across shallow and everyone is having a hey-day with it. But does Feinstein really want to say that the Bearcats regular season had no value at all on the basis that they were not permitted to play for the national championship (“Basically, those teams’ regular seasons had no meaning at all)? The Bearcats season had great value because they were the Big East Champions and got to play the defending national champion Florida Gators in the Sugar Bowl against one of the greatest teams of the decade. Is there no value in that? The Bearcats season had great value because they did something unprecedented for their university football program and laid a foundation for years to come. Is that value completely invalidated because there was no opportunity to play for a championship? Perhaps the BCS biggest mistake is hiring someone like Bill who was not quick witted or prepared enough to articulate the value of a teams regular season to a radio jockey.
8. Second, Feinstein goes into the realm of hyperbole to make a point when he says, “If Boise State had beaten the Dallas Cowboys in their bowl game instead of TCU there are people out there who would say, ‘yeah but how would they do in the Big 12?’” Ok John, back off the ledge here. Those of us who watch and study these things know the Bearcats did not deserve a chance in the title game because as the season wore on and their competition increased, the quality of their wins were becoming thinner. When Utah beats Alabama in the Sugar bowl you use it as an opportunity to invalidate the BCS system. But when the Bearcats were exposed and overmatched against Florida, why isn’t that an opportunity to validate the system? Clearly the Bearcats didn’t belong and it would have been a greater injustice to allow them in the title game had Colt McCoy’s pass not hit the turf with one second remaining against Nebraska. In fact, that probably would have been the best thing that could have happened for BCS proponents because then it could be demonstrated first hand that the non-AQ conferences are so for a reason.
9. Third, we all know that the mission of FBS football is to a) fund the rest of the athletic department, and b) to raise the profile of the university in the eye of the public. Therefore it is essential for university Presidents to employ whatever strategy necessary to keep their stadiums full every game every year. If a playoff system is created, then a team’s goals change from winning every game, winning your conference championship, defeating your rival and making it to a BCS bowl to just making the playoffs. This is the way it works in college basketball (who has the most empty regular season of all) and the NFL – and once a team falls out of contention fans lose interest and stop coming. In the BCS system, a team like Cincinnati can capitalize and reap tremendous financial reward for its university on a magical season even if they don’t really deserve a shot at the title.
10. I not sure what John was thinking when he declares the TCU-Boise game the best of the BCS bunch when it was a pretty solid consensus that it was the worst! He guarantees that a playoff system would never deliver a dud game – like that never happens in a 1 vs. 16 match up in March Madness…or the silly play-in game for the 65th slot. Now John is insulting our intelligence!
11. John’s most humorous point was proclaiming that were would not be one unsold ticket for a college football playoff game. Hmmm…did he check the attendance records set at the ACC and Big East championship games the past couple of years (a mini version of a playoff)? That’s right, quite a few empty seats to determine a champion!
12. We may think that a traditional playoff is the most pure way to determine a champion, but playoff proponents have not adequately demonstrated that it is financially superior model to the one currently in place, and while espousing all of the problems that are to be solved by a playoff system they have not adequately addressed the problems that a playoff system would create.
