The Great BCS Debate
By Dustin Snyder
Love of Sports Correspondent
All of us have come to despise the BCS and college football rankings over the past few years.
Sure it’s fun to debate who belongs where, but what happens when a team gets slighted because of preseason rankings that’re based on nothing more than some geek’s crystal-ball perceptions? The preseason rankings may seem innocent enough, but the fact remains that 118 teams are already behind the 8-ball before one single snap’s taken. Is this fair? Is this how we should be doing things? Perhaps we should objectively enjoy and analyze the first few weeks of the season before we start ranking them.
Then again, is there really a chance of finding “objectivity” within the landscape of American sports media?
Since we’re all privy to how greedy the BCS is and how much money’s really at stake in college football, it shouldn’t surprise you to contemplate how many more fans watch television games when “#8 plays #14”, rather than “South Carolina vs. Boston College.” The rankings, especially during the first part of the season, really aren’t anything more than a means to gaining bigger audiences, much in the same way that we now four or five variations of “rivalry week.” After all, who needs objective perception when the money is rolling in?
Well, I kind of do, for one.
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, trying to come up with a way to rank these teams fairly in an unfair atmosphere, I realize that I’m not the only chickenhead brainstorming over this. From Sagarin’s head-scratching formulas to Mark Schlabach’s brain-numbing opinion, everybody has their own way of doing this. However, for my own personal satisfaction, since this will never actually take shape, I believe I’ve found an answer that’ll keep me happy…well, at least my own head.
What if you took 119 scenarios and wrote each one down on its own piece of paper, without writing who the team actually is? Then you give those 119 scenarios to someone that’s pretty sports competent, and ask them to rank the teams, or pick a Top 25 in order. Somehow you’d have to let them know if a team’s in a power conference, or we’d end up with an Eastern Michigan-esque team as number one in the nation. But of all the BCS teams, your results would be startling.
I’m a sucker for all the preseason magazines, and I tend to read them from cover-to-cover because I love college football that much. Recently I’ve seen some patterns develop through a few of them which stood out to me. I’m going to give you three of them, and then you should think about where in the Top-25 you’d rank these teams. Don’t try to figure out who they are just yet, and simply look at it objectively. I’ll let you know up front that all three are very good programs that play in BCS conferences.
Scenario 1: Eight returners on offense, seven on defense, and for the first time in a while, they’re don’t yet have a feature RB or WR. They’re breaking in a new quarterback, with a completely new offense and offensive coordinator. They’ve also hired a new defensive coordinator who’s actually got a poor track record.
Scenario 2: Nine returners on offense, including their entire offensive line, and four on defense. The aforementioned o-line feature preseason award nominees, and is easily amongst the top lines in the nation. They’ve lost three of the top four offensive players, but run an offensive system that mainly relies on two players, and one of them is returning. With exception of a single player, the entire secondary is new. Their coaching staff was decimated, and one of the returning coaches is now the head coach, but it’s worth mentioning that in eight seasons with the team, he’s never risen above being an assistant.
Scenario 3: Nine returners on both sides of the ball, including an elite special teams unit. All of their coaches are intact from last season, with exception of the Safeties coach, who’s now a defensive coordinator on a different team. The o-line is the same, and also boasts some preseason award nominees. The WR position is silently in the nation’s top grouping, and it might help that they’re losing an underachieving quarterback. On defense, the line returns intact and is one of the nation’s best, with preseason award nominees there as well. They lost a CB and a LB to injury, but have what’s probably the best LB depth in the nation.
The first scenario adds up to Auburn, and I challenge you to find me another example of a team being heralded as a national title dark horse while simultaneously being in the process of replacing both coordinators, breaking in a new quarterback and implementing an entirely new scheme.
The second is West Virginia, who’s also a supposed national title contender. Of course that’s in spite of the incredible coaching losses that they’ve endured, in addition to the fact that they’re only four returners on defense.
Finally, the team in the third scenario is Penn State, who The Sporting News insanely predicts to be the seventh-best team in the Big Ten, despite losing their worst offensive player, returning nine on both sides of the football, and having an easier schedule in 2008.
If I told you that a team was returning nine on both sides, won nine games last year, has what may be an easier route in 2008, lost the QB that cost them multiple games and has their staff intact, you’d probably put that team around the Top 5 in the nation. So you see, this is exactly why the preseason rankings are so ridiculous. It’s simply not objective, because you can’t rank people before a game is played.
Take Clemson for example. They’re in everyone’s Top 10, and definitely feature awesome RB’s. However, they’ve also got a core of underachieving WR’s, a somewhat overrated QB and an O-line that’s possibly the worst in college football. I mean they gave up 11 sacks in the spring game, and no, that’s not because the defense is so stellar.
How good can your QB or RB production be when the line can’t stop my 82-year-old grandmother, or my Aunt Florence? Clemson also has a very well documented reputation of being a disappointment, and never in the history of modern athletics has a head coach been so handsomely rewarded for such mediocrity. It must be nice to be Tommy Bowden, whom the college football God’s have favored for some reason.
It’ll never be perfect. There’s no end-all formula with multiplication and remainders and an isosceles triangle; and to a large degree, that’s exactly what makes the game so much fun.
Simply put, while it’s unfair to put a team behind the eight-ball before a single game is played; there’s no denying the fact that we LOVE the debating!
Even Aunt Florence will vouch for that.
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