The team everyone agreed was unbeatable at the beginning of this year plays what might be the nation’s best offense Saturday, and on an October afternoon in Eugene, Ore., one team’s national title hopes will be dead more than two months before a “national champion” is crowned.
It’s a shame really, that this year, perhaps more than any other in the Bowl Championship Series era, we might not really know who the best team in college football is come January.
In a year of unprecedented upsets and parity, it has become more evident than ever that college football desperately needs a playoff system.
With one loss each, fifth-ranked Oregon and ninth-ranked USC are both in must-win mode when they play Saturday. Who’s to say that by the end of the season, the loser of that game might be playing the best football of anyone in the country?
Yes, USC has certainly underperformed this season, losing to Stanford and playing closer-than-expected games against the Huskies and Arizona, but with the undeniable talent on the Trojans’ roster, there is no reason they can’t cut back on the turnovers and play up to their potential by the end of the season. But even if they do this, their one loss (or two if they lose to Oregon) could keep them out of the championship game in favor of an unbeaten with a weak schedule.
If they both keep winning, we could be headed for an Ohio State vs. Boston College national championship game, while teams in the nation’s best two conferences, the SEC and the Pac-10, are punished for playing tough competition. A pretty good argument could be made that Ohio State isn’t even the best team to beat Washington at Husky Stadium this season, let alone the best team in the nation.
Of the five unbeaten teams left, only Boston College has a win over a team currently ranked in the BCS standings, and the Eagles just barely got that win on Thursday night against No. 8 Virginia Tech. They looked terrible for most of the game before rallying in the final minutes to beat the Hokies.
The idea of implementing some sort of playoff system has been discussed for years and seems to be gaining traction with each passing year. Any system will always have some controversy. One popular idea is to send the top eight teams to the current BCS bowls, and use those as quarterfinals. Of course this would upset the ninth- and 10th-ranked teams, but wouldn’t that be better than a situation where the top-ranked team by the coaches’ and the AP polls somehow gets left out of the championship game, as the 2003 Trojans were?
“I’ve been an advocate of a playoff system forever,” USC coach Pete Carroll said. “I would only rather play it off and never have any kind of a system. However, I do realize that there’s still going to be some kind of a system necessary to some extent that’s going to have to pinpoint the teams that are going to be in the playoffs. So it’s not a foolproof deal that could be pure, but I think that it’s wrong for us not to have a playoff system with everybody wanting to know who the best team is. If they didn’t want to know, then they wouldn’t have these polls and all this hype and stuff with the BCS.”
One argument against a playoff system always has been that it would be bad for the rest of the bowl games, which are big pay days for schools and conferences. But I have a hard time believing that the NCAA, the same organization that secured a $6-billion deal with CBS to televise the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, can’t figure out how to make a football playoff system profitable.
And the argument that a playoff would keep the student athletes out of the classroom for too much time? Please. College football has been as much about money — you could easily argue more about money — as it has about education for a long time now. A couple of extra weeks of practice and games for a few teams is hardly going to make things noticeably worse for athletes who practice from early August through early January and again in the spring.
It’s time to quit talking about a college football playoff system and time to make it happen.
“I think it would be nice, because I don’t think [the BCS] is going to be all that accurate,” Washington offensive coordinator Tim Lappano said. “There are some teams that have two losses that are pretty freakin’ good, and there are some teams with none or one (loss) that aren’t as good. Hopefully, someday there will be (a playoff).”
While Lappano was the offensive coordinator for Oregon State in 2000, the one-loss Beavers went to the Fiesta Bowl and humiliated Notre Dame. There were people who thought by the end of that season that Oregon State was the best team in football, but an early season loss to Washington kept fans from ever finding that out. It’s time for that to change.
“Everybody wants to know,” Carroll said. “And some people are keeping that from happening legitimately in terms of how a true competition would play out. So we’re always advocating for as many opportunities to keep playing until it’s all over and you can tell who the winner is.”
And in this the year of parity in college football, we may never know who that winner is. What a shame.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on UW sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
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