50-48 #58: MACK BROWN IS THE DEVIL

50-48 #58: MACK BROWN IS THE DEVIL

In 2006, Texas A&M defeated Texas in Austin during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.

In 2007, Texas A&M defeated Texas in College Station during the last regular season game of the season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one in which coaches are required to attach their names to their choices—Mack Brown ranked his team ahead of Texas A&M.

In 2008, Texas Tech defeated Texas in Lubbock during the heart of the regular season. In the final coach’s poll of the season—the one that will come out next week—Mack Brown will rank his team ahead of Texas Tech.

But somewhere in between that second and third paragraph, Mack Brown began pissing and moaning about head-to-head matchups as being the ultimate arbiter of championship status. How is it that Mack Brown can think his team is better than Texas Tech (to whom he lost) and Oklahoma (whom he defeated), and still emphasize the viability of head-to-head matchups? How is it that he can think that his team was better than Texas A&M two years in a row, even after losing to them both times? Hypocrisy, thy name is Bevo.

This seeming paradox cannot be reconciled because it isn’t actually a paradox. It is rather a mangled form of reductio ad absurdum by Mack Brown—a shell game designed to magnify his plight to ridiculous ends in the hopes that people will forget the core reality of his situation. And judging by the chatter on sports television and radio, it’s working. Sports fans, as much as I love them, have never been the brightest bulbs on the tree.

What’s missing from the sanctimonious calls for head-to-head matchups is the fact that college football has NEVER been dependent upon such realities. This is the same inherent flaw in similar sanctimonious calls for a college football playoff system. Such has never been a part of the college football pantheon.

A playoff works in the NFL, for example, because all teams are given the same resources. There is a level playing field, making all teams essentially equal at the start of the season. When a playoff arrives, it is a modification of a regular season where all teams play each other, with an equal pay scale, an equivalent schedule, etc.

But such is not the case in college football. 1A teams are not working with equal resources, with equal recruits. There is no draft to ensure that talent is spread evenly throughout. There is no uniform scheduling mandate. The BCS, for example, arbitrarily includes basketball conferences such as the Big East, ACC, and Pac-10, even though these conferences are patently undeserving of their status. Cincinnati, for example, will be representing the Big East in the BCS this season, after being included in the conference a couple of years ago. Is Cincinnati as talented as TCU, Boise State, BYU, Utah, et. al.? Of course not. The one difference between Cincinnati and those schools is that they were invited in mid-decade to join the Big East. Their program didn’t change. Their facilities and their resources didn’t change. They just put a new conference logo on their jerseys. Their schedule didn’t get appreciably harder, because the Big East is not a football conference. Its best teams left years ago to join the ACC. Everyone in the Big East would happily acknowledge that Utah had a stronger football program, but Utah was far, far away out west. Cincinnati was close enough to the East Coast to make them a viable candidate. Plus, they had a strong basketball team.

You see? The arbitrariness of the system leaves no room for the precision of a playoff. USC, for example, has probably more talent than anyone in the country. They do their best to play a relatively strong non-conference schedule. Unlike all of the teams in my beloved SEC, USC does not schedule 1AA cupcakes. But USC cannot be a viable candidate for the national championship game because they play in a horrible conference. It isn’t their fault. They’ve always been in the Pac-10. (On this subject, were I the athletic director at USC, I would be demanding that the Pac-10 make overtures to BYU and Utah to create a twelve-team conference, complete with a championship game. And yes, believe me, I like saying nice things about USC just about as much as you like reading them, but—to use my favorite sports cliché—it is what it is.)

The third best conference in the country this season is, far and away, the Mountain West, just behind the SEC and Big 12. But the conference’s inconsistency in securing big-time recruits and its distance from major media markets ensures that it will never be considered a BCS conference. In a playoff system, would the Mountain West be given an automatic bid into the tournament? Who knows? And, if they were, would they deserve it every year? Probably not.

But, wait, 50-48, you might be saying. What about the NCAA basketball tournament? That works. Yes it does. But that’s because a 64-team tournament allows for enough teams into the system to ensure that the best teams are included. While some deserving teams on the outside of the 64-team circle might be left out, all legitimate title contenders can be included into the system because of its girth. In addition, with the more limited skill set, relative lack of positional specialization, and far-reaching AAU playing and evaluating system, the competitive distance between the various teams and conferences is far smaller. Also, the lack of physical demand that basketball puts on a player’s body (compared to football; we here at 50-48 are not presuming that basketball is easy by any means) makes a large-scale tournament with multiple games per weekend a real possibility. It is not a possibility in football.

What all of these basketball checks make up for, of course, is the fact that half of the tournament invitations are chosen by a selection committee—not by conference championships. Football doesn’t have such checks, but it does have the same core problem. The college football rankings are not based on wins and losses, not based on similar competitive schedules, but rather on the opinions of sportswriters, all of whom are judging how a 50-point victory against Louisiana-Monroe, for example, compares to a 5-point win over Purdue. Again, it is all arbitrary. In such a system, a playoff becomes just as silly as the BCS.

The two core elements of this argument are objectivity and history.

There is no objective standard for judging who are the “best” teams. Records don’t work, because the schedules are so varied. Recruits don’t work, because teams like Notre Dame who get great recruiting classes stink on hot ice. Conference championships don’t work, because all conferences—including all conferences in the BCS—are not created equal.

And history tells us that objectivity doesn’t matter anyway. National championships in college football have always been mythical—have always been the choice of sportswriters. It wasn’t until the 1970s that bowl games even counted towards championships. Bowl games were designed as showcases for certain cities, who invited teams who received significant publicity throughout the season to play an exhibition at their local venue. Let me say that again—exhibitions. When the Hogs won their national championship in 1964, for example, they were chosen prior to their bowl game win. They shared the championship with Alabama.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind the bowl games counting as part of the press’s championship voting. If that system had been in place in 1964, Arkansas wouldn’t have had to share the title with Alabama. (Joe Willie Namath got his ass waxed in the Orange Bowl that season.)

But regardless, the championship has always been arbitrary. Now, the BCS doesn’t even use the AP poll to determine champions. It uses the coach’s poll—a poll created by coaches who don’t watch college football because they’re busy with their own teams on Saturday. Liars and con men like Mack Brown vote in that poll. And Mack Brown has proven time and time again that he votes with his bias for Texas more than any legitimately objective standard. And on the strength of a system like this we want to create a playoff? (By the way, Bob Stoops does not get a vote in the coach’s poll. Arbitrary, arbitrary, arbitrary.)

Ultimately, there is no way to combat the arbitrary nature of college football polling. It is inherent in the system. There is no polling without arbitrariness. And there is no college football without polling. Instead of trying to fix an unfixable system, why not enjoy college football for what it is. 50-48 suggests going back to the pre-BCS system. Was it really so horrible when the coaches and AP split and gave us two national champions? Is it really such a bad thing to win a conference championship and make the argument that the sportswriters got it wrong? The whole impetus behind the BCS was to create better television matchups for ABC. That was the only reason.

Remember, college football was built through the conference system. Conference championships were always the most important part of college football. And conferences were created to match like universities in a certain region. Not universities with similar resources regardless of region, all agreeing upon a standardized schedule so an objective decision could be made on a legitimate national champion.

And speaking of legitimacy, let us return briefly to Texas, crying as it is about the Big 12 Championship Game. In the three-way tie between Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma, it is Oklahoma who has the strongest non-conference schedule. It is Oklahoma who has higher offensive and defensive rankings. It is Oklahoma who is ahead in the polls. Are these categories arbitrary? Of course they are. But they are what we have. As far as “better” can be determined in the hit-or-miss game of gauging success in college football, Oklahoma has all the earmarks.

Look carefully at Mack Brown’s ballot when the final coach’s poll comes out. If he places Texas above Texas Tech, which he surely will, any pity argument he tries to make will immediately become invalid.

So, to sum up:

1. A playoff will never be tenable in a system based on voting.
Voting has always been a constituent part of college football.
Therefore, a playoff is untenable for college football.

2. Everyone who voluntarily wears burnt orange is a monumental dick.
Mack Brown voluntarily wears burnt orange.
Therefore, Mack Brown is a monumental dick.

QED.

50-48
Fuck Texas
WPS

PS: We here at 50-48 are very cognizant of the fact that this isn’t a fully systematic argument, and that it tends to rambling in spots. But rambling is par for the course here. And we’ve been frittering our time away with work and depression, leaving little time to shore up the loose ends. Forgive our mess!

PPS: On this very topic: BOOMER SOONER.