Smart Football's Guide to the BCS Championship

Okay, so it's not really a guide at all, but instead just some stuff I've previously written that happens to have some tenuous link to the title matchup between Oklahoma and Florida.



1. Rhythm Nation: Auburn Hires Gus Malzahn. Money quote:

Is Chizik Trying to Copy Oklahoma?

So, you can see why this might be appealing to Auburn, even with a defensive minded head coach. As Dr Saturday recently pointed out, "only Oklahoma's 1,036 total plays bested the Hurricane's 1,007 this year, though TU led the nation in yards per play." I think this is no coincidence.

Oklahoma too has a fairly basic system as far as schemes go. They don't do anything that a lot of teams don't. Their passing game is kind of a derivative of what they did under Mike Leach and Mark Mangino, but they have gotten away from the pure faith of the Airraid and now use a lot of rather traditional (meaning, common) concepts. Labeling them spread, pro, multiple, or whatever is a bit futile. (When asked what offense Oklahoma runs, Bob Stoops said simply: "The Oklahoma offense."). They use both the "I" and other traditional sets, though are probably still more "spread" than anything else. But before people jump down my throat, I note that I think Wittgenstein was accurate when he said most arguments boil down to people's different uses of labels and language, in this case what spread or pro means to one person versus another.

Kevin Wilson, OU's offensive coordinator, is not known as a passing guru, and few would confuse him with one. But he knows one thing extraordinarily well: the no-huddle up-tempo offense. He ran it at Northwestern with Randy Walker, and that's how OU killed people this year. They have all these great athletes, they have solid schemes, and they go so fast they mow you down. I have to think Chizik envisions this kind of result.

2. The Urban Meyer/Florida Gator Offense. Money quote:

Just click the link already.

3. Discussion of OU's drubbing of Texas Tech. Money quote:

Further, [one] storyline is that Stoops, Venables, and others basically have Leach's number, they've figured his out, and don't expect all that stuff to work against them. Stoops even reinforced this storyline after the game, by noting that most games between Tech and OU haven't been close. But this too is overblown. The game wasn't a referendum on the offense, it was a battle between two teams. OU clearly has a talent advantage of some kind, and although the offense didn't do nearly enough to even approach winning, it was only a few bad drives before the game was 21-0 and was basically out of reach.

That said, there's a kernal of truth to Stoops' theory about knowing that offense. As I've pointed out before, Leach ran his offense at OU exactly how he wanted. If OU does "get" Leach's offense, he doesn't get it in a way that another team could just pop in the tape and pick up. The Airraid, as much as it is certain schemes -- and no doubt OU's defense sat in zone a lot of the night working on their ability to pattern read the traditional Airraid concepts -- but the Airraid is an approach to football as much as it is an offense. If the OU guys have this heightened familiarity, it's not just schemes, it's knowing how Leach runs a practice, how they practice screens, indeed, how he approaches the game. Again, I don't think OU has the offense or Leach figured out once and for all (I mean, Tech did beat OU the year before and scored over thirty on them), but I can't completely discount this.

4.What does (should) it mean to be crowned National Champion?(Another self-explanatory one).

5. Probabilities, Pragmatism, and Football. Money quote:

"They say statistics are for losers, but losers are usually the ones thinking that. Statistics are great. Our whole game plan is based off statistics. Our management of the game is based off statistics. Our recruiting is based off statistics. Everything we do is analyzed. Is that the bottom line? No. You can't analyze the heart of Tim Tebow." - Urban Meyer

6. Auburn's offense might be bad, but don't call it the spread, the Airraid, or the Tony Franklin System. Money quote:

To highlight the absurdity of this situation, let's think of the last time a big name school hired an offensive coordinator to run the Hal Mumme offense: Bob Stoops, when he went to Oklahoma from the U of Florida, hired Mike Leach as his offensive coordinator. Why? Well as defensive coordinator with Florida, Stoops said that they only team that had an incommensurate level of success against them was Kentucky. Stoops noted that UF's talent level was far superior, yet stopping Kentucky was maddening for Stoops. So Stoops said: I want that.

Compare this to what is happening with Tuberville and Franklin. Back in 1999, Stoops hired Leach and gave him free rein to install his offense. (In fact, I have a coaching clinic talk where Stoops said that he ordered Leach not to change anything that first year, because he wanted exactly what he saw with Kentucky.) And who was Leach's QB at OU? A noodle-armed guy named Josh Heupel. And their receivers were a bunch of converted running backs and defensive backs. Yet I didn't hear the same cry that "Oh, we'll spread it out when we get the athletes." (News flash: if that's your approach, it'll never happen.) Now, I also observe that Stoops too wasn't entirely comfortable being a spread it all the time guy, and Leach happily went on to Texas Tech where he could be as much of a mad scientist as he liked. Yet OU stuck with the exact same system the next year with Mark Mangino as OC, and won a National Title. But Stoops knew what he was getting when he hired Leach, and most importantly he let him do it.

7. Not me, but everyone should read EDSBS's Orson Swindle on Rick Reilly's status as walking gag-reflex inducer. Money quote:

Tough call, but I gotta go with

Also, we never read Reilly growing up and don’t read him now, since he largely comes from the school of hackneyed one-liners (occasionally scoring) and the aesthetic of Mitch Albom’s School for Guys Who Ponder the Beauty of Life, Put One Hand on Cheek, and Lean On Said Hand Wistfully.

Looking forward to the game.

What does (should) it mean to be crowned "National Champion"?

There is much debate now whether Utah or Texas ought to share in the college National Championship in some way, though it is unlikely that they actually will). From the WSJ's Daily Fix:

[I]n an open letter to the 72 members of the media who choose the Associated Press No. 1, the Washington Post’s John Feinstein makes a strong case for them to place undefeated Utah at the top of their ballot.

“The reason to vote for Utah is simple: This is the one and only way you can stand up to the BCS bullies — the university presidents, commissioners, athletic directors and the TV networks who enable them — and, to renew a catch phrase, just say no,” Feinstein argues. “Say no to this horrible, hypocritical, feed-the-big-boys system. Say no to the idea that fair competition doesn’t matter. Say no to all the hype surrounding the power conferences and power teams. To co-opt yet another catch phrase, say yes to change.”

Feinstein isn’t the only one who thinks Utah didn’t get a fair shake at the national championship. Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel agrees, pointing out that some voters in the Harris Interactive poll, which determines the title-game participants, admit they didn’t see the Utes play at all this season. “Even by the absurd standards of the BCS, having voters not bother to watch an undefeated team play a single game is a new low,” Wetzel writes. “Whether Utah deserved to be ranked No. 1, 2 or 25 isn’t the point of this argument. The Utes deserved to have voters at least see them.”

But not all agree:

Gregg Doyel disagrees that Utah deserves to be No. 1. “People, please. Utah is the same team that beat Michigan 25-23. Michigan went 3-9 this season,” he writes at CBS Sports. “Utah is the same team that beat Air Force 30-23. Air Force went 8-5. Utah beat Weber State 37-21. Weber State isn’t even in Division I. Utah beat New Mexico 13-10. New Mexico went 4-8.”

I'm not sure if, given a vote, I would vote Utah #1, but Doyel's argument seems bizarre to me. There's a lot of weaknesses with arguing that, because, say, USC beat the Citadel by 20, while Ohio State only beat then by 10, then USC is better. And his argument is just a series of those assertions. I mean, that kind of thing happens all the time and no one believes those predictions because they are entirely unhelpful. All the time one team gets blown out only to turn around and beat a team that blew out the team that originally beat them. Some teams just match up differently; football teams are complex, and some just match up with others better. To paraphrase Herm Edwards, it's about who won. Nevertheless, we saw some of this reasoning this year with Oklahoma and Texas, where Texas's win over Oklahoma eventually counted for less than the subjective impressiveness of Oklahoma's victories down the stretch.

But, more fundamentally, all this made me wonder what the designation "National Champion" is supposed to capture, anyway. The baseline that everyone -- including the President-elect -- seems to push for is a playoff. So we can use that to ask about each view.

Doyel's argument seems to be that Utah doesn't deserve to be #1 because -- "People, please" -- you wouldn't really expect them to beat Texas, OU, or Florida, right? I mean, just look at all their bare victories over mediocre or mid-level teams. In other words, one could phrase the Doyel view as the "National Champion" is the team that you think is the absolute best team in the sense that, were they to be matched up against any other team in the country, they would always be favored to win.

That can't be right, though. That's not at all what a single-elimination playoff gives you. Had the 2007 Giants played the 2007 Patriots the week following the Giants' Super Bowl win, would Eli and Co. suddenly have become the favorite? I think not. In March Madness, with teams playing every couple of days, do we really think that the better team always wins each game? No, and that's kind of the point of a playoff.

Indeed, series-based playoff systems, like with MLB or the NBA, are presumably based on the very idea that one-game is not enough to determine the best team. So, if we still think the playoff is the best solution, then it makes no sense to say that Utah can't be the National Champion just because you think the other teams might actually be better overall. Though, if you subscribe to the Doyel view of "National Champion," then the BCS probably does a better job for you than a playoff would, because the system is all about crowning the perceived best overall team. Although it lacks the precision of a playoff, it gives you fudge-factors so that Florida's and Oklahoma's (though not Texas's) losses can be overlooked.

So, maybe instead of crowning as National Champion the best team in absolute terms, that distinction is a reward for having the best overall season. I don't really watch racing, but that seems to be what they go for with their points system. And many BCS defenders say that it makes "every week a playoff," so the best overall season gets rewarded (let's just pretend like that is true). Well, a playoff doesn't give you that either: Exhibit A - the 2007 New England Patriots. They played unbelievably all year, blew everyone out, and then lost. No one -- not even them -- tried to argue that they should get a share of the Super Bowl via media vote or whatnot.

And that sort of thing happens all the time in playoff systems. It seems like a lot of the recent Super Bowl winners haven't been that great overall, or certainly were not considered the best teams going into the playoffs. Even when the Colts won the Super Bowl, it was with arguably their worst team in something like four or five years. Luck and circumstance play a huge factor, and again, the playoffs are decided by single, permanently binding, contests.

So what does a playoff give you, and why is it probably a better solution for crowning a National Champion? Let me say first that I think it would be a better system than the current BCS morass. But the advantage the playoff gives you is not anything metaphysically correct. It probably does not crown the best team. And it does not reward the best season (sorry Utah).

It merely gives you relative certitude. It's not perfect -- some clunker teams can be crowned, some historically great teams will get the relative shaft -- but, before the season, during the season, and in the playoffs, everyone knows what it takes to be the champion: you must get into the playoffs, and you must win every game once you're there. The Patriots couldn't lobby for votes, they couldn't say that they got jerked around, and they even couldn't say that they didn't get their chance. They played and they lost. They were probably better, they might only have had a bad day, but hey, you knew what you were getting into.

Which is really the issue here. No one has any idea what being "National Champion" ought to mean -- especially in college football where you have over a hundred D-1 programs and no team can come close to playing all the others. A playoff would simply lay some ground rules people could follow. As it stands, without a playoff, everyone may mount their high horse and argue past each other.

Update: Rocky Top Talk and the good Senator both weigh in on this issue. And Bill James says that all self-respecting statiscians should boycott the BCS, because the computer side of the BCS is irrational, incomprehensible, and, worse still, used only to justify the coaches poll: "Throughout the 11 years of the BCS, whenever the 'computer' rankings have diverged markedly from the polls, the consensus reaction has been, we have to do something about those computers. And they have; whenever the computer rankings don't jibe with the 'human polls,' they fix the computers."