Saturday, November 15, 2008

The "Best" Team

How often do we hear fans complaining because the "best" team(s) didn't get to play in the conference championship, or the "best" team wasn't ranked number one, or the "best" team didn't make a BCS bowl. Hmmm. What does it mean to be the "best?" The problem is, if you don't think about it too much, it seems pretty easy. It's obvious. The "best" is the "best," right? How hard can it be?

If you're content to have "best" be simple and obvious, skip the rest of this. Otherwise, read on...

Is the "best" the team that on average did better than any other over the entire season? Is an opening loss as bad as losing the last game of the season? What if your team has Heisman contenders at QB and RB and they both get injured in the waning seconds as your team wins the final game of the regular season? Better yet, what if they went undefeated against the toughest schedule in the country? Are they still the "best" team -- right now, that is? Have they earned the right to play for the national championship anyway, even if their star players will be watching from the sidelines? And what about consistency? Team A plays a very tough schedule and beats every opponent by less than a touchdown. Team B plays the same schedule, whips every opponent by four touchdowns except one who beats them by a field goal in overtime. Which one is best, A or B? If scoring matters, then can you make up for a loss one week by running up the score next week? If it doesn't matter, then why do we invoke it so often when trying to prove our case about who is better? Why do we appeal to it as a "tiebreaker" when W/L and SoS aren't enough? Lots of questions. How about some answers...

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that there should be a standard. Otherwise, you have something like this...

You're taking a class at school. Your teacher informs you that in the upcoming test, problem #1 will count 90% of your grade. On test day, you skip #1 and work all the other problems. When the graded test comes back, you have a 10% grade -- you aced all of the problems you worked. Now you complain -- "but I got ALL BUT ONE of the problems right." "Doesn't matter," the teacher says, "the standard is what it is." So would it be better to have no standard? You have no idea what the teacher wants. He might only give credit for spelling your name right, or maybe you'll get points for turning in a blank test so that he can reuse it next year. You really have no idea what it is you're supposed to do.

At least when there's a standard, it is at least fair, and no one really has a right to complain. To strive to achieve in areas the standard does not emphasize is simply to fail.

Let's look at it another way... In each football game, we have a standard -- the team with the most points wins. There are no points for yards, takeaways, completed passes, fewest penalties, etc. The standard is clear -- most points wins. To do anything else and then complain about it is ridiculous.

Before I take the next step, let me state this clearly -- the BCS has been a huge step in the right direction. "Yeah, but wouldn't a playoff be better?" you ask. Well, the BCS IS A PLAYOFF. Think about it. Playoffs are when you select (by whatever standard) some number of the "best" teams and let them "play-off" until only one remains. Before the BCS, that number was ZERO. With the BCS, it is now TWO. That's a step in the right direction, right? Would four be better? I think so. Eight? Maybe. The top ten where six get a bye? I'd consider it.

Now back to the standard. We're talking about COLLEGE football, right? Colleges. Places where there are supposed to be a lot of smart people, right? Couldn't all of those smart people figure out some absolute standard they could all agree to. One that's full and open. Granted, it wouldn't be quite as simple as what we have in an individual game (most points wins), but if we had a "formula," if you will, that everyone agreed to, then there would be no questions about what needed to be done. The college computer science departments could run what-if scenarios and know ahead of time who needed to beat whom to achieve a certain rank, or make the playoffs, or make the championship game. I could go on, but I'll resist the temptation and stop here.

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