Musical Chairs, Football Style

Everyone is familiar with musical chairs, the game in which contestants walk around a group of chairs until the music stops.  When it does, everyone dashes to plant her posterior extremity on a chair.  Since there is one less chair than the number of participants, the one person left standing is the loser.  For each subsequent round, one chair is removed.  The final round starts with two players fighting over one chair.

As we head into the 2014 college football season, a game of musical chairs awaits at least one of the five so-called power conferences (i.e., the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten, the Big 12 and the PAC 12).  That is because, for the first time in NCAA history, there will be a four team tournament at the end of the regular season to determine the national champion.  Five power conferences but only four teams.  Somebody will be left standing on the outside looking in.  I can hear screams of "We was robbed" already, and it's only August.

 

In case you hadn't heard, the BSC (Bowl Championship Series), which had a sixteen year run, no longer exists.  The name was, at best, a misnomer, because the only real function of the BCS was to pick the top two teams to play a single championship game.  No playoff whatsoever.  The algorithms used to determine those two squads was dependent, to a large extent, by several computerized rankings which only the wonks followed with any exactitude. Furthermore, the BCS system was not transparent because, among other things, the polls incorporated into the BCS formula were conducted by anonymous voters with little to no accountability.  In many years, the fans of the team ranked third (or even fourth) in the BCS final pre-bowl ranking argued that their team deserved to be in that title game.

 

Starting this year, all of that is changing.  A select Committee of thirteen people will determine which four teams will play in the semi-finals.  (I use the word "select" loosely here, as Tyrone Willingham, who was fired from his last two head coaching positions in 2004 (Notre Dame) and 2011 (Washington), serves on the Committee.)  The Committee's first ranking of the top twenty-five teams will not be until October 28, after the ninth week of the college season, and then they'll issue subsequent weekly rankings throughout the season.  All the other polls (USA Today, Associated Press, ESPN, etc.) you might see before or after October 28 carry no weight.  Only the Committee's opinion will count for purposes of filling the tournament brackets.  On December 7, 2014 ("Selection Sunday"), the final rankings, including the four national title tournament teams with their respective semi-final pairings, will be announced.

 

In addition to Willingham, the Committee is an amalgamation of former head coaches, assistant coaches, athletic directors, conference commissioners and media members.  I am not sure what credentials Condoleezza Rice brings to the table -- football fan(?) -- but her vote counts the same as Jeff Long, who is the A.D. at the University of Arkansas and is chairman of the Committee.  No one on the Committee has a direct tie to the University of Minnesota and, unfortunately for the Irish, no one besides Willingham has a direct tie to ND.

 

This season, the two semi-final games will be played on January 1, 2015 in the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.  One of those sites will host the # 1 seed (as determined by the Committee) against the # 4 seed; the other site will feature # 2 vs. # 3.  The Committee will decide which bowl gets which of the two games.  The fact that both semi-finals are being played on New Years Day is cause for celebration.  Under the old BCS system, there was never one day on which so much was at stake.  A lot of fans, including me, felt like the BSC ruined what used to be, perhaps, the greatest sports day of the year, New Years Day.  Now that holiday is back to the preeminence of the pre-BCS era.  

The two semi-final winners from New Years Day will play for the national title on Monday night, January 12, 2015 in the Jerry Dome in Arlington, Texas.  Just like the procedure used for the NFL's Super Bowl, in subsequent years the NCAA title game will be awarded to different cities which will bid for it.  You can be sure that the Twin Cities sports moguls will try to obtain the game for the Vikings stadium at some point.

 

Not only will the Committee choose the four semi-finalists to play in the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl, they will also be charged with the responsibility of selecting the combatants for four other bowls which are not semi-final sites.  At least one of those four other bowls (Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Cotton Bowl and Peach Bowl) will be played on New Years Eve and the rest on New Years Day.  In following years, the two semi-finals will be rotated among all six of those bowl games.

 

Five more things to keep in mind as you play armchair quarterback in front of your TV:

 

1. There is no restriction regarding how many semi-final teams can come from the same conference.  For example, if Alabama and LSU are deemed by the Committee to be two of the top four teams on Selection Sunday, they will both be semi-finalists even though those schools belong to the same conference, the SEC.

 

2. Strength of schedule is going to be more important than ever.  That is one of the key criteria which the Committee is going to consider in their deliberations.  Teams that schedule cream puffs to fill their pre-conference schedule will pay the piper in the end.

 

3. In addition to the schools which belong to the five power conferences named above, Notre Dame and schools from five other conferences (American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference and Sun Belt Conference) are also eligible for the four team playoff, and will be included in the Committee's rankings.

4. Transparency is still an issue, just as it was with the BCS protocol.  All of the Committe's votes are to be conducted using a secret ballot.  I can't believe this rule is going to last for long.  Why allow the Committee members to hide behind a veil of anonymity?

 

5. Now that we have gone from no playoff to a four team playoff, you are going to hear a lot about the prospect of expanding the playoff brackets in the future from four to eight teams.  The current contracts with the networks and the bowl committees call for the four team playoff arrangement to last twelve years. Although I think expansion to an eight team playoff will probably happen, I hope it does not.  There is an inverse correlation between the number of teams in the playoffs and the importance of the regular season. With room for only four playoff teams, any more than one loss during the regular season will knock a team out of playoff consideration.  But if the tournament field is enlarged to eight or more teams, each individual regular season game will be rendered less important, because there will be more margin for error in terms of losses.  Retaining the integrity of the regular season should be a paramount goal of the NCAA, regardless of the extra money that could be added to its coffers via playoff expansion.