Driving The Lane: Who’s The Best?

It’s time to finally say, “Good riddance,” to the Bowl Championship Series — sort of. Unfortunately, the new College Football Playoff doesn’t go into effect until the 2014 season. So we are now in that awkward break-up stage where we’re still going to be hooking up with the BCS for a little while longer until we finally move on.

I doubt many people will miss the BCS. And while I was much more of a fan of the system than most, I am very excited about the changes coming our way. Finally, we have our playoff system. While it’s not the eight-team playoff that most of us — including the President — wanted, it will do. A four-team playoff is certainly better than a single Championship Game.

But now comes the hard part: Choosing which four teams will go to this playoff. The BCS has often left us wondering whether the two best teams are in the Championship Game. Of course, the same issue is going to arise here. While this problem is never going to go away, there is one thing the NCAA can do to at least ease the pain. It has to set very strict rules regarding the format of choosing the final-four teams.

None of this “best four teams” crap. Sports are not about just pitting the “best” teams against each other. If that were the case, why even keep track of wins and losses? You would just pick whichever teams look the “best.” No. We need to pick the four teams that truly earned a spot in the playoff by winning games during the regular season.

This starts by first making it clear that a team must win its conference in order to make the playoff. Sorry, SEC fan boys. Unfortunately, there are no conference limitations in the playoff at the moment, and it makes me sick. How can you possibly assert that you are the best team in a field of over two hundred when you have proven that you are not the best in a subset of ten to fifteen?

I still refuse to acknowledge University of Alabama as the 2011 National Champions. I don’t care that it absolutely steamrolled Louisiana State University. It never should have been in that game. That position was rightfully owned by Oklahoma State University, and it was robbed.

I realize Alabama had a much better chance of beating LSU than Oklahoma State. I realize Alabama showed in that game they were the ‘best’ team in the country.

It doesn’t matter. It already lost to LSU. No matter how disgusting that regular season matchup was, Alabama lost.

Therefore, it was not the SEC Champion. Heck, it didn’t even earn the right to play in the SEC Championship Game. And yet it somehow earned a spot in the National Championship Game? I’m sorry, that just doesn’t add up.

There is only one counterargument to this: Wild cards. Other sports have wild-card spots that allow more than one team from a division into the playoffs. So why can’t college football?

Well, wild cards are only allowed into the playoffs after the divisional winners. So until they can devise a playoff format with enough spots for the winners of all of college football’s conferences, there simply isn’t room for wild cards.

This may seem a little unfair to SEC teams. I understand going through an SEC schedule is unlike anything else in college football. The conference is just that good. But the SEC also has an advantage over every other conference: The winner will always be picked for the playoff.

It doesn’t matter if everyone beats up on each other, and the conference winner ends up with three losses. The SEC champion will always deserve a spot in the playoff. So there’s your goal. Just win your conference and you’re in. And if you’re not good enough to do that, then you’re clearly not the best team in the country. You don’t deserve to go to the playoff.

The second major stand the NCAA needs to make is regarding teams from mid-major conferences. Every year, some small school from the Mountain West Conference cries about getting no love from the BCS despite finishing with an undefeated or one-loss season. The NCAA needs a plan to fix this.

I suggest a format that allows one spot to be filled by the “best” mid-major conference winner. Then the three “best” major conferences winners can fill the remaining three spots. There you go. That’s a set system the NCAA can use. It gives every team a chance and doesn’t allow for the nauseating questions like, “How many teams from the SEC deserve to go?” or “How many top 25 teams does a mid-major team need to play in order to deserve a spot?”

But how do you choose the “best” mid-major conference winner and three “best” major conference winners? That’s a mystery that even I can’t solve. But at least having a fixed format will make this process a little easier.