USA Today
In favor of a college football Bill of Rights: Column
By William Mattox, JMI Resident Fellow
November 27, 2014When you’re a civics nerd who loves college football, December can be very frustrating. That’s because college football’s annual “beauty contest” to select which contestants vie for the national championship concludes just before Bill of Rights Day on Dec. 15.And while these events seem completely unrelated, that’s actually the problem. Strangely.You see, college football has sought in recent years to create the gridiron equivalent of a “Constitution” for determining its national champion. First, it developed a two-team selection process which relied upon polls and computer rankings; then, a four-teamplayoff chosen by a committee.Just as the U.S. Constitution represented a major upgrade over the Articles of Confederation, college football’s establishment of a championship process has been a welcome improvement over the regional bowl alliances that once dominated the post-season landscape.Nevertheless, the current system remains seriously flawed because it fails to provide the equivalent of a “Bill of Rights” that guarantees playoff slots to teams that meet certain pre-determined objective criteria.Without such guarantees, teams begin every season not knowing to what degree various subjective factors – “eye tests,” “signature wins,” “bad losses,” etc. – will decide who advances. Given this unpredictability, many top-tier teams reduce their slate of “losable games” by scheduling multiple lower-tier opponents.To illustrate how risk-averse scheduling has become, consider: Georgia (my alma mater) won the 1980 national championship by going 12-0 against schools from what are now called the “Power 5” conferences (ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC). Conversely, four teams from Georgia’s Southeastern (SEC) Conference – Mississippi State, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, and Texas A&M – scheduled one-third of their 2014 games against lower-tier schools . And Arkansas played only three Power 5 opponents the week after another Power 5 game – thanks to a timely sprinkling of “cupcakes,” “breathers,” and bye weeks.So, what would a “College Football Bill of Rights” look like? I believe it’d need two main rules.First, the four teams that amass the most wins over Power 5 opponents will be guaranteed slots in the championship playoff. This rule would be modeled after the National Football League. In the NFL (as in all pro sports), teams don’t benefit from losing narrowly – or suffer from winning unimpressively. They play to win each game. And they advance to the playoffs if they win the most games in their grouping. That’s fair. Clear. Objective.Second, in breaking ties, preference will be given to the team with the higher preseason Intended Strength of Schedule, based on their opponents’ combined Power 5 win totals in recent season(s). The key word here is “intended.” Teams should be rewarded for what they can control (the intended rigor of their schedule), not for what they can’t control (the actual rigor of their schedule). Playing a perennial powerhouse should count more than scheduling a perennial “bottom-feeder” – even if these opponents reverse roles in a given year.Adopting this Bill of Rights would spur an increase in teams willing to play a pro-style gauntlet of “Any Given Saturday” games. This year, only four schools – Florida State, UCLA, USC, and West Virginia – scheduled 11 games against Power 5 teams. Not only would that number grow, but college fans (and TV broadcasters) would also get more inter-regional “clash of the titans” match-ups since Intended SOS would be so important.Adopting this Bill of Rights would also render meaningless the “time zone bias” against Pac-12 teams. In countless hours of ESPN-watching this year, I’ve yet to hear a single analyst note that the top five teams in the Pac-12 South have as many Power 5 wins (32) as all seven teams in the SEC West (32) . Remove subjectivity from the selection process and it won’t matter if influential sports talk shows ignore such data when catering (somewhat understandably) to larger audiences in Eastern and Central time zones.Most importantly, adopting this Bill of Rights would ensure that college football’s cream rises to the top. That its most deserving teams routinely advance. While a pro-style system would not eliminate occasional oddities – this year’s NFC South winner will make the NFL playoffs with a poorer record than most, if not all, of the AFC North teams – it would still be better to have an objective process using pre-determined criteria than a subjective “beauty contest” that rewards public relations as much as play on the field.We are, after all, a nation governed by laws not by the arbitrary whims of a king (or a selection committee). And just as our founders recognized the need for a Bill of Rights to protect citizens, college football’s leaders need to protect gridiron teams by adopting playoff selection rules based on pre-determined objective criteria.William Mattox is a resident fellow at the James Madison Institute and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.Article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/11/27/college-football-bill-of-rights-column/19524771/
2014
