To recap, the question was:

If team A beats team B and team B beats team C; is Team A better than team C?

The poll ended up:
No - 21 (87.5%)
Yes - 3 (12.5%)

The poll was open, so you can see who voted for what.

http://www.ohiochatter.com/forum/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=1111

Now, it's that time of year where everyone is complaining about the BCS and saying how much better a single elimination playoff system would be.

Guess what? The initial question is the philosophy behind single elimination play offs. If you don't believe that reasoning, how can you be so adamant that a playoff is for sure better? Just because other sports do it doesn't make it better.

College Football has the best regular season out of any sport and a pretty damn successful post season too. But I don't think this precludes from changing it. However, I also don't believe a playoff is necessary.

Here's my idea.

Most people who want a playoff agree that 8 is a good number or plus one. Plus one is two weeks, 8 team playoff is 3 weeks.

I combined the two ideas and I think the best solution to determine the best team is for a pool. Best record wins, or in the event of a tie go to some kind of tie breaker such as a point differential.

Pros:
- 6 high quality games (roughly equivalent to current number of BCS games); can still have "bowl" games for other teams not in the top 4.
- It would only take 3 weeks to get through (Same amount of time of a 8 team playoff without having to use the formula that the majority agreed isn't necessarily true)
- 1st week: 1 v 4 and 2 v 3
- 2nd week: 1 v 3 and 2 v 4
- 3rd week: 1 v 2 and 3 v 4
I would arrange it in that manner to get the top two teams playing last.
- It's settle either outright on the field, or on the field through point differential tie breaker. Not using a BCS formula completely, also not completely dependent on the failed logic as discussed earlier.

Cons:
- It is someone reliant on the BCS formula to determine the top 8 (but so is a plus 1 and 8 team playoff)
- There isn't 1 "ultimate" game for all the marbles... although there could be if it ends up that way if 1 and 2 both win their previous 2 games.
- It takes 3 weeks minimum.

So this was a two part post... the first was a criticism on play-offs by attacking the logic behind the system. If so many people don't approve of the logic, why approve of how the logic is applied.

Secondly I supplied my own theory, feel free to try to come up with a better plan.

Fly4Fun;594122 wrote:... If you don't believe that reasoning, how can you be so adamant that a playoff is for sure better? ...

I am not sure and I'm certainly not adamant that a playoff is better. I'm not even sure it's necessary to crown a National Champion in order to deem college football a success.

Why didn't you choose to add this to the original post? It seems like a perfect place to have a natural migration to explain your reasoning for your interesting initial question.

Con_Alma;594129 wrote:I am not sure and I'm certainly not adamant that a playoff is better. I'm not even sure it's necessary to crown a National Champion in order to deem college football a success.

Why didn't you choose to add this to the original post? It seems like a perfect place to have a natural migration to explain your reasoning for your interesting initial question.

I thought about it, but I figured people would be able to make the connection given the title of the thread. Also I linked the thread here, and I will link this thread there.

I think the link is a good idea.


I see it now.

The problem is you're comparing regular season games where they might not neccessarily be do-or-die. A playoff would be.

A tournament is a process of elimination. There must be some final form of elimination. A tournament cannot exist where a team can lose a game or series and yet still win win the tournament. The BCS lacks that basic concept. A loss in September may or may not boot you from the potential championship. If you're TCU, you're done. If you're Auburn, you can still have a chance to redeem yourself.

It's like flipping a coin, that if you're wrong you can call it again as a do-over.

Sykotyk

Sykotyk;594175 wrote:The problem is you're comparing regular season games where they might not neccessarily be do-or-die. A playoff would be.

A tournament is a process of elimination. There must be some final form of elimination. A tournament cannot exist where a team can lose a game or series and yet still win win the tournament. The BCS lacks that basic concept. A loss in September may or may not boot you from the potential championship. If you're TCU, you're done. If you're Auburn, you can still have a chance to redeem yourself.

It's like flipping a coin, that if you're wrong you can call it again as a do-over.

Sykotyk

Regular season games for the most part are do or die in the current system. Look at the 1 loss teams this season... they're out. But I also don't think the BCS is perfect, however, I don't believe it's any less perfect than a tournament.

And the factors that preclude using the transitive property in sports still apply in a tournament situation. You have to consider match-up problems, weather conditions, playing off games...

Just because you say it's in a tournament doesn't fix it. If the process behind the elimination is flawed then tournament itself is flawed. We just have this obsession with sports and tournaments that everyone forgets to look at the basic premise behind tournaments

And you're wrong to state that "A tournament cannot exist wher a team can lose a game or series and yet still win the tournament." It's called a double elimination tournament...

I would argue that the goal of a champion is not to be the best team, but to be the better team against a single opponent each round. If you do that several times in a row, it would be hard to say you aren't the champion.

queencitybuckeye;594202 wrote:I would argue that the goal of a champion is not to be the best team, but to be the better team against a single opponent each round. If you do that several times in a row, it would be hard to say you aren't the champion.

I would say that's a nice motivation speech... "one team at a time." But it ignores the fact that a single elimination tournament relies on the philosophy of Team A > Team B and Team B > Team C so A > C. Without accepting that as logical fact, a single elimination tournament does not make sense.

It's not hard to think of the situation Team A beats B, B beats C, but C beats A. Now imagine if we have a bracket where A > B, C > D, and then it's A vs. C and C wins.

But if it was something different A < C, B > D and then we have B vs. C so B wins. Just because who they are matched up against we get a different result and a different champion. Is that fair?

I actually have no problem with the bowl system as it was prior to the BCS. I do concede your point that just because a team would have to beat every team they played to win a tournament doesn't mean they couldn't have lost to a team in the tournament that they didn't play or that they are necessarily better than all the teams in the tournament. ("Better" teams lose to "lessor" teams every year.)

But with the current situation there are very good teams who don't even get a shot to win the title. TCU this year has no chance to win the title and they beat every single team they played. Boise had no chance to prove it on the field last year. In 2008 the champion (Florida) had one loss and Utah had none but no chance to prove they were worthy. In 2007 the champion (LSU) had two losses and there several other teams that could have been worthy if they had the chance to prove it.

FatHobbit;594259 wrote:I actually have no problem with the bowl system as it was prior to the BCS. I do concede your point that just because a team would have to beat every team they played to win a tournament doesn't mean they couldn't have lost to a team in the tournament that they didn't play or that they are necessarily better than all the teams in the tournament. ("Better" teams lose to "lessor" teams every year.)

But with the current situation there are very good teams who don't even get a shot to win the title. TCU this year has no chance to win the title and they beat every single team they played. Boise had no chance to prove it on the field last year. In 2008 the champion (Florida) had one loss and Utah had none but no chance to prove they were worthy. In 2007 the champion (LSU) had two losses and there several other teams that could have been worthy if they had the chance to prove it.

I agree that the BCS isn't perfect by any means. I'm also not sold that a tournament would solve the problem or would necessarily be an improvement. College Football Bowl Division has in one of if not the best regular seasons of any sport... don't sacrifice that to jump to a system that might not be any better in actually deciding who the best time in the nation. That's why I currently like my little system I put together, although that does have it's cons as there is no guarantee of "THE GAME" that decides it all.

Besides, subjective topics such as "which team is better" is very engaging and is part of what makes the regular season so entertaining. What makes people frustrated is also what at the same time makes things interesting.

Fly4Fun - I like how you set that up (the question, the reasoning, etc.). I've maintained for a long time that the only thing a tournament does is determine what team got hot over a three week period. I mean, when a 5-loss NFL team or a 10-loss college basketball team wins the tourney it doesn't prove at all that they were "the best". They won the right 3,4, 6 games and the entire body of work isn't considered. Neither the BCS nor a playoff means the best team is crowned champion and it will always be that way unless everyone plays everyone.

Then the counter shifts to the TCU example - they won all their games and don't even have a chance. The problem then, isn't necessarily a lack of a playoff, it is a lack of enough competitive events to determine who the best teams really are ot qualify in the first place. Your solution starts with a way of ensuring that the top teams have a chance to play a larger percentage of the top teams to enhance the sample size. Even doing it your way...by taking the top 8 teams, people assume they are getting the "best" 8 teams. But you still don't know that TCU deserves a chance over say, Alabama with 3-losses because you still don't know how TCU would have fared against three other potentially "top" teams.

Sticking with the TCU example, all they've done is beat 10% of the entire population. That is a pretty small number. So if Alabama beat 8% of the entire population how do we know that TCU's wins are worth more than Alabama's? What if TCU ultimately could only beat 70% of the population but Alabama could beat 85% of the population? Wouldn't Alabama be better? The argument for a team like TCU to get a shot to call itself the best by beating three more teams (still not a large segment of the population) doesn't put you any closer to determining the "best" team.

So again, the problem isn't not having a playoff. The problem is not having a sample size large enough to compare the teams. And so, since the current system works for so many other factors there isn't a reason to change something that doesn't address the real problem.

Very deep thought going on in this thread, and I like it. It's a nice change from the pissing matches we see on these threads so often.

I like your idea because at some point there is a drop off. By that I mean the top 10 teams let's say are considerably better than 11-120 (or whatever). What you propose is actually very similar to what NASCAR does in the Race to the Chase. Granted, with them everyone plays everyone and all have the same conditions to play in. What if we do what you suggest, with the top 8 using the same scenario now for the 4 BCS games and playing a round robin tournament; almost like a separate conference schedule. At the end of that, have a championship game between the best 2. With all the talk of 4 Super Conferences, I could see something like this happening.

First, the transitive property of football is flawed because of adjustments, injuries, weather, and other factors.

As far as NCAA playoffs, and I am for them, my idea would be this: Divide the country into 4 regions, base it on geography, population, conferences, best looking cheerleaders, whatever. From those regions, a 1st and 2nd seed emerge, which can use BCS, computers, conference champs, etc.

Of those 8 teams that remain, cross region them into either a) four New Years day bowl games, then play your national semis as two bowl games about a week after New Years, with the National Championship being about 2 weeks after New Years. or b) play them as national quarters on a Saturday at least 7 days before New Years, then make the last two games on New Years Day the national semis, leaving two teams that would meet a week or so later in the National Championship game.

Either way, you are only adding 3 games, incorporating bowls, giving some time for buildup aka making more money. So the two teams in the finals add 2 games (they were already getting an extra one for a bowl), and the two teams that make and lose the national semis add one game (they were going to a bowl anyway.) It doesn't have to be super complicated. Corporate sponsors will suggest stringing it out to allow for more travel and planning.

So for this year, on Dec 17th you could do national quarters-call them bowls if you want-1 vs 2 in all of the regions, give the 1s as close a home field as you can. Then on New Years, those 4 winners play the last two games, call them Rose and Fiesta, with the winner of those games playing Sunday Jan 8th or Friday Jan 13th. You should never run into the situation like an undefeated Auburn (years ago) or TCU being left out.