Seeping Matter

Some of you who read this blog a lot are just now checking to make sure you haven’t accidentally gone to the wrong website by mistake.

I’m no fan of the BCS.  I’m not a missionary proselyting for the anti-BCS religion, mind you, I just don’t really care for the BCS.  If we’ve learned anything over the past five years or so, it is that the good mid-major teams are definitely good enough to compete against and defeat the best that the BCS conferences are willing to send their way.  The only thing we don’t know is just how good those teams really were, because they never get a chance to play for the title.

And it will happen this year also.  TCU and Boise State will probably finish their regular seasons undefeated, but it is unlikely that they will both even get a BCS bowl invite, much less have any chance to play for the title.  TCU, for example, probably will need three of Florida, Alabama, Texas, and Cincinnati to lose a game before they have a chance.  Even then, it is probably a long shot.

So this is about the time that people say, “What we need is a tournament, just like they do in basketball, which is awesome.”

It is true that the NCAA basketball tournament is awesome.  One of the best in all of sports.  But it isn’t true that they should have a football tournament.  It’s a bad idea logistically and economically.

To explain this, consider the current bowl schedule.  This year there are 34 bowl games scheduled, starting December 19 and finishing on January 7.  Usually when people think of having a tournament, the idea is, why not just take the existing games and make them into a tournament instead?

It takes 31 games to play through a complete single-elimination tournament with a field of 32 teams.  So 34 bowl games could support a 32-team tournament, with a few extras thrown about.  This is a logistical problem, though, because football is such a demanding sport.  A team can’t really play more than one game in a week.  So you’d need five weekends, or about one month, to complete the schedule.  To finish by January 7, you’d have to start about December 10.

That’s a bit longer, but feasible.  What isn’t so feasible is adding another five games to the champion’s schedule.  That’s a pretty long football season for guys that are still trying to finish college.

But even if we could work through all of that, the tournament is still not such a good idea, for economic reasons.  It isn’t that people wouldn’t be interested in a tournament — they would.

One problem is that although the tournament promises to be more decisive and less controversial in determining a champion, it bowl-going opportunity for fewer teams.  Currently, with a 34 game schedule, 68 teams will get a chance to attend a bowl game.  That’s 68 teams with fans who are thrilled to follow their team to a their bowl game and cheer them to victory.

Compare that to a 32-team tournament.  First off, 36 teams that would otherwise have attended a bowl game are being left out.  Those teams don’t get the bowl game money.  And many of their fans now won’t be attending a bowl game, fans that might have attended one otherwise.  All in all, that means potentially fewer people attending the games.

Fewer attendees for almost the same number of games.

This attendance problem is compounded by the fact that some teams will be playing multiple games — five games, for those in the championship.  If you are a fan of USC, you of course are arrogant and delusional, as are pretty much all USC fans.  Therefore, you surely think you will compete for the title.  If you can only afford to go to one game, you’ll certainly wait to go to the final game.  And since USC is not nearly as good as you think they are, you’ll end up missing the game altogether.

And you won’t be the only one.  Certainly a large number of people who would have gone to their team’s bowl game in the current system would miss it in the tournament, even if their team makes it to the tournament, because in trying to wait until the big games they miss their team altogether when they are upset in early rounds.

It took me a long time to understand this, but I think now I understand why they keep saying that a tournament won’t work.  Even if you can get past the logistical problems, the economics are just not nearly so good.  Ironically, it is better for the mid-pack teams, and not just the top teams, if we stay with the current system.  Even though the mid-majors don’t have much of a chance to win the title in the current system, it does a better job of giving them bowl money than a tournament would.

So although the BCS is still lame, it is still better for us than a tournament.  Besides, if we get rid of the BCS, what will I complain about each year?