The NFL Playoffs Demonstrate the Folly of a College Football Playoff

Last Sunday, the NFC Championship Game featured the Arizona Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles. Both teams barely played above .500 football in the regular season. One, Philadelphia, didn't even win its division finishing just 9-6-1. That same Eagles team had quarterback Donovan McNabb benched in the second half of a late-season game against a Baltimore team no longer in the playoffs. Its opponent, the Arizona Cardinals, suffered one of the worst beatings of the regular season 47-7 in its second-to-last game against a team that didn't even make the playoffs.

One of those teams was bound to be among the final two standing in the NFL's so-called championship. Yet people want this for college football? The BCS has all kinds of flaws that need to be worked on, but even the briefest examination of the NFL playoffs should point to why they aren't a legitimate solution for college football.

Lets put something on the table right away. Whatever playoff format is chosen, if and when we come to that day, won't remain static. If we're talking a plus-one, eventually and in fairly rapid order you can count on that expanding to an eight team tournament, and in all likelihood a 16-team tournament.

This expansion is inevitable and there's no way to check it. A plus one won't stay that way because someone will sue and demand their place at the table, and eventually every conference champion will need to be included, not just of BCS schools but non-BCS schools. Theoretically this isn't such a problem since the best teams should advance, but in practice that's not how it works.

There isn't a Cardinals fan alive who with a straight face at the end of the regular season would have said they had the best or second-best team in the NFL. The playoffs should in theory advance the most superior teams, but instead because they're played with just one game between teams, anything can and usually does happen. Instead of order and something that promotes superiority and the best possible championship, you get what amounts to a roll of the dice.

Michael Lewis speaks to this flaw in his book Moneyball, which was about baseball but the following concept applies equally well to football and its series of one-game postseason battles.

[T]he season ended in a giant crapshoot. The play-offs frustrate rational management because, unlike the long regular season, they suffer from the sample size problem. Pete Palmer, the sabermetrician and author of The Hidden Game of Baseball, once calculated that the difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game. Over a long season the luck evens out, and the skill shines through.

But in a series of three out of five or even four out of seven, anything can happen. In a five-game series, the worst team in baseball will beat the best about 15 percent of the time; the [2002 season -ed.] Devil Rays have a prayer against the Yankees.

Or, as Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane more colorfully put it "my [stuff] doesn't work in the play-offs. My job is to get us to the play-offs. What happens after that is [redacted] luck".

Which explains why two teams not among the NFL super elite and certainly not among the elite of the entire NFL, found themselves within 60 minutes of a Super Bowl appearance.

The NFL playoffs are exciting and mean well, but are not structured to reward superior play and ability. If you played this year's playoff out again, the outcome would likely be remarkably different within the same assemblage of teams. And if you played it again, same thing. Luck and circumstance overriding actual ability.

One thing I enjoy about college football is that while it may not get the exact one or two teams right at the end of the season, it will bring together two of the three or four best teams out there, as evidenced by 12 games' worth of play instead of performance in just one. Neither model is perfect, but college football's gets much closer to answering that nagging question "who is best?".

A college football playoff could potentially seat for example the 2008 ACC or Big East champions, Virginia Tech and Cincinnati as its so-called best teams, given just how much variance is introduced through a playoff. To me that makes the whole process meaningless, soul-less and random.

In exchange you also end up carving into the greatest regular season in all of sport to accommodate the inevitable playoff expansion. This is a horrible trade-off that doesn't really come any closer to determining a legitimate champion than the BCS.

At some point we have to step back and take a look at how college football is structured and realize just how near-impossible it is to legitimately and fairly crown a champion. There are 119 teams of tremendously varied ability and style, some of whom are in 12-team divisions, playing a 12-game regular season including anywhere from three to five non-conference games. The one way to strengthen a playoff is to have teams play a lengthy series of games between themselves. This is difficult for the NFL and impossible for college football given the academic limitations and demands in place. The math just isn't there to do it right.

It's unfortunate, but in the meantime the game has done about as well as it can to determine a championship and does it without eroding the only truly compelling regular season in all of major sport. So apologies for my insolence but people like our new President Barack Obama couldn't be more wrong about a need for a playoff in college football. I understand their concerns, but it won't work how we would want it to work, and would take away from the best part of the game.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

1-21-2009 @ 3:56PM

Gator said...

This was posted in another thread days ago..

1-18-2009 @ 7:37PM

Gator said...
Hear Ye Hear Ye all those who are thinking that a playoff will guarantee that the best two teams are in the
"College Super Bowl Game"
Arizona the number 4 seed is going to the NFL Super Bowl. Pittsburg and Baltimore are not the top seeds from that conferance yet one will be in the Super Bowl with Arizona..........
Playoffs do not get you the best two teams 100 percent of the time if ever. Yes the BCS is a mess but a playoff does not fix it!

Florida Gators going for 3 NC's in the last 4 years!
Go Gators!

1-21-2009 @ 4:26PM

cdpack said...

I disagree completely I say there should be a playoff because its simply you lose you go home and if youve already won 11 straight games whats 3 more to get you to the National Title game comes and if Souther Miss can beat USC in a playoff format they deserve to be there period and NO EXCEPTIONS!!! Let The Best TEAM at the Best TIME Play!!

1-21-2009 @ 9:29PM

chomeygo said...

You can't compare the NFL to College you idiots. NFL= the best of the best...College= some of the best against some of the best. The difference being that the cream of the crop will be more obvious with a playoff system! Sub-par teams will never have a shot at the national championship like the NFL where on any given Sunday...... Again, the Gators can't claim they were the best in this format. Could be any of 4. So get off the excuses. Lets have a playoff to shut idiots up!

1-22-2009 @ 7:30AM

iminge said...

You are 100% wrong. This is exactly why we need a playoff in college football. The mythical championship means nothing unless it can be proven on the field. You imply that perhaps Carolina is better than Arizona when they knocked them around on their own field? Those rediculous ideas always seem to come from the SEC. In fact, following your logic, Alabama should have been in the national championship game, because after all, they did have a better regular season than Florida did. The fact that they were able to play an "SEC champinship game" gave them the opportunity to play for the national championship which is precisely why a playoff is needed.

1-21-2009 @ 4:40PM

Brian Grummell said...

Gator,

I hear ya. I've been talking about this for a long, long time.

http://www.collegefootballresource.com/blog/2006/11/9/le-playoffs.html

http://www.collegefootballresource.com/blog/category/playoffs-bad-idea

1-24-2009 @ 2:46PM

bluerange308 said...

Moron! If the NFL had the BCS system, the Titans and Giants would have just been put in the superbowl, and they both lost their first game in the playoffs. You waisted your time on this article. Playoffs work better than the BCS......MORON!!!

1-21-2009 @ 5:35PM

ddegen1 said...

Mr. Grummell, your email address is unavailable for responses, which I find as irresponsible as your article, especially for someone using a general public forum to express his personal (yet incorrect) agenda.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL WOULD BENEFIT WITH A PLAYOFF SYSTEM and your entire argument is a fallacy, based upon incorrect information!!! You compare the current NFL Playoff system (which I agree is not equitable) to a potential college playoff system where conference champions of weak conferences would be eligible for the playoffs, thereby eliminating some of the better teams around the country. This is NOT what is being proposed. UNLIKE the NFL, college playoffs would be based upon national rankings at the end of the year with the top 4, 8 or 16 teams being selected, depending upon the format. If the conference champions from weaker conferences such as the the Big East & the ACC were not in the top 4, 8 or 16, they would not be in the playoffs…PERIOD, END OF DISCUSSION. How much simpler can it be? Unfortunately, proponents such as yourself, who are afraid of change, invent ridiculous & incorrect arguments that have no basis and serve no purpose!!! College football is the ONLY major sport that does not include a playoff system and college presidents should take note of the tremendous successes enjoyed in other sporting arenas.

1-21-2009 @ 6:58PM

Ray Holloman said...

College football may be the only major sport without a playoff, but it's also the only sport to award a championship for the best season start to finish and not which team played the best over a limited amount of time at the end of a season. And frankly, what's more equitable, rewarding a team for excellence performance over four months or rewarding teams in a one-and-done playoff environment like the NCAA Tournament or the NFL playoffs? You want great TV? Watch Mad Men. You want great football, pit the two best teams from the regular season against each other.

Is the BCS perfect? Of course not. It's impossible to say with complete certainty which two teams are the best, but between 100-plus Harris voters, 60-plus coaches poll voters and six separate computerized formulas (which, by the way, really only serve as a backcheck against voter will, which is 67 percent of the formula, keeps anyone from doing something nuts like putting Notre Dame in the BCS title game), the BCS does a better job than just about anything else.

NCAA Tournament involves the luck of the draw, the luck of location, and depends on an even more subjective view of which team should be seeded where by the committee. Baseball playoffs completely alter the way the game is played, shrinking five man rotations down to three, not to mention the awkwardness of the DL rule. Stanley Cup playoffs are, with few exceptions, won by teams who's goalies stand on their head for a few weeks. The NBA does a fairly good job deciding it, but football in no way has time for seven-game series.

And good luck getting the ACC and Big East, or any other BCS conference for that matter, to sign off on a playoff in which they don't have a berth any more locked up than they do in the current system.

Besides, not all sports crown their champions with playoffs. The champion of the English Premier League is awarded to the team with the most regular season points and the English seem to care more about that than the UEFA Cup. Of course, I can't say I watch much EPL as I have more interesting things to do, like sock maintenance or cataloging different species of mountain goat.

1-21-2009 @ 5:58PM

RE: "In exchange you also end up carving into the greatest regular season in all of sport to accommodate the inevitable playoff expansion."

Most power conferences PAD THEIR SCHEDULE WITH 2 OR 3 CREAMPUFFS early in the season - home games that are meaningless & actually affect revenues because they have terrible attendances (ie. North Texas @ LSU or San Jose St @ Nebraska to name a couple) Remove 1 or 2 of those games & add the playoffs at the end - HELLO MCFLY!!!

1-21-2009 @ 6:45PM

Fonzie 2.0 said...

You're crazy if NCAA had a 12 team playoff you would have 6 to 9 conference champs and a few 1 & 2 loss teams... if any of those teams won it all they would more then deserve it.

And I'm a gator fan, the BCS is a joke I want a playoff system.

1-21-2009 @ 6:52PM

Bob said...

Going by what you consider to be the great drawback, that one fluke game can kill your season, we should therefore get rid of what most seem to consider the tournament of tournaments, the college hoops March Madness. By your definition, all those great Cinderella stories didn't count, because they weren't the regular season juggernauts. By your reasoning, we should just scrap the highly successful basketball system, and let voters and computers decide their champion--let's face it, your supposed "legitimate" #1 might have their season decided by ONE SHOT! We can't let luck have that much control, now can we?

1-21-2009 @ 7:15PM

sgdbaty13 said...

Dumb Dumb, nobody is suggesting we take 6-5 teams and put them in a college playoff. However, Utah, USC and Texas should have had a chance to compete for the National Championship Game. End of Story

Tod said...

What could be more stupid than playing the entire season then having sportswriters and coaches VOTE on who is the best? You would never get to see the Giants humiliate the Patriots, two Super Bowl winners would never have been allowed to play in the game, and there wouldn't be8 good bowl games and 24 meaningless ones! We haven't had a national champion in 15 years! get real! College football would TRIPLE their revenue in a playoff system!

1-21-2009 @ 7:40PM

RE: Ray Holloman said...
"College football may be the only major sport without a playoff, but it's also the only sport to award a championship for the best season start to finish and not which team played the best over a limited amount of time at the end of a season. And frankly, what's more equitable, rewarding a team for excellence performance over four months or rewarding teams in a one-and-done playoff environment like the NCAA Tournament or the NFL playoffs? You want great TV? Watch Mad Men. You want great football, pit the two best teams from the regular season against each other....."

You are not LISTENING and that is one of the lamest arguments I have ever read!! The top 4, 8 or 16 teams WILL BE REWARDED for their season by going to a playoff, depending on the format. College football in Div 1AA, Div 2, 3, etc.. all successfully crown a champion (and not a fluke champion I might add - just ask Appalachian State). With your argument, you are saying USC, Texas & Utah were not deserving a shot at the championship game - all who had stellar seasons - START TO FINISH!!

Are you also saying that all of the past College Hoops champions were NOT the best teams? Give me a freakin break - what planet did you step off of? Most of the teams that end up in the Final Four (and Elite 8 for that matter) are ranked in the top 16 at the end of the season - get your facts straight!!!

The issue is not whether the playoffs can work, or whether it will require extra time to be taken away from the players' academics - these are just phantom arguments & excuses to the real issue - $$$$.

I don't care about great TV - I care about watching great football - Texas vs Utah, Florida vs USC, Alabama vs Oklahoma & Ohio St vs Oregon in a 1st round playoff - ARE YOU KIDDING ME? None of those teams are a fluke and the best team would win - that is why they were highly ranked.... NOW THAT IS GREAT FOOTBALL!!!

1-21-2009 @ 8:16PM

revlongboneee said...

college football needs a legit playoff format. i dont follow the nfl so i dont have a clue about why 2 teams that didnt win their divisions were in the title game. maybe those teams were injured early or peaked at the right time who knows.

as far as college until every team has the same chance then it will be nothing more than a popularity contest....no way college football can improve until the voters are fair and unbiased and there isnt one person that follows the game that can claim that.

last season is a perfect example as to why we need a playoff. utah went undefeated again and again wasnt considered for the title. utah definitely manhandled alabama. florida struggled with the same team. a post earlier mentioned college football awards the best season start to finish...if this were the case then where is utahs national title trophy?

the only true and fair way to have a legit college football champion is to have either 8 super conferences set up like the sec, big 12, acc, mac etc and take the division winners and let them play for the conference title then take the 8 conference champions in a 3 week (7 games total..... 4 quarterfinal, 2 semifinal, and a championship game) playoff format.

another way would be create 16 conferences then take the 16 champions.....the handpickin of teams has hurt college football more than helped it. i know several people who wont even watch college football because a legit playoff format doesnt exist. i personally wont watch the nfl because its a business and no longer a sport. athletes get hangnails and sit out but they still collect a paycheck for that game.

its time to do away with the popular opinion polls and settle it with a legit playoff format like every other college sport including 1aa, div2, div3, juco etc. does.

1-21-2009 @ 9:30PM

flackusc said...

This is profoundly idiotic. You speak of 'best' like it's some sort of mathematical abstraction. There's no magic, objective definition of 'best' in sports or in life. That's fine. Playoffs serve as a perfectly reasonable substitute. Or, conversely, playoffs are the worst system of determining relative skill man has ever devised, except for all the others. They're all we've got.

My Seattle Mariners won 116 games in 2001 but they weren't the best team that year because they lost in the playoffs, didn't go to the world series, and didn't win it. Sports are about direct competition, and if a team plays over its head or under its potential in the big game or series, then than we chalk it up to 'chemistry' or 'heart' or 'desire'. This is part of the fun. Everyone gets to marvel at an underdog like the Cardinals going to the Super Bowl. Do I think they would beat the Patriots? No. But that injustice has to do with something that CAN be fixed, namely playoff seeding. Just because the NFL playoffs are flawed doesn't mean the principle of a sports playoff is worth abandoning.

There's nothing wrong with two teams playing, one team winning, and that team being consider better than the team it beat. That's sports. The BCS is a sham because great teams don't get to play each other and it's NOT FUN. Florida vs. USC would have been SO FUN. All that talent and speed. The Ray Malalugua/Tim Tebow collisions would have been worth the price of admission. You know what's not fun? Having undefeated teams like Utah go home empty handed. There's no payoff. No release. Who cares that they might have pulled off an upset against USC or Florida or Texas? That would have been great. And I say that as a diehard USC fan.

There is nothing impossible about an 8 team playoff, and pretending like we will inexorably have to adopt a 16 team bracket is a silly straw man argument. The frustration our new president and every sane sports fan in america feels with the BCS doesn't have much to do with the 8th best team in America is. Everyone understands that some teams with legit claim on the lower seeds will be left out. Fine. The system will, of course, be flawed. But that's no reason to cling to an infinitely more flawed system. Don't let great be the enemy of good. And stop writing asinine articles to generate controversy and page views.

1-22-2009 @ 11:28AM

flackusc said "...And stop writing asinine articles to generate controversy and page views."

THANK YOU - THIS SAYS IT ALL!!

1-21-2009 @ 9:59PM

Eric said...

I thought this was a great post, and I'm typically honest about that sort of thing (unless it comes to Tom Ziller).

Anyway, not being a college-football maniac, you raise some good points that I had not thought about before. It sure seems like the goal of the BCS is to crown the best team in college football, and the best team surely does not always win in any playoff.

Great article. This is why I still read Fanhouse -- definitely more this than Jay fricking Mariotti.

1-21-2009 @ 10:14PM

Let's address what I've seen so far:

"This is NOT what is being proposed. UNLIKE the NFL, college playoffs would be based upon national rankings at the end of the year with the top 4, 8 or 16 teams being selected, depending upon the format. If the conference champions from weaker conferences such as the the Big East & the ACC were not in the top 4, 8 or 16, they would not be in the playoffs…PERIOD, END OF DISCUSSION"

Not true, and Ray addressed this. NO major-conference will sign off on a playoff without automatic inclusion of one or more of their member institutions. Anything else is a pipe dream.

"Most power conferences PAD THEIR SCHEDULE WITH 2 OR 3 CREAMPUFFS early in the season"

This is true. However, you will also notice that chief among the soft schedules, the SEC, has started to move towards a more legitimate OOC schedule. That has been the result of all things, various blogs and writers raising the issue of soft scheduling. It is a work in progress issue that like many things, is not solved overnight but to my amazement is starting to get addressed. Give it time.

"By your definition, all those great Cinderella stories didn't count, because they weren't the regular season juggernauts"

Well, YEAH! Otherwise why bother with the regular season? Might as well make the entire season a playoff, bad teams being eliminated right off the bat.

BTW the basketball system is the farthest thing from highly successful. It's highly lucrative, but money isn't always a sign of success in sport. Sport is about what happens on the field, not off it. A series of single elimination games in basketball is not what I'd consider a successful way to determine a legitimate champion.

"And frankly, what's more equitable, rewarding a team for excellence performance over four months or rewarding teams in a one-and-done playoff environment like the NCAA Tournament or the NFL playoffs?"

Exactly.

"You want great TV? Watch Mad Men"

Hey now, what about Big Love? Then again, I just discovered that a week ago.

"The NBA does a fairly good job deciding it, but football in no way has time for seven-game series."

Very true! I think the NBA by far has the best, most realistic postseason. For whatever reason, be it the way the game works or 7 games being just the right number, things seem to work themselves out with the NBA playoffs. Its the one shining example of a great playoff, in my mind.

"Besides, not all sports crown their champions with playoffs. The champion of the English Premier League is awarded to the team with the most regular season points and the English seem to care more about that than the UEFA Cup"

Seems to be, yeah. And again because of that their regular season is incredibly compelling and watchable even for someone like myself who generally has been disinterested in professional and international soccer for most of his life.

"However, Utah, USC and Texas should have had a chance to compete for the National Championship Game"

No, they shouldn't have. Did you actually watch USC this year? Did you see them against Oregon State? How about the world's worst 28-0 shutout against Arizona State where USC's offense turned the ball over I think five times in the second half against ASU and looked horrible. Or USC's first-half performance against Stanford where they basically had to scuttle future first-round pick Mark Sanchez and live and die with the running game? Of course not. Those things MATTER in college football, and luckily there are enough CFB observers like myself out there who notice those things and then watch all the other teams and can make a reasonable determination about who is superior at the end of the season.

"What could be more stupid than playing the entire season then having sportswriters and coaches VOTE on who is the best?"

Ohhh, I don't know, having a playoff that sends a team like Arizona to the Super Bowl ?!

"Are you also saying that all of the past College Hoops champions were NOT the best teams?"

Uhhh, yeah! Jimmy V's team anyone?

"I don't care about great TV - I care about watching great football"

Here's a concept -- watch college football's regular season with great football every weekend.

"i dont follow the nfl so i dont have a clue about why 2 teams that didnt win their divisions were in the title game. maybe those teams were injured early or peaked at the right time who knows."

Uhhh, that's kind of an important detail.

"Sub-par teams will never have a shot at the national championship like the NFL"

The Giants won last year, didn't they? Case closed.

"You speak of 'best' like it's some sort of mathematical abstraction. There's no magic, objective definition of 'best' in sports or in life. That's fine. Playoffs serve as a perfectly reasonable substitute"

Not really. Did you read my post?

"My Seattle Mariners won 116 games in 2001 but they weren't the best team that year because they lost in the playoffs"

Um, yes they were. That was an incredible team. They lost in the playoffs because of all the inevitable noise that cannot be eliminated in a 5 or 7 game series. Baseball is a complex game, I trust the regular season results much more over what happens in the postseason.

"Sports are about direct competition, and if a team plays over its head or under its potential in the big game or series, then than we chalk it up to 'chemistry' or 'heart' or 'desire'."

Yeah except thats lazy and likely inaccurate in most every case.

"Just because the NFL playoffs are flawed doesn't mean the principle of a sports playoff is worth abandoning."

TRUE, and I don't mean to imply otherwise. However, given the circumstances that dictate college football which I wrote about in my entry, 100+ teams etc., those completely override the ability to piece together a legitimate playoff for CFB. PERIOD. End of story.

"Florida vs. USC would have been SO FUN."

Agree, it would have been AMAZING. Too bad USC fumbled around so much of its season. Try beating Oregon State next time. Better yet, don't mess around offensively against Arizona (17 points) Cal (17 points) ASU (21 points and one of the most embarrassing second halves of football I've ever witnessed) etc.

USC had its chances, and thats the beauty of college football, they had their shot and blew it several times during the regular season when other teams would look weak USC would look no better. I say this as a USC fan who knows his team well.

"pretending like we will inexorably have to adopt a 16 team bracket is a silly straw man argument"

Whats straw man about it? It WILL happen, because conferences will sue if they're not included, its why the BCS is as watered down as it is because there's antitrust and other things at work and outside parties have to be satisfied to keep things working. The same things holding the BCS back are the same forces that will inevitably wreck what everyone assumes at the outside will be a perfectly reasonable playoff. You're incredibly naive to think otherwise.

"Great article. This is why I still read Fanhouse"

Thank you, we appreciate your visit. My opinion is in the minority here, but its intelligent, rational and worth expressing.

1-22-2009 @ 12:06PM

Dave said...

Dear Mr. Grummell, I wrote -

"It is quite evident that you were randomly picked out of a pool of writers to comment on something you have absolutely no clue about - SPORTS. So just pick up your keyboard and go back to whatever you were doing prior to this article and leave the SPORTS to SPORTS WRITERS!!!"

I apologize what I meant to say is - you have the right to be ignorant, but you do not have the right to be arrogant about it!!!