So deserving = Krazy definition of deserving. I guess that is where we are. The problem with that is that it doesn’t answer why “deserving” in 1980 is different from 1998 and 2014. Each system has their own criteria of what constitutes as “deserving”. It however never has a disagreement of what is “best”.
First off thanks for not being overly argumentative in your response, I wasn't trying to pick a fight but it felt like it was descending a bit so I appreciate the tone.
As to my definition, and yes from my perspective it's my definition, I'd say deserving is the team most worthy based on their regular season performance in its entirety. Some criteria tried to cherry pick the regular season, overlook some stuff, make some stuff of incredible importance (for instance Auburn beat Alabama so that somehow undoes the fact that Alabama beat two teams that beat Auburn) and dismiss the rest. Deserving should be the entire body of work.
I just wish they would do away with them all together for just playoff semifinals. But it won’t happen due to money.
It
shouldn't happen due to money. You and I are not so far apart merely because our views on the BCS, it's on our views of what is best for the sport as a whole. I was looking up some data, and college football managed to go through the 80s and into the 2010s with a fairly consistent level of popularity. This went from the bowl era, to the BCS, without really losing ground, but mind you not really gaining that much either.
What was the only constant? The regular season and bowl games. We saw the addition of conference championship games, the BCS and so on, but the sport stayed steady. I'd add that staying steady was in and of itself an accomplishment. During that period the MLB (while I don't blame this, they expanded their post season) lost so much ground that college football nearly caught up to them (by some metrics it has), and college basketball (which only saw an expanded tournament field) actually saw it's share as the most popular sport cut in half! So college football wasn't broke, it didn't need fixing. We can have our preferences, but I find it hard to look past the bowl system as very good for keeping college football fans in general engaged.
With any playoff system the champion isn't always the best team. They were just the most successful in the playoffs. If you don't want that for college football you don't want that for any other sport either.
I think that's a very interesting point, and I honestly can kind of see both sides. I still think it's a travesty that the undefeated Patriots had to play a 10 win team they'd already beaten a second time to prove their worthiness of a championship. I thought it was ludicrous when a team that was around .500 in their conference won the NCAA tournament. I'm not against playoffs entirely though, but I think they should do a far better job of making sure that the regular season means more than just seeding, and should be limited enough that completely unworthy teams are not getting a shot at a championship. The perspective I really disagree with across all sports is a kind of one size fits all approach many have, for instance if you win your conference/division, you automatically get into a playoff regardless of how you played. In the NFL that's lead to teams with losing records not only making the playoff but playing a home game.
The problem is the committee's lack of transparency and appearing to make things up as they go ("Clemson played that game without Kelly Bryant" might be the nadir of the committee).
The more I think about it the more I feel like incorporating the polls and computers, with the committee as the final third might be the best solution. Then again one can argue they want the system to be broken so they have impetus for expansion. But, if they used the polls as one third of the vote, computers as one third, and then let the committee be the final third, they could be the tie breaker of sorts. This way, if you have something like the BCS trying to decide between LSU/Oklahoma/USC, the committee is empowered to make that choice. However, they wouldn't be able to just ignore everything and veer off in their own direction, because they'd still only be a third of the vote, and if there is agreement between the computers and polls, their job would basically be to rubber stamp that. But we'll never see something like that...
