Down Goes #4

[SurelySerious]

Kind of fits the topic:

Let's Be Careful What We Wish For: What March-style Madness Would Do to College Football

By DARREN EVERSON

March Madness lived up to its name like never before this season, as unthinkable upsets dominated the NCAA men's basketball tournament. But now that it's April, let's look at what all of the upsets have left us with.

Saturday's Final Four—which doesn't have any No. 1 or No. 2 seeds, and therefore none of the teams that dominated the rankings and the standings this season—has the worst combined regular-season conference winning percentage (62.9%) in the history of the tournament.

To illustrate how crazy the 2011 NCAA basketball tournament has been, The Wall Street Journal created a similarly upset-laden college-football playoff. We filled out the bracket by matching each basketball team with their equivalent football team—based on the final computer rankings from the 2010 college-football season. (We left out play-in games for simplicity's sake.) We then played out the tournament in the exact same manner that the basketball tournament has gone.

Undeniably, the journey to this point has been thrilling. Eleventh-seeded Virginia Commonwealth, whom many experts believed didn't belong in the tournament, beat five teams from five major conferences to get here. Butler made it back for a second straight year, surviving three nail-biter finishes and the loss of last season's star, Gordon Hayward, to the NBA. Kentucky and Connecticut continued late-season surges to get to Houston.It's practically sacrilege to criticize the fundamental design of the NCAA tournament, whose brackets, filled with small schools from scrappy conferences, are universally lauded. But now that the upsets have gone on ad infinitum, be honest: Are you clearing your schedule to watch Butler battle VCU?

When it comes to college football, there's no end to the constant hollering for a playoff system to replace the BCS. But it might be that college football's postseason—though flawed, detested and possibly corrupt—offers something of value that the NCAA basketball tournament often doesn't: a final slate of games that features the best overall teams playing one another (in bowl games) for all the marbles.

To illustrate how zany this year's NCAA tournament has been, and to show what such a tournament would look like if it happened in college football, the Journal has created the world's first 64-team basketball to football "conversion bracket."

To do this, we took the list of overall seeds for this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament and laid it next to the final regular-season BCS college-football standings (the ones that help determine which teams go to which bowls).

We then went through this year's NCAA tournament bracket and replaced every basketball team, by rank, with its corresponding football team. (In other words, Ohio State's basketball team, the No. 1 overall seed this year, was replaced by Auburn, whose football team ranked No. 1 in the BCS standings after the regular season. Kansas, the No. 2 basketball team, was replaced by No. 2 Oregon, and so on.)

Once the bracket was full, we "played" the games just as they've happened so far in the NCAA tournament to create our own "football final four."

The results don't exactly look like must-see TV. In one football final-four game, Northern Illinois (Butler's equivalent) would meet Air Force (our VCU doppelganger). In the other game, Kentucky's stand-in, Oklahoma State, would take on Connecticut's correlate, Virginia Tech.

Beyond producing matchups that only the most hard-core fan would want to watch, the exercise exposed another downside of tournaments: that the most-deserving teams, the ones that had the best seasons, often don't get anywhere near the championship— and this can affect the quality of the final games.

Before this year, the two Final Fours that had the worst combined seed totals in the modern era came in 2000 and 2006. The 2000 version featured Michigan State, Florida, Wisconsin and North Carolina and didn't have a single game decided by fewer than 12 points. Its contribution to basketball history was a first half between the Spartans and Badgers in which the teams scored a combined 36 points.

In the 2006 Final Four, George Mason—that year's underdog sensation—was blown out by Florida while UCLA thumped LSU.

Let's be honest: this year's Final Four could be one for the ages if Butler or VCU wins it all. But at the risk of ruining your Final Four appetite, is the basketball equivalent of Northern Illinois vs. Oklahoma State what the people want to see?

Go Falcons

[LockheedFix]

While I think this article is pretty interesting, it is fundamentally flawed. Massive upsets like the ones they routinely have in the NCAA Basketball tournament, and during the regular season in general, are much less common in football. While you may see the occasional Appalachian State beating Michigan (haha, that still cracks me up!) the odds of seeing, say, Air Force beat Florida St., Boise St., Florida and Oregon would be astrnomical.

[Breckey]

One can hope can't he?

[AEWingsMN]

well, then in the same thinking as the article, why even have bowl games... lets just wrap it up at the end of the season and thank everyone for playing because the champ has already been crowned.

but i don't think anyone is actually asking for a 64 team tournament. If it was an 4 or 8 team tournament, there wouldn't be any chance of AF beating Florida and Florida St (that's just awesome btw), because they'd never make it into the top 8. Any week in the NCAA #8 has a legit chance of beating #1, and all of those teams are top notch schools. But a tournament also ensures that teams can't go undefeated and not be given a proper chance to prove their worth.

[Herk Driver]

If it was an 4 or 8 team tournament, there wouldn't be any chance of AF beating Florida and Florida St (that's just awesome btw), because they'd never make it into the top 8. Any week in the NCAA #8 has a legit chance of beating #1, and all of those teams are top notch schools. But a tournament also ensures that teams can't go undefeated and not be given a proper chance to prove their worth.

Really?

[AEWingsMN]

Let me clarify, cuz I wrote that poorly. What I meant was in "NCAA Football", the difference in caliber between #8 and #1 is very small. Not saying it isn't in Basketball, but that's why basketball has a tournament.

The point of an 8 team format to me would be that it's a nice round tournament number in which you'd also have enough teams in there to nearly guarantee that anyone who would be able to stake any claim at being the #1 team on any given year would have be included. Any undefeated or 1 loss teams would typically make it. And if you were on the outside looking in (#9, #10), and didn't make the 8 team tournament, you probably weren't really staking a claim for the top spot. Still a really good team, but not good enough to actually be able to claim they should be ranked #1.

And the other half of the statement you highlighted, I was saying I don't think the Air Force has been a top 8 caliber team anytime recently.

[SurelySerious]

And the other half of the statement you highlighted, I was saying I don't think the Air Force has been a top 8 caliber team anytime recently.

Recent is relative. If you're Rainman and the 1985 season when they were 12-1, beat Texas in the bowl game and finished #5 is recent, then they are a high caliber team. Or if you are Oklahoma last year and AF nearly beat you, they're a good team.

[Herk Driver]

Let me clarify, cuz I wrote that poorly. What I meant was in "NCAA Football", the difference in caliber between #8 and #1 is very small. Not saying it isn't in Basketball, but that's why basketball has a tournament.

The point of an 8 team format to me would be that it's a nice round tournament number in which you'd also have enough teams in there to nearly guarantee that anyone who would be able to stake any claim at being the #1 team on any given year would have be included. Any undefeated or 1 loss teams would typically make it. And if you were on the outside looking in (#9, #10), and didn't make the 8 team tournament, you probably weren't really staking a claim for the top spot. Still a really good team, but not good enough to actually be able to claim they should be ranked #1.

And the other half of the statement you highlighted, I was saying I don't think the Air Force has been a top 8 caliber team anytime recently.

SurelySerious already beat me to it, but this is all so 1985. Never say never.

[HercDude]

Seriously? Someone who writes for the Wall Street Journal doesn't see the difference between NCAA basketball and football?

BTW you'd have to make it a 16 team playoff. That's the only way you could get every conference champion in. An 8 team playoff leaves room for a 12-0 darkhorse to get hosed by the BCS, out of the playoffs, and thus negate the only reason to have a playoff.

[GKinnear]

Really, you'd let the conf. champ from the Sun Belt in the dance? Potentially that could be Middle Tenn State or U of Arkansas Little Rock (both of which could be beaten by a quality Div II school). And what about ND? Would they get an automatic bid due to their independence or would they have to be seeded high enough by the AP/Coaches Poll?

I'm more a fan of a 12 team format. The top 4 seeds get a bye-week in the first round. It allows for all the conf champs, if desired, and the bottom four get a game a little closer to their competition level.

[AZwildcat]

I like the 12 or 16 team format, any more is just silly. I always thought they could have some sort of NIT equivalent so you could still have more postseason "toliet bowl" games which = more money. I haven't done a lot of searching but I wonder if anyone has done a cost analysis of how much money the BCS currently draws in vs. what a playoff system would bring.

[HercDude]

Really, you'd let the conf. champ from the Sun Belt in the dance?

Of course. Are you going to tell me that UConn (Big East Champ) had a shot at beating Auburn this year but UCF (C-USA Champs) did not? The "Automatic Qualifier" rule is retarded, because individual conferences are not guarenteed to remain the same strength. When the BCS went in to effect in 1998 the Big East still had Miami, Va Tech, and Boston College which made them a decent conference. Who is to say that in 7 years the Big 12 isn't going to be a joke just like the Big East?

So since you eliminate that rule you have to give each champ a shot at the title. That also leaves room for 5 wildcards, so a one loss team that had a great year may still win it all. If that was the case no team would be undefeted at the end of the season, so no chance of a split champion.

As for the independents, I'd say they get to go if the are undefeated or are in the top 16 of the final BCS standings (or whatever would substitute for BCS standings).

[GKinnear]

The "Automatic Qualifier" rule is retarded...

Couldn't agree more. To clarify my earlier point, I'd let in the top 12 ranked teams into the post season. That would let in a darkhorse, like Boise St, who lost one game to still compete for a title.