Does SEC Champ = BCS Championship Game?

[Tiger Wench]

I like reading Fiu's opinion on things.  Truly an opinion, but well thought out and supported by facts.

So - let's discuss...

SEC Title = BCS Title?

By Pete Fiutak 

I was just in Las Vegas for the first weekend of March Madness and perused the early betting lines and odds to win the 2011 BCS Championship game (for the 2010 season). In today’s day and age, for good (at least for SEC fans) and bad (for everyone else), it was easy to tear the sheet in half the long way and forget about most of the teams on the list. (No, Stanford and Connecticut aren’t going to win the whole ball of wax.) And it was just as easy to tear the sheet the other way and eliminate another boatload of teams like Missouri and Wisconsin.

Oh sure, I sort of like Nebraska at 14-to-1 considering the improved offense, strong defense, and favorable schedule, but this is about guessing who’s going to win the national championship. That means figuring out who’s going to win the SEC title.

It really has been an impressive run for the SEC winning the last four national championships and five of the last seven, and Auburn might have made it six in eight years had it gotten a break in 2004, but it hasn’t been without a few breaks.

Alabama knocked out Colt McCoy in last year’s championship, but that’s part of football and has to be let go of by those trying to diminish the accomplishments of a great team. 2007 LSU needed a slew of wacky things to happen so it could play for the title after losing two games; 2006 Florida got its big break when USC gagged away a 13-9 loss to UCLA; and 2003 LSU got on the right side of the debate going from third to second in the BCS rankings thanks to an Oklahoma Big 12 title loss and then catching a bigger break playing the Sooners instead of USC. But the SEC put the ball in the hole once it got the chance in each of the title games, no matter how the teams got there, and after so much success, the big spring question is whether or not the 2010 national championship will be settled in the Georgia Dome on December 4th instead of in Glendale, Arizona, on January 10th.

And that could lead to the big, ugly, elephant-in-the-room theoretical debate that the BCS has avoided so far. What happens when there’s a one-loss SEC team and two unbeaten teams from BCS leagues?

Considering what the SEC has done in national championships, would anyone pick anyone but the SEC champion in the title game? Remember, of the five recent national champions from the SEC, only Alabama of last year was able to get through clean, and if you hate the BCS and are looking for a big-time brouhaha, this could be your year.

Say, for argument’s sake, that Florida loses at Alabama in the regular season, wins every other game, and then beats the Tide in a rematch in the SEC Championship. In this hypothetical situation, Ohio State and Texas finish unbeaten. There would be little question that the Buckeyes and Longhorns would play for the national title, considering how big those two are, but would everyone truly believe that the best two teams were playing for the championship?

To take this a step further and to what might have been, say Terrence Cody doesn’t block a Tennessee field goal attempt in the final seconds of last year’s 12-10 Tide win, Alabama loses, but goes on to stomp Florida in the SEC Championship game. Meanwhile, Texas and Cincinnati both go undefeated. Would the Bearcats have gone to Pasadena? Maybe, and no one would’ve been thrilled with that.

Now the stakes are higher than ever for the SEC because of all the recent success, and the pressure is even greater for Alabama, Florida, and LSU, the three projected top teams in the league. The SEC has also put pressure on the entire system with a case of champion-until-proven-otherwise issue, and unless something happens from out of left field, like a two-loss SEC champion and two juggernaut seasons from big name programs like Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State or USC, it’s the SEC’s BCS world and everyone else is standing in line.

[Townhallsavoy]

One aspect of college football that I hate is the concept of "ranking" the teams in order to determine who is the best.  For some odd reason, we've allowed #1 and #2 to be considered the only two teams worthy of being in the discussion of who competes for the championship. 

Fiutak's point is valid.  The SEC champion is worthy of winning the national championship every year.  I don't care if it's a two loss SEC champion while Ohio State and Texas are both undefeated.  The SEC team has competed in the toughest conference and proven to be the best team in that conference.  However, we all know that the voters wouldn't allow that two loss SEC team to get into the championship talk, which is why ranking teams based on personal opinions doesn't work. 

There's so much stock in going undefeated that it clouds the real goal of competing in sports - to put together a team that can perform at a high level in the regular season and earn its way into the postseason.  Every sport and every league works this way except for college football.  In the NFL, you navigate through the regular season trying to earn a spot in the playoffs.  Same in the NBA and MLB.  In college basketball, you navigate through the regular season trying to earn a spot in the tournament of 64 teams.   

Once a team gets into the postseason, they begin trying to knock off the other teams in hope of being crowned the champion of the season. 

In college football, on the other hand, you just navigate through the season trying to go undefeated (or have the best overall record).  Once you go undefeated, you hope you have the reputation of being one of the best two teams.  Then you are awarded the chance to compete for the championship. 

In my opinion, when there are 120 teams competing in the same division (about 70 teams in BCS conferences), you are never going to narrow down the field to simply two teams that are worthy of being crowned champion.  The SEC champion is a prime example - no matter how many losses the SEC champ has, they are still worthy of winning the national championship.

This is why a playoff is needed.