A few weeks back, sports radio host Dan Patrick interviewed Bill Hancock, the new Executive Director of the Bowl Championship Series. Although some time has passed, Playoff PAC thinks this interview is worth revisiting. Mr. Hancock does his best to defend the status quo, but his arguments do not withstand even the mildest scrutiny. As we’ve said previously, Playoff PAC believes that the more the BCS is forced to talk about their system, the more apparent the need for change will be.
Playoff PAC was unable to locate a reliable transcript elsewhere on the InterWebs, so we’ve provided three key excerpts below for your review. Given that Mr. Patrick does a decent job of grilling Mr. Hancock on his own, Playoff PAC provides only minimal commentary. You can listen to the full, entertaining interview here.
EXCERPT 1
Mr. Patrick leads off his interview with an intriguing question about a “hybrid” playoff-bowl system.
Patrick: “Bill, we can keep the bowls. Why don’t we have 4 bowls, or 3 bowls, or 2 bowls that actually matter with deciding who’s the best team in college football? You keep the experience, but now you have something that will … take part of March Madness and put it into college football.”
Hancock: “You know, I hear ya, Dan. But the fact is the bowl experience would not be the same… I’ll give you a great example. We were in Miami and a Virginia Tech player injured his ankle riding a jet ski. And, at the same time we were there, an NFL team came in to play a playoff game. They arrived on Saturday night, got there about 8 o’clock, had their dinner, got up the next morning, had the pre-game meal, went to the stadium, and then flew home. Here we’ve got college students at the beach for a week riding jet skis in our bowl system. On the other hand, we’ve got these NFL athletes who were there for 11 hours, playing the game and going home. Our experience for the young people that play college football is much better, and it’s a lifetime experience.
Aah, jet skis. A glorious mode of transportation. Before listening to this interview, Playoff PAC had no idea that jet skis could also double as a distraction device. Mr. Hancock tells an entertaining yarn about injured jet skiers and an NFL team’s whirlwind playoff visit, but completely dances around Mr. Patrick’s question.
Why? Among the many false choices propagated by BCS officials, they love to imply that college football’s stakeholders must pick playoffs or bowls. But this is not true. Mainstream playoff proposals would augment the bowl system by simply adding national championship implications to bowls that are only big-money exhibition games under the BCS system. Lower-tier bowls would not be affected either. As Mr. Patrick stated later in the interview, “If you want to have these smaller bowls, they still factor in—the kids got to go to a bowl game.” These lower-tier games are a reward to student-athletes, a travel opportunity for fans, and an economic boon to hosting communities. Individuals and institutions care about these games under the BCS scheme, despite the fact that the contesting teams are not among the top 2 that play for the national title. It’s hard to believe they’d suddenly stop caring if their teams weren’t among the top 8, 10, 12, or 16 contesting for the championship. A playoff wouldn’t take anything away from these lower-tier bowls.
Mr. Hancock couldn’t tell us why college football can’t have a “hybrid” system of playoffs and bowls. That’s why he didn’t answer Mr. Patrick’s question. That’s why he resorted to jet skis. (As an aside, Playoff PAC speculates that last year’s Boise State, Penn State, Texas, USC, Texas Tech, Alabama, and Utah teams all would’ve sacrificed a week-long jet skiing opportunity to get a crack at the title. But perhaps we’re wrong.)
EXCERPT 2
The entire interview was informative, but the following might be the most revealing of all exchanges with Mr. Hancock.
Patrick: “Let’s say Cincinnati goes undefeated. What do you say to the Bearcats? What do you say to Brian Kelly that they don’t get a chance to play for the national title?
Hancock: “… I was director of the Final Four for 13 years, and I would say to Cincinnati the same thing that I always said to coaches who were left out of the Tournament or got a bad seed in the Tournament—‘You guys had a great season and you’re to be congratulated for it.’”
Patrick: “Yeah, but those teams aren’t undefeated, Bill. If a team goes undefeated, and you don’t play for the national title, it’s nice that you say ‘you had a great season.’ But, how do you say that to Cincinnati—‘Hey, nice season guys”?
Hancock: “That’s what you say. You guys had a great season. Yeah, they’re undefeated. But you know, right now, what are there? Six of them that are undefeated? So, not everybody can play.”
Patrick: “But at what point do you say, ‘Everyone deserves an opportunity to play for the national title’?”
Who needs a little crystal football when you can get a verbal slap on the back from Bill Hancock? That’s not exactly a worthy consolation prize. If Cincinnati prevails this Saturday against Pittsburgh, it will have beaten 3 teams ranked in this week’s AP Top 25. That’s one more than either Florida or Texas. But the Bearcats are just supposed to be satisfied with “You guys had a great season and you’re to be congratulated for it.” Is there any doubt that the BCS is a fatally flawed system?
EXCERPT 3
In the excerpt below, Mr. Patrick probes Mr. Hancock about how he would feel if his team went undefeated, but was arbitrarily excluded from any opportunity to play for the national championship.
Patrick: “Now, you went to Oklahoma, right?”
Hancock: “I did.”
Patrick: “Let’s say Oklahoma went undefeated but didn’t play for the national title. You’d be okay with that because they’d go to a nice bowl game and a nice consolation prize for Bob Stoops.”
[Editorial Comment: 5 seconds of silence elapse here—literally.]
Hancock: “Is that a question?”
Patrick: “Yeah, you’d be fine with that, right?”
Hancock: “You have to remember that every year there’s gonna be controversy. Every year in the NCAA tournament we had controversy.”
Patrick: “No, but you’re an Oklahoma fan!”
Hancock: “I would not be fine with that. You remember the year that Auburn got left out. Every year, somebody is not going to make it. Every year in the basketball tournament, somebody doesn’t make it.”
Patrick: “Yeah, but if you don’t make it in a field of 65, then you know what? You have yourself to blame there. And not some team that’s undefeated is not going to make the tournament. So, that’s the point. If you have Cincinnati, you have Boise State, or TCU, and they go undefeated and don’t play for the national title, to me that’s a flawed system. And you know that’s a flawed system, Bill.”
One of the BCS’s favorite arguments as of late is that a playoff would be just as controversial as the BCS. They state repeatedly that the selection process would certainly exclude some teams that are “on the bubble.”
We’ll release more material to refute this BCS argument shortly. For now, it suffices to note that Playoff PAC is not saying that a playoff would be perfect. We’re saying that it would be progress. Yes, a playoff selection process would engender controversy in some contexts. There would be some argument over who receives the final spot in an 8-, 10-, 12-, or 16-team playoff. But the BCS cannot credibly claim that this flaw is even comparable to the warts of the status quo.
A playoff wouldn’t leave three undefeated teams out in the cold, as the BCS is poised to do this year. A playoff also wouldn’t arbitrarily crown a champion, as it did after the 2008 season. The 2008 Florida Gators were a fantastic team, but their on-the-field achievements were arguably exceeded or matched by at least Utah, Texas, and USC. With a playoff system, you would create a world where the eventual champion would accomplish something unmatched by any other team—victories in consecutive weeks over the nation’s finest football teams.
Perfect should never be the enemy of progress. And a playoff—even with limited controversy over “bubble teams”—would be far superior to a status quo that keeps undefeated teams from proving their mettle on the field.