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Originally posted on FishDuck.com : fishduck.com/2012/06/the-american -way-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-a-c hampionship/ Reported by Nathan Roholt on June 11, 2012 in FishWrap , FishWrap Archive 1 Comment " YOU HAVE TO WIN SOMETHING, AND THAT"S A CONCEPT THAT"SACCEPTED BY FANS AND, GIVEN THE WAY COLLEGE FOOTBALL IS STRUCTURED,FAIR. " - Larry Scott, Pac-12 commissioner We are getting a playoff, or at least that is what thecommissioners of college football announced this off-season.Despite not having any knowledge of its structure related to how aplayoff would work, or how teams would be selected, or how themoney would be distributed; the word "playoff" alonemarked enough progress to make most college football fans rejoice.None of those questions have yet been answered, but the first topicis already up for debate – if there is a four-team playoff,how should those teams be selected? At present, the Pac-12 and Big Ten support a model that wouldrequire the four teams to be conference champions. The SEC and theBig 12 support a model where the four "best" teams,independent of accomplishment or conference, are selected, whichthanks to the influence from the human polls, overwhelmingly favorsthe possibility of those conferences getting two teams into thetournament. As mere coincidence, they are also the only twoconferences to have had a non-champion from their league play inthe championship game. " THE FOUR BEST TEAMS HAVE TO BE THE FOUR BEST TEAMS. THAT"STHE AMERICAN WAY ." - Oliver Luck, West Virginia Athletic Director As the athletic director of the Big 12"s newest member (WestVirginia), it would be logical that Oliver Luck"s stance inthe above quote would mirror that of his new conference. Anargument could be made that Luck"s bias might have somethingto do with the fact that his son"s teams would have beeneligible for a playoff in back-to-back years had a playoff with atop-four team selection model been in place, despite not having wonits conference in either season. Yet, with all due respect to Mr. Luck"s patrioticinterpretations of college football, his stance on how to handle afour-team playoff could not be more incorrect. Selecting the fourbest teams, independent of their achievements, wouldn"t be"the American Way" in the classic definition, butrather a continuation of the already omnipresent plutocracy thatcurrently exists throughout college football. Instead, there is asystem that gets as close as any system can within the confines ofa four-team playoff: the "conference champions" model. As FBS football conferences are currently structured, all elevenconferences currently play either a round-robin schedule, or aconference championship game. In order to play in a conferencechampionship game, they have to have the best record in theirdivision (or have the best team in the division be on probation,see: UCLA 2011 ) or to put it even more simply, the division winner is the teamthat beats more teams amongst their shared opponents than anyoneelse. Let"s not forget the direct cause of all this playoff talk inthe first place. Last December, the BCS decided that Alabama, ateam who had failed to win its own conference, let alone its own division , was more deserving of a chance in the title game than aconference champion in Oklahoma State. It was determined that Oklahoma State"s loss was worse,ignoring any consideration that it was a late-season road game on ashortened week that was played less than twelve hours after one ofthe worst tragedies in school history, the exact kind ofcircumstance the consideration of human polls were intended fororiginally, and Alabama was given a chance to play LSU again in thetitle game. Fans responded to the rematch accordingly, likely under theassumption they knew how it would end having already seen anLSU-Alabama game a mere two months earlier, resulting in the lowestratings ever for a BCS title game. The previous record for worstratings for a title game had been Miami-Nebraska in 2002, which wasalso the last time a team that failed to win its conference endedup playing in the championship game. This obviously shows the greatest flaw of a system thatdoesn"t reward conference champions: fans don"t want towatch a team have a chance to be declared the best in the nation,when they already know they weren"t even the best in theirown conference. The BCS will say that Alabama winning the NationalChampionship Game is a vindication of the selection; that they werethe best team all along. While Alabama may formally be declared thechampions, they are at best co-champions. Their season series withLSU is tied 1-1, and there never will be a rubber match. That tiegoes against the origins of this playoff in the first place, whichwas to create a clear-cut champion, not to use the structure to create a bigger mess. Additionally, had the "four best teams" model been inplace this season, Stanford, not Oregon, which was the team thatbeat them by 23 on their home turf, would have competed in aplayoff. This is a problem not lost on Larry Scott, either: " Our conference would not have been comfortable, had there been aplayoff system last year, accepting that Stanford is in the playoffand not Oregon. Stanford was ranked fourth and Oregon was rankedfifth. Oregon beat Stanford, had to play an extra game, wasconference champion and subsequently Oregon went on to win the RoseBowl. That"s crystal clear to us. If Oregon wins ourchampionship, they deserve to be in a playoff ahead of one of ourother teams ." Let"s assume the "four best teams" model was inplace this season. Now imagine if Oregon were to defeat USC onNovember 3rd, only to lose the Pac-12 Championship on November30th, but finish the season ranked in the top four. Would it beproper to complain that Oregon was being left out of a playoffwhile a lower-ranked conference champion made it in? Of course not!Oregon would have had a chance to earn its spot in the playoff, andwould have failed to do so. Maybe it is years of drinking what Chip Kelly Chip Kelly is pouring, but the mentality for many Oregon fans regarding thisis intertwined with the "Win The Day" philosophy, worryabout what you can control, not about outside influences. The conference champion system isn"t perfect. In 2009, therewere five undefeated teams (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, Boise State, andTCU), and in a four-team playoff, one of those teams would havebeen left out. But it is a system far more conducive to earning achampionship than one where the "top four teams" areselected solely based on assumption and conjecture rather thanmerit. People can make excuses for why the "top fourteams" belong, but the fact remains that in the history ofthe BCS, every single top-four at-large team that failed to win itsconference did so because it lost to the eventual conferencechampion. They failed to prove it on the field. For years, the argument made by those who opposed a playoff wasthat it would minimize the value of the regular season; thatcollege football was unique because every game mattered. To have amodel where the best four teams are selected independent ofachievement renders the games irrelevant. It doesn"t matterif a team proves they are one of the best teams in the country; itonly matters if those who choose the playoff teams think they are. The way to a championship has to be earned, not given.That is the American Way. 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