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Tucker: Playoffs beat perceptions

Submitted by SHNS on Thu, 11/13/2008 - 14:43

One point, in the wind, on the road ...Heartbroken Penn Staters cried as their dream season faded into a cold, wet Iowa night. Their hopes for perfection and one more national championship for legendary coach Joe Paterno buried on the field in Kinnick Stadium: Iowa 24, Penn State 23.As Nittany Lion players and fans agonized over the crushing defeat, their 81-year-old leader tried to lift their spirits."We've got to keep our heads up," Paterno said during his post-game press conference. "We can still have a heckuva year... Maybe go home and cry on Sunday, but Monday we've got to come out and be ready to go to work."JoePa said his team's "balloon isn't busted. If we win the next two games (at home against Indiana and No. 15 Michigan State), we can have an opportunity to go to a good bowl... That's a pretty good year."True, most years Penn Staters would covet a Rose Bowl matchup, especially with USC. The Trojans could be ranked as high as No. 3 when the BCS dust settles. But this season was supposed to have a magical ending -- in Miami for the BCS national title game.Maybe their balloon isn't busted, but it's pretty darn deflated.If you've got your heart set on playing for a national title, and you know you've got the better team, you've got to find a way to beat Iowa. Losing is devastating. Especially if you're in the Big Ten, a league perceived by many as a weak sister.That's the biggest problem with college football at its top tier. In great part, it's left to perception. And hindsight, let alone foresight, isn't even 20/20 in this sport.Florida (8-1) is ranked third in the Associated Press poll and fourth in the BCS standings, four spots above No. 8 Penn State (9-1). The Gators lost at home to 5-4 Mississippi, 31-30. The Nittany Lions lost on the road by a point to 6-4 Iowa, whose four losses were by a total of 12 points.Logic would seem to say Florida's home loss should have been more costly in the polls, but Penn State has paid the bigger price. Why? Maybe -- at least in regard to the polls' perception -- Ohio State's embarrassing losses to Florida and LSU in the last two BCS title games influenced the human equation.Florida can thank the Harris and USA Today polls for its spot in the standings. Both ranked the Gators third, while the computers ranked them fifth, tied with Oklahoma.Evidently, polls and computers find a way to get over some losses.USC lost to (6-3) Oregon State, 27-21, on Sept. 25 in Corvallis. Tough loss, somewhat comparable to the Nittany Lions' defeat in Iowa City. And there's another relative comparison: Penn State drubbed Oregon State, 45-14, on Sept. 6 in State College.Hmmm. USC is ranked sixth in the polls. And talk about a weak sister conference! Southern Cal is the only Pac-10 team ranked in the BCS standings. The Big Ten has three: No. 8 PSU, No. 11 Ohio State and No. 15 Michigan State.All that aside, if it's about perception, in the minds of many, USC is the best team in the land right now. The Trojans' defense has yielded only one touchdown in the last 23 quarters. They've won their last six games by a combined score of 231-23.But the BCS isn't about margin of victory. It's about wins and losses. And those last six USC opponents ... They're a combined 23-33.Regardless, in an eight-team playoff, you'd have to like USC's chances of winning it all. Not to mention Texas' chances.The Longhorns have chalked up three wins over teams in the Top 13 of the BCS standings: No. 5 Oklahoma, No. 12 Missouri and No. 13 Oklahoma State.Not even No. 1 Alabama or No. 2 Texas Tech -- which beat Texas, 39-33 -- has that bragging right. Not yet anyway. If the Red Raiders survive No. 5 Oklahoma in Norman Nov. 22 -- a big IF -- that story would change.As for Alabama, it's beaten two teams in the BCS standings: No. 10 Georgia and No. 20 LSU. Alabama won't play another ranked opponent until it meets Florida in the SEC championship game Dec. 6.Nobody can say with certainty that any one of the current Top 8 teams couldn't win an eight-team playoff. Yet we have a system that tells us which two teams deserve to play for the title based on poll and computer perceptions that are about as horribly skewed as Al-Qaeda's perception of America as a paper tiger.It's high time we trashed the BCS and let the championship be decided on the field of play, instead of by hypothetical human and computer conjecture. That's just wrong.(Contact John Tucker at jtucker@unionleader.com) (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)