As the college football bowl season meanders to its conclusion next Monday night in New Orleans, most sports fans are figuring that the winner of the game between LSU and Alabama will determine which team is the undisputed champion. But they may be wrong.
If the Associated Press (AP) is to be believed, there’s a real chance the voters in its poll could opt to split the title, an eventuality that could lead to an even greater clamor to scrap the bowl system and replace it with a playoff. The reason: While USA Today is contractually obligated to name the winner of the BCS Championship Game as its national champion, the voters in the AP poll can vote for whichever team they please.
The AP sent the 60 reporters who vote in its poll the following set of questions:
- Do you expect to vote the winner of the Alabama-LSU game No. 1?
- Would you consider voting LSU No. 1 even if it lost?
- Would you consider voting another team — i.e., Oklahoma State or Stanford — No. 1?
Of the 44 who responded, only 11 said that they would vote for Alabama outright if they beat LSU. Meanwhile, three other voters made it perfectly clear that if Alabama won, but didn’t decisively defeat LSU, then the Tigers could very well get their vote.
After thinking it through, it seems clear that those voters have more than a leg to stand on. After all, LSU traveled to Tuscaloosa and defeated Alabama on the road earlier this season, a 9-6 overtime victory that put most of the nation — outside of Tuscaloosa and Baton Rouge — to sleep. If the rematch is just as close but Alabama prevails, why should a victory in a neutral site game count as much, even if it is played in Louisiana?
As Joe Giglio of The News and Observer told the AP:
“Unless Alabama absolutely dominates LSU and leaves no doubt that it is a superior football team, I will be voting for LSU,” he said. “I am voting for the No. 1 team in the country for the 2011 season, not the result of one game. In the case of this rematch presented by the BCS, you have to consider the scope of the entire season, not the timing of one loss.”
Again, it’s hard to argue with this sort of reasoning, especially as many defenders of the current system like to boast that it ought to stay in place because of the importance it places on the regular season — a claim that’s been looking shakier and shakier since LSU and Alabama finished 1-2 in the final poll.
As for me, I’ll be tickled if a split title is the result of next Monday’s game. Thanks to the BCS, the college bowl season has become an interminable parade of bowls, one pretty much like the other, especially when networks are forced to televise games populated by thousands of empty seats.
Faced with plummeting attendance, an 8-team playoff would be just the tonic to revive interest in postseason college football. Best of all, you wouldn’t have to junk the current system, as most of it could continue to function alongside a playoff the same way the NIT survives alongside the NCAA basketball tournament.
So if any AP voters are reading this, by all means be sure to vote for LSU if the Tigers drop a close one to the Crimson Tide next week. The only thing we have to lose is the hated BCS. Excuse me if I don’t shed any tears at that prospect.
Eric McErlain blogs at Off Wing Opinion, a Forbes “Best of the Web” winner. In 2006 he wrote a “bloggers bill of rights” to help integrate bloggers into the Washington Capitals’ press box. Eric has also written for Deadspin, NBC Sports and the Sporting News, and covers sports television for The TV News. Follow Eric on Twitter.