LSU-Alabama: The "Correct" Decision

Whether we like to admit it or not, the "best" team or player does not always win the championship, no matter what the sport is. This is readily apparent in individual sports, but there is an orthodoxy in team competition that whoever wins the final game (or series) is, therefore, the best. When Y.E. Yang defeats Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship or Jo-Wilfried Tsonga knocks off Roger Federer at Wimbledon, this is in no way suggests that the victors are the superior athletes.

This, of course, is not a completely fair argument. We have a much larger historical perspective to work with when we discuss Woods and Federer, so these aforementioned losses are more clearly aberrations. College athletics, on the other hand, are constantly in flux. So many variables are at play that the quality of one year's team does not (necessarily) have any correlation with the quality of that team in the years preceding or following. Earlier this season, LSU defeated Alabama 9-6 in overtime. This game is a snapshot, fixed in time. We can draw no conclusions from it. Whereas we know from career productivity that Federer is a greater player than Tsonga, despite the loss, there is no analogue for the football game. It proves nothing, and the result could have just as easily gone the other way. From this perspective, the argument that LSU has "proven" themselves to be a better team than Alabama is meaningless. They have proven themselves to be better than Alabama no more than Iowa State "proved" they were better than Oklahoma State.

This leads into the second, more compelling argument against Alabama's invitation to the championship game: Oklahoma State "deserves" the opportunity to play for the national championship. Undoubtedly they do. They were the only one-loss conference champion! But a conference championship proves nothing more than a head-to-head match-up. It is determined by factors every bit as arbitrary as those that go into the BCS system. If by some accident of history Alabama had been assigned to the Eastern division of the SEC, then they would have had their chance for a rematch in the SEC championship game, at which point, had they won, they could have "rightfully" claimed their place in the BCS final. Are we to argue that Georgia was more deserving of a chance at the SEC title than Alabama was, based on their geographic setting? Of course not, and yet no one cried foul about it.

This is not an argument against Oklahoma State's credibility as an opponent for LSU. It is not an argument against Stanford, or Oregon, or Boise State, or any of the other schools that were talked about as national championship hopefuls this season. It is an acknowledgment that the NCAA uses an arbitrary system to judge teams based on their performances (which prove nothing) in arbitrary classification systems known as conferences and divisions.

Arguments can be made for and against any of these teams. Alabama didn't win its own division and already lost to LSU. Oklahoma State lost to a mediocre Iowa State team, and they didn't even have to play a conference championship game. Stanford, like Alabama, didn't even win its division. Like Alabama, Oregon has already lost to LSU this season. Boise State didn't win its own (weak) conference. Wisconsin lost its two games on last-minute heave-hos to the end zone; had those fallen to the ground, they would be in the title game. Would that have made them any better as a team? Would it have made them more deserving?

Alabama is not more deserving of this game than anybody else. But neither are they less deserving. For better or worse, the BCS is the system that is in place, and according to the mysterious whims of voters and the machinations of the computer rankings, they have been deemed to be the "best" fit for the championship game.

The only genuine argument for Oklahoma State (or any of the others) is an aesthetic one, one that is based not on any appeal to a mythical objectivity. The statement "I would prefer to see LSU vs. Oklahoma State" is valid; to say "Oklahoma State is more deserving than Alabama" is not. The truth of the matter is that I could have written this same post had things turned out the other way and Oklahoma State had been in the #2 spot. The debate would have been just as strong, just in the other direction.

This supposed weakness of college football, I claim, is its hidden strength. It dares, out of stubbornness or genius (they might be the same), to be different. And in the end, I would have watched the game just as surely no matter who was in it, because really, the teams don't matter. Five years from now, we will remember who won the game, but just as importantly, we will remember the debate. And the question "what if?" will have just as much truth value as the game itself, which, after all, proves nothing.