Just for Sport

Note: This post originally appeared on February 8, 2005.

This afternoon I got back to my room from class and turned on one of my favorite TV shows, Pardon the Interruption. If you don’t know (and you should), PTI is a genius show where two guys, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser, sit around and argue about sports. This is truly near and dear to my heart. Anyway, one of the issues today (as it is many days) was the national poll for college basketball. There are currently two undefeated teams in NCAA basketball, The University of Illinois and Boston College. The problem is that while Illinois is ranked #1 and has been for a while, BC is still ranked #4, behind two seemingly better, but not undefeated teams. Of course, anybody who follows sports at all knows that there has been a whole lot of trouble for college football concerning the national poll and the BCS system. Because basketball has a tournament, it’s not a big deal to a lot of people, but I think the poll in basketball is just as flawed and needs attention.

I have a simple solution. And please don’t misunderstand me, I am not taking up Boston College’s cause. I don’t give a rip about them. As a matter of fact, they are tied with Notre Dame 20-20 as I write this. No, this is a matter of principle. Allow me, if you will, to set up a hypothetical situation for you. A certain team in the NFL, say, the Browns, goes 9-7 in a given year. They never won by more than 10 points, and they only beat a winning team twice. All of their losses are blow-outs. Then take another team, say the Bengals, goes 8-8 in the same season. They beat the Browns twice, but a few heartbreaking losses and a hard schedule gave them the .500 record. The question is, who goes to the play-offs first? The answer is always the Browns. It doesn’t matter how much the sportswriters like the coach; it doesn’t matter if the quarterback is cordial to the media; it doesn’t even matter about the strength of schedule. 9-7 always beats 8-8. That’s why all college teams should play the same number of games, and rankings should be based on record. All undefeated teams go automatically to the top, followed by one-loss teams, etc. It’s really not that hard. Then, let the people vote on teams with the exact same record. Under my system, the current top 5 in NCAA basketball are as follows (with actual ranking in parentheses):

1. Illinois 23-0 (1)
2. Boston College 20-0 (4)
3. Kansas 18-1 (3)
4. Syracuse 21-2 (7)
5. North Carolina 19-2 (2)

As you can see, there is an apparent discrepancy. Under my system, University of the Pacific (18-2) would be way higher than the 24 they are now. Before you argue based on strength of schedule, let me remind about our humble little example. 9-7 always beats 8-8. Every time. Why? Because WE PLAY TO WIN THE GAME! It doesn’t matter how good you are if you can’t win games. North Carolina doesn’t deserve to be #2 if 2 teams have already beat them. As far as I’m concerned, there are at least two teams that are better than UNC, and that was proven on the court, not in some reporter’s notebook.