Poll Im-Position

October. It's the best the month of sports year. But while many sports fans will follow the season's bounty of on-field drama, a group of curmudgeons will start banging their tired drum. That's right, October is the official beginning of BCS-bashing season.

Humans don't like uncertainty, and that's usually a good thing. That preference helps us go from meeting to meeting and keeps us from losing our house keys. But when we try to bring order to outright chaos, our need for certainty and organization bogs us down.

And that's where the college football polls come in. Decades ago, before we could sate our need for intercollegiate pigskin on a Tuesday with high-def Sunbelt Conference action on a weekly basis, it made sense to poll college football experts about who was good. It made sense that people who followed the sports for a living, namely writers and coaches, would rank the country's best teams in the way a mechanic might rank the best cars he had seen or a music critic might rank the best concerts he had attended. But now it doesn't make as much sense.

Just as baseball has moved past the gospel of scouts and into a world ruled by advanced metrics, so too should our evaluation of college football teams. There are 10 dozen teams in the FBS; who in his right mind could reasonably complete a sound contrast of New Mexico State and Western Kentucky? So instead of asking a group of experts to pretend to know it all, I propose the following four steps to make the college football postseason right. And no, the word playoff is not contained in any of them. First, I'd...

1. Kill the "human" polls. In the BCS' years of infancy, the formula was far more complicated than it is now. Teams were awarded quality win points, strength of schedule was an implicit, if not explicit, variable, and other objective measures of performance were assigned quantitative values. But following a few years where the BCS dared to disagree with the pollsters, the lowest common denominator of conventional wisdom neutered the formula to merely reflect an index of the human polls with a splash of computer polls for garnish.

Want further evidence of the tyranny of conventional wisdom? AP voter Doug Lesmeries of the Plain Dealer has been called out nationally for his ballot, on which Lesmeries previously had Houston ranked in the top five in front of Florida. Lesmeries' unconventional rankings, which he based on, get this, what teams had actually accomplished on the field this season, weren't flamed because they were illogical or poorly defended. To the contrary, unlike many other voters, Lesmeries could backup his rankings with real results like "Houston won at Oklahoma State" and "Alabama (Lesmeries' No. 1) beat Virginia Tech on a neutral field." No, Lesmeries simply had the gall not to echo the consensus of the majority.

The polls have run their course. They had their place before the country could watch dozens of games every Saturday or access any statistic in seconds. It's time to end the farce of pretending coaches and writers can re-evaluate 120 teams in a meaningful hierarchy every week of the college football season. I know I couldn't. Instead, we need to make way for...

2. The rise of the machines. In many states, the high school football playoffs are populated and seeded based on formulas that credit teams for what they achieve on the field. It's that simple. For example, in Ohio, the state's athletic association uses a formula that awards points to teams for each win, indexed for the size of the opponent, the opponent's record, and the records of the opponent's opponents. And to the loser? Zero points.

Of course, as soon as anyone suggests putting the fate of college football in the hands of "computers," doomsday predictors cast visions of Terminator's Skynet crossed with The Matrix's Mr. Anderson. Let's dispel some of that angst.

Calling the formulas used to evaluate football teams "computer polls" is a misnomer. Each of those polls was devised by a sports-minded mathematician under an environment of painstaking statistical significance. Should we really be questioning their credibility when it seems like half of the coaches "voting" in their poll pass their ballots to an equipment manager? Would you feel better if we called them the "calculator polls" or the "abacus polls?"

Steve Spurrier always puts Duke No. 25 on his preseason ballot (when he has one) because they gave him his first head coaching job. Seriously. Do you still want to blame polls that draw from countless relevant variables, none of which is "did they hire me," just because you don't understand the math?

Of course, changing the way teams are ranked is only a start. We need to tweak the system a little to play up the "national" part of our national champion, so we will...

3. Weight non-conference games more heavily than conference games. There are two reasons why non-conference games are more important in deciding a national champ. First, we only get to see college football teams play 12 times before making postseason destination decisions. So while teams are handcuffed to their conference schedules, shouldn't we emphasize the portion of their schedules they elect to play? By weighting the point values for non-conference wins 25% heavier than conference games, schools are rewarded for their electives.

Secondly, non-conference games matter more from a national perspective because of the inherently more competitive nature of many conference matchups. Take for example Iowa's stranglehold this decade on its series with Penn State. When the Hawkeyes beat a top-10 Nittany Lion team, it's certainly a strong win, but it doesn't tell us as much about how good that year's Iowa is as a win over, say, a top-10 Virginia Tech would. Big games in the conference would still matter and because at least two-thirds of most teams' schedules are made up of conference games, such an emphasis on non-conference play wouldn't lead to a fourth place Big 12 team jumping to the top of the rankings based on a good September. And to make the non-conference slate even stronger, conferences should...

4. Adopt basketball's Big Ten/ACC Challenge model. The scope could vary, but wouldn't it be interesting if today the SEC and Big 12 agreed to have their champs from this season play in a neutral location next September?

Or, because non-conference schedules are typically set a few years in advance, the two leagues could identify a slate of four teams that would matchup with four from another conference a few years down the road with the specific games to be determined in the future.
How about a geographic angle? Teams in specific regions could agree to have a rotating regional slate. So, for example, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio State, and Marshall could agree to matchup in a future season with the head-to-head specifics decided before that season. There are many ways this could work.

Big non-conference games have great lead-ups and pit top talent against each other, but most importantly, they tell us a lot about the strength of teams and conferences in comparison to each other.

Look, I know a college football playoff would be a blast. Those two or three weeks would be taut with major games and the accoutrements that make us love college football. And frankly, the arguments offered by BCS defenders about students missing class time and the toll of extending the season are saturated in crocodile tears. But what's lost in the playoff enthusiasm is the penalty it would exact on the regular season. Basically, any major conference team with one loss would get into an eight-team playoff.

Think about all of the dramatic moments this decade where teams in pole position to reach the title game succeeded or failed in walking the tight rope. Ohio State's 2002 fourth down miracle against Purdue? A good game, but the Buckeyes still would have easily made the playoffs. West Virginia's heart-wrenching home loss to Pitt in 2007 that denied them the BCS title game? Again, the Mountaineers easily would have qualified for the tournament despite that loss. How would the stakes have changed this year for Ohio State/USC, Florida-/LSU, Alabama/Virginia Tech, or Oklahoma/Miami? And perhaps most of all, what about those spoilers who get a chance to glorify their mediocre seasons by ruining a rival's perfect season? In a playoff scenario, there would be must less at stake to spoil.

Yes, these recommendations might have as much chance of winning out as Brett Favre in Green Bay's next mayoral race. But if nothing else, think about those polls the next time you look at them. Do you really think all of those media members, not to mention the coaches/equipment managers, really give a fair evaluation to every team every week when they cast those ballots? That's not the system or the mathematicians' fault. The next time you hear someone rip the BCS, know what it really stands for: Brainless Critic's Scapegoat.