The Myth of the Best

Last night, I got into a debate on Twitter. My tweet that sparked said debate reads, “A 9th place conference team playing for the national championship hurts the credibility of the sport.” What I mean by that statement is that the college basketball regular season is rather meaningless when it comes to determining the national champion. Connecticut, who finished tied for 9th place in the Big East, and Butler will play for the NCAA Men’s Basketball national championship tomorrow night. If you believe either of these teams is among the fifteen best in the nation, I have serious doubts about how much college basketball you know and watch.

But that is my point here. The NCAA tournament is fun and exciting; and the primary reason for that is the high level of unpredictability. From day to day, game to game, and half to half, we really have no idea what is going to happen. These games are played by teenagers and early twenty-somethings whose emotions are on a rollercoaster. We never know for sure what we’re going to get. It’s wonderful. That’s why it’s one of the most popular sporting events in America. But les us all go into it without the illusion that this tournament is about determining who is the country’s best college basketball team. Being the best team and being the champion are two things that often have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The NCAA tournament is a crapshoot. We see it every year. A team can get hot for a few games and make a deep run. Often, the two or three best teams are beaten before they even reach the Final Four. All we remember are the Final Four and the national champion. What does the regular season mean? What relevance does that long grind hold?

But it’s not just college basketball. Major League Baseball and NHL hockey also hold crapshoot postseason tournaments. Once you get in, anything can happen. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; I’m just calling it what it is. Let’s not pretend that it’s the best team and not the team with the hottest goaltender and peaking sniper who holds up the Stanley Cup. And let us not pretend that a hot pitcher and one hot hitter aren’t the determining factor in winning the World Series.

Some people may—and have—brought up the fact that the Green Bay Packers just won the Super Bowl as the 6th seed in the NFC playoffs. My counter is this: how many times during the past decade have you thought a mediocre team played in the Super Bowl? I give you the 2008 Cardinals. That’s it. Plus, injuries affect NFL teams’ playoff seeding more than they do teams in any other sport. Scheduling also greatly affects seeding. In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier this year about how the schedule often provides the wrong teams with playoff byes. Sure, there are upsets in the NFL playoffs, but more often than not, road teams winning is a righting of the ship that was thrown off course by inflated records. And, yes, I believe the ridiculous scheduling formula diminishes the meaning of the NFL regular season, but it still does mean something.

The best of seven NBA playoffs are the realest playoffs around. Only once every decade or so do you ever leave the playoffs with the feeling that the best team did not win the championship. That’s why, in a sport when the best players don’t often change teams, only a few select players have led their teams to championships.

In college football, it’s often too hard to figure out who the best team is. But the NCAA doesn’t try to fool us. They neither award nor acknowledge a Division I-FBS champion. The playoff proponents often yell out the spiel that we deserve to see who the best team is. What a crock. A playoff won’t do that for these people any more than the bowls will.

When interviewers question underdogs about their ability to win, they often ask if they believe they are better than the favorite. I’ve always found it to be a stupid question. They don’t have to be better; they just have to win. And that’s championships are about. You don’t have to be the best; you just have to win.

To bring this back to college basketball, let me close by saying that I enjoy the tournament. I hope I enjoy the Connecticut-Butler game tomorrow night. But the tournament allows 68 teams in. It’s moving toward 96 teams (I happen to be in favor of the expansion to 96). But you have to understand that every team added to the tournament further diminishes the meaning of the regular season. The more teams involved, especially when teams are eliminated after one defeat, the less likely it is you’ll see one of the top teams win it all. The belief that we are crowning college basketball’s best team is just a myth. We’re crowning the champion. That’s it. Just the champion. Don’t make it out to be anything more than that.