So we're hearing a lot of whisperings about how the impending 4-team college football playoff will go down (I'm taking it as a given at this point that there will be 4 teams involved in some form of playoff/plus-1 starting in 2014). It appears that one of the most contentious issues on the table is whether to include a conference champion requirement (that is, you must be a conference champion to qualify for the playoffs). Several conference commissioners not residing in the former Confederacy favor the requirement. Mike Slive and Stewart Mandel (among probably a host of other sportswriters) oppose it.

Being from Missouri, the home of perhaps the most famous compromise in our nation's history, I am instinctively compelled to seek a middle ground in the face of any divisive argument. I therefore propose the following Brilliant Compromise (okay I'm kidding about the Brilliant part, but I actually think this is a pretty good idea)...

First off, I actually like the idea of requiring playoff participants to be conference champions. It moves the national championship one step closer to being settled on the field, and a step further away from being a beauty contest. It moves the criteria away from some subjective idea of who we all think the best teams are, and towards a set of objective requirements (win your conference championship based on clearly defined criteria in each conference). Of course it doesn't solve everything -- you still have to decide who the "best" four conference champions are (and you have to deal with Notre Dame), but that seems much less contentious than the current situation.

But I also understand that any system that doesn't include the "best" two teams would be a deal-breaker for many, and in cases like this past season just wouldn't pass the laugh test.

So here's what I propose: take the top 4 conference champions, UNLESS the 1st or 2nd ranked team (using whatever ranking system is in place) is not a conference champion. In that case, the wildcard team would bump the 4th ranked conference champ. Note that this is different from having 3 champs and a wildcard. In this case the wildcard would ONLY be eligible if ranked #1-2.

I'd like to think this would satisfy most people on both sides of the issue. We're allowing for a wildcard, but that wildcard would have a higher bar to pass than in most sports. The conference champion requirement would be the rule and would apply in probably 9 of 10 seasons. The wildcard would be the exception and would allow for cases like Alabama in 2011. If the system were in place last year, Alabama would have bumped #10 Wisconsin.

There are other details to sort out. Would the wildcard get the seed corresponding to their ranking, or drop to the 4 seed as a penalty for not winning their conference? What would happen if both 1 and 2 were not conference champs (two wildcards)? How would you account for Notre Dame? I could also consider an argument for relaxing the wildcard ranking threshold (maybe include the top ranked non-champ if ranked in top 4, for example). But those are relatively minor in comparison.

I like it, it seems like a rational compromise, so of course it will never happen (unless Mike Slive is reading this on his way home from KC).

I don't know if I really have any truly original insights on this issue, but I've been thinking about it lately and just wanted to express some thoughts.

First, I understand Kansas' position on continuing the rivalry, I do. If Missouri were the jilted party, I'm sure we would feel a strong tendency to end the rivalry out of spite, and we would come up with similar reasons as theirs to feel justified in our position.

But let's clarify some things. Missouri did not choose to leave the Big 12 because they wanted to end this rivalry, or they don't respect the tradition of the rivalry, or because they're just tired of Kansas. On the contrary, potential loss of the rivalry was a major drawback of the move that had to be taken into consideration.

Missouri chose to leave the Big 12 because of the well-documented instability of the conference, and ANY school in the Big 12 would likely have made the same choice if they were in Missouri's position. Indeed, EVERY Big 12 school that has had even a hint of an opportunity to head to greener pastures over the past two years has made clear their preference to leave: Nebraska to the Big Ten; Colorado to the Pac-12;Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Texas Tech, Baylor falling all over each other for the Pac-12's advances; Texas A&M and Missouri to the SEC.

As others have pointed out, it is an unfortunate coincidence of geography and demographics that Kansas, K-State, and Iowa State have been on the short end of the stick throughout all this. No question they would have been ready to leave had any of the major conferences been interested.

And that would be totally understandable. If Missouri were left behind while Kansas or any of the others left, it would be frustrating, disappointing, demoralizing even, but I would still understand the decision.

So in the end, the decision was about much more than the rivalry, and the rivalry should be about more than the decision. Granted that Missouri initiated the current impasse, but Kansas now has the power to resolve it.

Finally, I can understand the challenges of continuing the football rivalry, given limited game slots, financial considerations, and the pressures to schedule winnable non-conference games. But those issues are much less of a factor when it comes to basketball.

Hopefully saner heads will prevail in the near future.

After reading Bill C's post on the value of returning starters, I was curious to see what affect losing or returning an All-American quarterback would have on a team's ranking. I used consensus All-Americans (from Wikipedia - some years have two consensus) and AP Top 25 Rankings for comparison. If teams were ranked out of the top 25 the next year, I treated that as ranked 26.

The results? Over the past 10 seasons, 8 consensus all-american QBs have not returned, and their teams dropped 13 spots in the AP poll on average (likely worse if you consider non-ranked teams likely to actually be lower than 26).

Over the same time span, 5 consensus all-american QBs have returned the next season, and their teams still dropped 6.6 spots on average.

My take from this quick-&-dirty comparison is that losing an all-american QB is somewhat of a big deal, and it would make sense to include something along those lines in preseason ratings (such as weighting returning starters by position and by achievements such as all-american or all-conf). Returning an all-american QB however? Not as predictive. Perhaps because it's harder to maintain the high ranking the team achieved that year regardless of who's playing QB the next. Every team with an all-american QB ranked in the top 15 that year and most in the top 5, so there's not much room for improvement.

With the recent reports that Colorado is likely to stay in the Big 12 for 2011, I started thinking about how the conference schedule would work next year.  Let's assume that with 11 teams the conference will go ahead and do away with divisions and the championship game as they've been planning (keeping divisions with 11 teams would be a scheduling nightmare).  A full round robin schedule doesn't seem likely, as that would require 10 conference games, leaving only two games for non-conference matchups.  Possible I suppose, but I don't see it happening.  What are the likely alternatives?

First, a nine game schedule with each team skipping one other is mathematically impossible with 11 teams.  Intuitively it seems you could pull it off using bye weeks, but it literally cannot be done.  You cannot defy math!  Well, unless you are Bill C. I suppose.

So, an eight game conference schedule seems most likely.  That means each team would miss two other teams in the conference, and that's where the controversy would begin.  At least one team would might get to miss both Texas and Oklahoma, while at least a few would have to play both of them.  How do you choose the scheduling winners and losers?  Remember, it's just for one year, so we don't really need a system to stand for the long term.  We need a system that addresses the current balance of power in the conference.  

A random draw would be "fair", but not very satisfying, especially if any team with a decent chance of actually winning the conference next year got to skip the Big Two.  Can you imagine the backlash if Mizzou "won" the Big 12 next year by going undefeated, without having played Oklahoma or Texas?

I think a more reasonable approach to choosing which schools get to skip each other would be based on recent conference standings.  This is not unlike how the NFL designs schedules.  Let's use the Big 12 standings over the last three years to see how this would work.

Big Twelve Standings (excluding Nebraska), 2007-2009

1. Texas, 20-4
2. Oklahoma, 18-6
3. Texas Tech, 16-8
4. Missouri, 16-8
5. Oklahoma St, 15-9
6. Kansas, 12-12
7. Kansas St, 9-15
8. Texas A&M, 9-15
9. Colorado, 8-16
10. Iowa St, 5-19
11. Baylor, 3-21

I'm suggesting that the top team would skip the two bottom teams, and so on down the standings.  Here's how that would work out (each team is listed with the two teams they would NOT play in the 2011 season):

• Texas - Baylor, Iowa St
• Oklahoma - Baylor, Colorado
• Texas Tech - Iowa St, Texas A&M
• Missouri - Colorado, Kansas St
• Oklahoma St - Texas A&M, Kansas
• Kansas - Oklahoma St, Kansas St
• Kansas St - Missouri, Texas Tech
• Texas A&M - Texas Tech, Oklahoma St
• Colorado - Oklahoma, Missouri
• Iowa St - Texas, Texas Tech
• Baylor - Texas, Oklahoma

One thing that jumps out is that one of the traditional conference rivalries - Kansas vs. Kansas St - would get skipped, but we could fix that by flipping two matchups that are nearby in the standings:

• Texas Tech - Iowa St, Kansas St
• Kansas - Oklahoma St, Texas A&M
• Kansas St - Missouri, Texas Tech
• Texas A&M - Kansas, Oklahoma St

So Missouri wouldn't get to face Colorado on their farewell tour of the conference, and would miss Kansas St for one year.  

Overall this approach seems pretty fair.  One could argue that Kansas St and Texas A&M are likely to be better than Oklahoma St or Kansas over the next couple of years, but if you wait to include the 2010 standings then that might start to show up anyway.  I think this would achieve the important goal of having every team that's likely to be a contender for the conference face every other contender.  To be the best, you have to beat the best.