COMMENTARY : Basketball Playoffs Not a Model to Work From

This time, it really wasn’t that hard to pick a national champion. Miami beat Notre Dame, badly, in the last game of the regular season and deserved to be ranked No. 1. But it wasn’t fair, either, because the bowl-poll system isn’t flawless. The worst of its problems are these:

- Schedules. Notre Dame Coach Lew Holtz is right; playing a tough schedule hurts a team’s chances of finishing No. 1 because it is more difficult to go unbeaten.

- Voting criteria. Poll voters have no uniform guidelines to work with. Some look at scheduling, but as Miami’s championship proves, more do not. Some consider margins of victory. And naturally, most are influenced by some form of emotional capriciousness.

- Controversy. Hence the word “mythical” often placed before “national championship.” Although debate is routinely cited as healthy for college football, it ceases to be useful when it gets comical.

But no one has concocted a workable format for a playoff system. Moreover, if you’re trying to eliminate controversy, a two- or four-game format will not get it done. Who would be the two teams this year? Miami and Notre Dame? Tell it to Florida State. Four teams? Miami, Notre Dame, Florida State and who? Colorado, Tennessee, Auburn? And how would the two or four teams be selected? A poll? Great. Square one. And even if it could be done, does the world really need another Super Bowl?

Proponents of a playoff system point to the beauty and symmetry of the NCAA basketball tournament and its ability to sort through nearly 300 Division I teams and arrive in late March or early April at a national champion. That’s how you find the best team, they say.

Well, that theory is a mess on two fronts.

First of all, the NCAA Tournament--as wonderful as it is--doesn’t select the best team. It selects the team at the right peak, with the right chemistry, for three weeks at the end of the season. If it selected the best team every year, neither Kansas nor Seton Hall would have made its most recent Final Four. What’s more, that’s not the tournament’s purpose. Its purpose is to provide mountains of money for the NCAA and the schools and conferences that participate and exposure for TV advertisers.

But as for eliminating ambiguity and controversy? Forget it. It’s just a different set of problems. As Holtz said, “There is no best team.” And no perfect system.