Boise and The Unforced Error

As the college football season comes to a conclusion this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the non-AQ teams and how you come up with a true champion. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about how you measure teams against one another when they never actually meet on the playing field. It’s the annual BCS throw-down.  How can you say now that TCU (are they really going to the Big East?) doesn’t deserve to be considered the national champion after beating Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl? What about Boise State last year? How about Auburn a couple of years back? All were undefeated at the end of play, had garnered glossy portfolios of achievements and all were determined NOT to be the national champion.  

Since it doesn’t look like anything is going to change soon, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to think about this. Anyone who knows NCAA football has to give credit to the argument that playing in one of the big conferences is tougher than playing in most of the non-AQ conferences, most years. There might be an exception now and then, but as a general rule, it’s true. And here’s why: it’s the unforced error.

For this post, an unforced error is a mistake that you or your team makes that is not the result of something your opponent did. It’s the dropped touchdown pass on the last play of the game when the cornerback fell down. It’s the fumble in the red zone in the 4^th quarter that kills the game winning drive, and of course, it’s the missed chip-shot field goal that send the game into OT, where you lose on another missed chip-shot field goal.

College athletes being who they are, unforced errors are a bigger part of the college game than they are at the professional level. It doesn’t matter what sport you’re talking about. When a bunch of kids two or three years out of high school, who have academic responsibilities play a complex game, they are going to make more mistakes than do paid professionals whose only job is to play their sport well. Because of this, you have to recognize that unforced errors are going to play an important role in the outcome of a lot of games. And THAT is what makes it harder to play in the big conferences and makes it appropriate to give more credit to teams who do.

 You see, if you outclass the teams you play from a talent perspective, you can get away with the unforced errors that you are bound to make. If you’re playing in a conference where your athletes are vastly superior to your opponents’, you’re not going to get into situations where the unforced error will cost you the game. It might cost you possession late in the game, but if you’re up by 31 points at that point, who cares? In contrast, if you play in a competitive conference, where you might have better athletes than your opponents but the difference is slight rather than huge, the odds are that you’re eventually going to get burned by one of those unforced errors. Ask Bobby Bowden about wide-left and wide-right. Ask the kid from Boise State that same question. 

Basically, I think the non-AQ teams get “disrespected” because they don’t run the risk week-in and week-out of losing on an unforced error. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in losing that way, because it happens to every team that plays somewhere along the line. But it can be heartbreaking. And it does cost you victories and chances at the national championship. If you can survive those brushes with unforced errors, you truly deserve the opportunity to play for the national championship that comes with it. If you never face the risk, or if you only face it once a year, maybe it’s right that you don’t get the same opportunity.