In 2007, the New York Giants had a decent regular season, but not a particularly good one. At 10-6, they barely finished in the top quartile of teams and failed to even achieve a winning record within their four-team division. But this was not a mediocre team. After all, they have the Super Bowl rings to prove it. But one would be hard pressed to say they were the best team in the league that year. Or even the second best. Instead, they were just the team that happened to slide into the playoffs and won the last four games of the season (three of which by less than a touchdown). The next year, the Arizona Cardinals came within a touchdown of being the champs despite a 9-7 regular season. If you ask me, that is no way to select a champion.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that post-season tournaments are the only way to crown a champion. Granted, when you have a bunch of teams that can’t play one another, it makes a certain amount of sense. How else are you going to sort it out? But we’ve become so attached to the notion of post-season tournaments that we are increasingly willing to relegate the regular season to near-scrimmages and “playoff tryouts.” Didn’t have a spectacular record? No problem! Didn’t win your division? Don’t worry about it! Barely ended up with a record above .500? Take a shot at the national title!

There is, of course, one major exception to this rule. Rather than being celebrated, however, the exceptionalism of college football drives people bonkers.

I’m not going to argue that the current BCS system is perfect. It’s frustrating that a good portion of the teams that play in the league have little chance to win a national championship even if they go undefeated. And who hasn’t endured at least one season where a favorite team had a record just as good as the team that made the national championship? I know I have.

The former complaint resonates with me. That a 12-0 Utah Utes team or Boise State team has no chance at a national title no matter how well they play strikes me as wrong. The fact that in any given year, a 1-loss USC, Texas, or SEC team would go to a national championship game before an undefeated Big East or ACC champion indicates that the situation is getting worse.

My first counterargument is that a 1 or 2-loss SEC team is usually going to be better than a Big East or Mountain West champion. The current system also allows Boise State’s awesome victory over Oklahoma to stand on its own terms rather than as a prelude to the inevitable loss in the next round of a playoff.

Unfortunately, neither of these arguments are incredibly convincing. Utah (an undefeated MWC team) beat Alabama (a 1-loss SEC team) just last season and the more often teams from non-BCS conferences win these games (non-BCS teams are 3-1 in BCS bowls), the more they are going to want the opportunity for something more.

A few weeks ago, I tried to figure out if this dilemma could be resolved without a comprehensive, 16-team playoff that would allow a team that got third place in its division a chance at the national title (as happened with the Richmond Spiders in I-AA football last year). Surprisingly enough, I actually came up with one.* The qualification rules were strict enough that either 8 or fewer teams would be allowed in each year (dating back to 2005). It gave every team, regardless of conference, a chance at winning the title. The regular season would be slightly devalued, but nothing I couldn’t live with.

Just as with many similar proposals, the general response would undoubtedly be “It’s not enough.” Half of the playoff proponents would say “If it doesn’t let a 13-0 MAC team in, there’s no point in having a playoff” while the other half would say “If it doesn’t let this 10-2 SEC team in – which happens to be better than that undefeated MAC team – it’s not a real playoff” or “The only reason to have a playoff is to have the best teams plays, even if some conferences get left out.” My plan satisfies the first group but not the second. Unfortunately, plenty of people simply aren’t interested in everyone having a shot at the title, which is really the only reason I’d care to see a playoff.

To satisfy both camps, you need a 16-team tournament. A lot of playoff proponents swear that we won’t revisit the same arguments for team 15 vs 16 vs 17, but I find that unlikely so long as there is any room for debate. Of course, just as we now argue over who gets to play in a BCS Bowl, we’d always argue over playoff qualifications. Last year, teams ranked 13-19 (except #17, a 10-2 BYU) had 9-3 records going into the bowl season. A hypothetical playoff could use BCS calculations or rankings to determine eligibility, but those are the very things that people object to now. With playoff eligibility at stake, the debate will only become more intense. Eventually we may see a 32-team playoff.

But even if we stick to 16 teams, once you’re letting 9-3 teams in, you’re excusing three losses. Right now, no losses are excused. With a playoff system, almost everything teams fight for now (National Championship Game, conference championship, BCS Bowl, any old bowl) becomes a sideshow. Nobody cares who wins the NFL’s NFC East Division because it doesn’t really matter when it comes to brass ring. The entire season revolves around making the playoffs (and to a much lesser extent, determining playoff seeding). And making the playoffs allows teams to lose games in ways that they cannot afford to now. Under the current system, however, games outside your favorite conference take on greater importance because they have a huge impact on your team’s championship hopes.

A prime example of this is USC’s 2009 season. USC’s first loss was devastating for its fans because it meant the Trojans were unlikely to get a shot at the national championship. Meanwhile, Washington’s victory was celebrated in Texas, Alabama, and Florida because it enhanced their national championship hopes. USC’s second loss was equally devastating because it eliminated what was left of USC’s national championship aspirations. USC’s third loss was perhaps less devastating, but it was still significant because it meant that they would not win the conference title or play in a BCS bowl for the first time in seven years.

Add a playoff system and only the third loss really matters and it still isn’t a season-ender because it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that USC would retain a shot at the national title. And only the third loss would really matter outside of the West Coast.

A smaller playoff system mitigates this somewhat, but leagues don’t generally limit playoff participation. Instead, professional sports have drifted towards increasing the number of divisions and wild card slots to let in as many teams as possible. In other words, I can’t even support my own limited playoff system because I have absolutely no reason to believe that it would stop there, particularly because people will always argue that a team left out deserves a shot to have things settled “on the field.”

Alas, 70% of the country rejects my profound wisdom. The good news, though, is that public opinion doesn’t matter. The only way a playoff system will be instituted is if fans start boycotting. But college football has never been more popular despite its chaotic champion-crowning methodology — or perhaps because of it.

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* My hypothetical playoff system basically lets in any conference champion (or independent) that won 10 or more games against FBS opponents. The playoff consists of eight teams, but there is an “elimination week” that narrows the field to four contenders. In the event that fewer than 8 teams are eligible, the teams with the best strength-of-schedule (SOS) do not have to participate in elimination week. In the event that there are more than eight eligible teams, priority is given to undefeated teams, but after that participation is determined purely by SOS, regardless of record.

Forget conference committees, any observer of health care reform needs to add the term “ping-pong” to their legislative vocabulary.

Ping-pong is a little known but increasingly used procedural device to pass legislation. A 2008 report by Walter Oleszek for the Congressional Research Service describes ping-pong as “the exchange of amendments between the houses”

It works like this:

PING: House passes a bill and sends to the Senate.
PONG: Senate amends the bill and sends it back to the House.
PING: House accepts the Senate amendment and sends bill to the President.

Sometimes the ping-pong match goes on for multiple rounds, as the House and Senate exchange amendments back and forth until either one chamber caves or compromise language is reached.

Walter Oleszek’s CRS report noted that pingpongs outnumbered conference committees by a 2-1 ratio in 1994, but went up to a 4-1 ratio by 2008.

Earlier this year, SCHIP legislation signed into law by President Obama (H.R. 2) was handled via the ping-pong method. The House passed a bill, the Senate amended it, the House concurred in the Senate amendment and the bill went to the President. Click here for the legislative play-by-play of the SCHIP ping-pong.

There are 2 procedural advantages of the ping-pong method:

1. No conference committee. Ping pong is a take it or leave it proposition. There is no conference committee, so there is no opportunity for compromises to be struck (or nettlesome provisions removed) by a handful of conferees picked by the leadership.

2. No motion to recommit. Bills can be sent back to the committee of juridiction from whence they came. These bills are recommitted with instructions to make certain substantive changes in the bill. Usually, motions to recommit are efforts by the minority party to attach controversial provisions to a bill, forcing the majority to either kill the bill or force vulnerable lawmakers into taking a difficult vote. Since an amendment does not originate in committee, it cannot be re-committed.

Ping-pong often plays a role in controversial legislation. During the 110th Congress, energy legislation was under consideration that would tax windfall profits on oil companies and use the proceeds to develop renewable energy. Republicans wanted to offer a motion to recommit on the bill to allow offshore oil drilling. Democrats wanted to avoid taking a vote on the issue. So the Senate amended House legislation and sent it back to the lower chamber. After a couple of rounds of ping pong, the House adopted the Senate amendment and the bill was signed into law.

What does this mean for health care?

The two touchiest items in the health care debate are now the public option and the Stupak Amendment. The House bill contains both. It is highly likely that the Senate will take up the House bill (H.R. 3962) and gut it from top to bottom, replacing the entire bill with a massive Baucus amendment containing whatever Senate compromise gets hammered out behind closed doors.

On the Senate floor, there will be amendments to the Baucus amendment – amendments for a robust public option, amendments to add the Stupak language, etc. These amendments will likely be subject to a 60 vote threshold, meaning that they will fail. So the Baucus amendment will remain largely intact when it goes back to the House for an up or down vote. Then it will go to the president.

by Jaybird

There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s _The Great Divorce that has been sticking in my craw in the last month or so. It’s the scene where they talk about Napoleon. If you haven’t read it (you should, it’s good) it’s a discussion of Hell. Hell, Lewis explains, is a place where one’s wishes are immediately granted. The problem is that people wish for things that make them feel better without actually helping them. The narrator talks to a couple of folks who say they looked up Napoleon. They spent a year spying on him and they said that all he did was pace back and forth saying “It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault.” That’s all he did. For an eternity.

I’m enough of an optimist to say that the wilderness is not for *THAT*… but, goodness, measuring some of the responses to the election, one might think that it was. People explaining that it was the fault of the media, or the fault of insufficiently rigorous investigation into the whereabouts of Barack (HUSSEIN!!!) Obama’s mother at the moment of his birth, or even the fault of the faithless American People. It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault.

To be sure, much of the complaining has taken the form of something like “if only you had been more like me, you would have succeeded. Since you were more like you, of course you failed.” While this argument feels good when you say it (go on, say it), it loses much of its oomph when one realizes that social conservatives are saying it at the same time as fiscal conservatives and yet again at the same time as defense hawks at the same time as paleocons at the same time as neocons at the same time as libertarians at the same time as Lincoln Chafee is saying it. Sure, one or two of these groups may be right (I’m pretty sure that at least one is) but the argument itself is just as likely to be the letting off of steam as it is an accurate measurement of the state of affairs.

Best to take a step back and think about what really happened and what it means. What happened in 2004? The Republicans won. Big Time. They picked up seats in their majority-controlled Senate, they picked up seats in their majority-controlled House. They re-won the White House with a majority vote and that is something that people hadn’t seen since 1988. Four years later, the Democrats have a nigh-unfillibusterable lead in the Senate. The Democrats have the House. Obama won the White House with a percentage of the electoral college so large that you have to go back to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to see a democrat exceed it.

This is more than can be pinned on Josephine. [Read more →]