Point-Counterpoint: Debating the plus-one

[jbcarol]

Fischer: 'm all for an NFL-style eight-team playoff but will add that pairing the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country is exactly what the BCS has been tasked with all these years and the plus-one would, in many ways, be an extension of that philosophy that truly pairs the top two teams in the country after a meaningful non-conference game late in the year.

Hinton: A plus-one would entrench the status quo. In fact, it's a conscious rejection of the playoff push, the whole point of which is demand for a system that judges aspiring champions by actually having them compete against one another – you know, the basic premise of the sport, and of competition in general as practiced by virtually every other competitive entity in the world. Plus-one proposals default to what we have now: A random cabal of pollsters, coaches, computer programmers and whoever else they can graft on to anoint contenders by fiat. (Among the proponents of a plus-one, for example, are a couple of Texas businessmen – fans – who have pitched a proprietary plan to BCS honchos on multiple occasions.) Nothing changes except that the music stops in early January instead of early December.