The Best "Team"

I've been thinking a bit about football recently.  Specifically, I've been thinking about how we could go about determining who the best player is at each position.

Imagine if, at the end of the regular season, the NFL's best players competed in a skills challenge to determine who was the best at their respective positions.  We could have any variation of events, but they'd probably include various passing contests, receiving contests, running contests, blocking contests, tackling contests and kicking contests.  While a passing for accuracy contest is going on at one end of a field, players could be doing a field goal kicking contest on the other, and a blocking contest in between.  It would be like a super-charged, fan friendly All-Star NFL Combine.  What a show it could be!

So who gets to compete in this hypothetical festivity of awesome?  There are thousands of pro football players, and this event couldn't support all of them.  We could be subjective and let coaches pick or let fans vote.  Or we could be objective and select based on the best single-game performances or the best season stats, or some combination thereof.

If we really want to identify who the best is, letting coaches and fans pick won't work.  To be legit, athletes should have to earn their way in, not get in based on name recognition, politics, or fans stuffing the ballot box.  No, this can't be American Idol and we want no Sanjayas here.

Taking an athlete based on their best single performance arguably allows you to get the guys with the most upside potential into the competition.  If you're looking for brilliance--the ability to throw for 400 yards or kick a 60 yard field goal--it makes more sense to take the guys who have demonstrated that brilliance, even if they aren't the best day in and day out.  Counter-argument: what if everybody who plays against the Seahawks throws for 400 yards?  Hmmm.  Good point.

Perhaps we should go by season stats.  More often than not, the groups would overlap, but in this case you'd likely eliminate a few young and inconsistent freakshow talents for some established veterans who are consistently solid, if rarely great.  You'd still have most of the top talents, and they'd be competing with guys who can bring it every night. Counter-argument: what if the guys put up big numbers early, and then fade down the stretch?  Hmmm. Okay then.

How about a combination?  After all, maybe it's not about how good you were at any random point (or stage) in your season.  Maybe it's about how good you are at the end of the year.  That's when we're holding the competition, after all.  Perhaps we should set up qualifying standards and then have the athletes compete to advance out of their division and conference.  What we don't want are guys who are injured or otherwise underperforming of late.  We want this to be a competition between the best of the best, right now.  Counter-argument:  There's no time for this.  Athletes are competing in the playoffs and Super Bowl.

But wait!  We can score this competition, maybe using a 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 point system like track and field!  That way, instead of having a playoffs and a Super Bowl, we can just name the NFL champion based on the results of this contest!  After all, a team is only as good as its superstars, and we now have a competition to decide which superstars are the superest of the super!

(Brief pause for reflection.  Okay let's continue.)

I know, I know.  It's a ridiculous proposition.  This would be a terrible way of deciding the "best team" in the NFL.  It would be tantamount to saying that the special teams has no impact on a game, that your fourth best blocker doesn't matter, that actually beating a team head-to-head isn't the best way to determine which team is the best.  We all know that's not true, and trading the playoffs and Super Bowl for this event--no matter how entertaining and legitimate the competitions--would be a travesty.

So why is this how we award the NCAA team title?

Before you write me a comment telling me I'm an idiot, let me just state one thing.  I'm perfectly aware that as team sports go, football and track are very different.  But I do think the above is illustrative of two broader questions.  The first is who gets to compete in an event to determine individual supremacy at any given position or skill (be it throwing a football or running 5000 meters).  The second, and more important one is, "what makes a team?"

I don't want to dwell on the first, except to say that selecting an athlete by their best single-game performance would be the equivalent of relying on descending order lists in track and field.  It eliminates the context of a performance from the equation.  I don't like this, because a distance runner racing at Stanford in March is kind of like a quarterback throwing against the Seahawks' defense, or any other team's defense with two injured safeties.  It's just easier to put up big numbers.  The track equivalent to going by season stats would require athletes to compete in an event a minimum number of times, but under that premise it could work.  The last is kind of a football equivalent to the current NCAA regional qualifying system. 

Each has its positives and negatives.  Each would get the top 90% of athletes into the competition.  I've made my stance clear  on which I prefer, so I'd rather spend my time on the bigger question, that of what makes a team.

In LetsRun's The Week That Was, they pointed out a fact that I missed in my NCAA Recap (embarrassingly, given that I'm an alum).  UCLA scored zero points in the NCAA meet.  Zero!  Among the greatest track programs of all time, UCLA is a fixture at the NCAA meet, and to score zero is no doubt causing a lot of alums to question the coaching and the direction of the program.  Then again, a team that couldn't score one point at NCAAs did manage to take Oregon--2nd place at NCAAs--down to the 4x400m in their dual meet earlier in the year. 

And speaking of Oregon, LetsRun had a forum post asking a telling question, "Could Rupp and Wheating single-handedly have won NCAAs?".  I don't know the answer, but really that's irrelevant.  The simple fact that the question itself is legitimate highlights that our current system for deciding the team champion has nothing to do with building the best team .  It has everything to do with getting the best of the best superstars.  Case in point: Bonnie Richardson of Rochelle High has won two Texas State team championships for her school, despite being the only athlete from her school at the meet!

As someone who follows the UCLA Bruins, I can say that this is certainly a down year for the program.  But even so, they could go head-to-head with many schools and compete across the board.  That they were beaten by 67 teams at NCAAs says nothing about the overall quality of the team.  To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they could beat Texas A&M head-to-head.  Most of the points they would lose in the sprints and jumps would be regained in the distances and throws.  If nothing else, it would be much closer than their 48-0 score at NCAAs would indicate.

But that's not how we award team titles, and I don't begrudge Texas A&M theirs.  Everyone knew what it would take to win a team title going into the season, and Texas A&M built the team that won.  They earned that title and absolutely nothing should be taken away from them.  

I just can't help but feel our system is rewarding the wrong type of behavior.  Texas A&M scored 23 points in the two horizontal jumps, zero in the nine distances and throws.  Oregon scored zero points in the eleven sprints and jumps.  Florida State brought in two foreign Olympians who boosted them to 2nd place in the meet.  Each team had a few super-duperstars, in a few events, who were clearly superior to everyone else in the country. 

The NCAA meet is great for showcasing those super-duperstars, and establishing who the best is in any given event.  The team competition is what it is, a bolt-on to the individual competitions.  It's practical, convenient, and a nice bit of extra motivation to a few fortunate individuals. 

Unfortunately, now that it's over, the lingering question of this and every NCAA season remains: who had the best team?

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Bryan ran cross country and track and field for UCLA, as well for Japanese ekiden teams while living in Japan. He now pretends to be a runner (mostly on weekends) and a writer (mostly after running). Check out his popular running blog Optimal Training and his distance running lenses at Buraian's Lensography. He welcomes your feedback via comment or email at buraian@lifeofburaian.com