Tocqueville and College Football
ANDERSON, JEFFREY H.
Tocqueville and College Football A defense of the Bowl Championship Series. BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE professor who created one of the computer rankings that determine which...
...When, on the fortieth anniversary of Kennedy's assassination, CNN asked Americans whether the United States would have become involved in Vietnam had Kennedy not been assassinated, the roughly 40 percent "no" response was presented not as evidence of Americans' ignorance that the United States already was involved at that point, but as an important finding to be taken seriously...
...Biden declared the system "un-American" but provided no reasoned argument with which to buttress his grandstanding...
...The BCS standings, on the other hand, embody the moderate middle ground of public opinion tempered and modified by reasonable thought and more objective standards of analysis...
...For example, there is hardly a domestic policy issue of note that the federal courts are not now in some prominent way involved in deciding...
...Politically that middle ground is republicanism, which incorporates popular opinion but also checks it, limiting majority tyranny...
...An unwillingness to challenge the prevailing majority view is abundantly evident in response to the BCS, but it is characteristic of our politics as well...
...From that middle position, but only from that position, we can reasonably hope that what James Madison called "the cool and deliberate sense of the community" will prevail...
...Let's scrap the BCS system and create a "panel of experts" to determine results, they say...
...That year, the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta Bowls agreed to host the annual BCS championship game on a rotating basis...
...And love them or hate them, the Bowl Championship Series standings represent a similar moderate middle ground in the world of sports...
...Tocqueville also predicted the opposite swing of the pendulum, toward embracing authoritarian rule...
...The BCS formula combines public opinion (the polls) with more objective standards (computer rankings, strength of schedule rankings, etc...
...But first a word about the BCS for those who do not follow it...
...Joseph Biden did nothing to demonstrate any "masculine independence of opinion" when he parroted public opinion about the BCS at a recent Senate hearing...
...When children enter our public schools, they are encouraged not to learn what other people thought about things, but rather to "think for themselves"—which is crucial, but also fruitless without insights from beyond one's own mind or beyond the minds of one's similarly underdeveloped peers...
...1, yet the Trojans are not No...
...On the whole, however, college football fans admirably exhibit far more respect for tradition than is typical in our society...
...The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S...
...They'll know which teams to pick...
...And what is the favored solution...
...on the other, they embrace rule by "experts," whether in the bureaucracy or on the Supreme Court...
...Perhaps the key to this phenomenon is found in Tocqueville's insight that our love of equality—which he thought to be Americans' defining trait—can be satisfied either by all of us equally becoming rulers, or by all of us equally becoming subjects...
...The consensus view, expressed on ABC's BCS selection show, ESPN's follow-up broadcast, and apparently in living rooms and barrooms across the nation (judging by emails I received), was something along the lines of, "The polls have USC No...
...But as in American politics as a whole, this reasonable middle ground between unchecked popular rule and unchecked rule by authorities is a lonely place...
...Tocqueville argued in Democracy in America that Americans were becoming (if they were not already in the 1830s) slaves to public opinion...
...Football fans swing between the same two extremes, as we shall see...
...And it helps to explain how such deference to authority can prevail among a people who otherwise so fervently embrace popular opinion and popular rule...
...I do not know any country," he writes, "where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America...
...One might add a final similarity between college football fans and Americans generally: Fans who clamor for a generic playoff fail to foresee what ill-effects such a change would have on college football's uniquely dramatic regular season...
...But six of the seven computer rankings (including mine, the Anderson & Hester Rankings) put Oklahoma and LSU ahead of USC...
...Questioning public opinion is not elitist but rather is necessary to encourage minority views that might be more just, though initially less widely held...
...therefore, the BCS standings are clearly wrong...
...This recalls Tocqueville's comment that in America, "the majority . . . lives in perpetual adoration of itself...
...1 team, until the Soon-ers lost badly in their last game...
...There is, of course, a middle ground between these extremes...
...Bonus points for wins over top-10 teams are added after the initial rankings are computed...
...Their correctness was held to be self-evident...
...This failure to foresee the unintended effects of policy change is also a common feature of our politics...
...college coaches, its number of losses, its strength of schedule (determined by opponents' and opponents' opponents' won-lost records), and its average score in seven computer rankings (actually in six, as the lowest is dropped...
...Perhaps most striking was the nearly complete absence of any attempt to defend the polls' judgments as correct...
...As such, it is a system combining popular opinion and justice, neither fully rewarding nor fully eschewing either...
...government...
...When direct democracy trumps representative democracy, this development is often praised on the grounds that "the people have spoken...
...When all of these BCS components were weighed together, Oklahoma finished first and LSU a close second, with USC an even closer third...
...This helps explain both Americans' distrust of Congress and the comparatively greater trust they display toward unelected government officers...
...Playing in the game are the two top teams in the BCS standings, which combine four elements, each weighed evenly: a team's average ranking in the AP's poll of sportswrit-ers and ESPN/USA Today's poll of Jeffrey H. Anderson is a professor of political science at the Air Force Academy...
...The BCS's strength-of-schedule ratings showed that Oklahoma's was the hardest schedule of the three teams, while USC's was easiest...
...Until 1998, college football had no organized national championship game but a number of traditional bowl games featuring top teams...
...This means Oklahoma will play LSU for the championship this year in the Sugar Bowl on January 4. The public outcry was loud and immediate: How dare the BCS leave out USC, thereby defying public opinion as registered by the media and coaches' polls...
...Both in the world of college football and, more important, in that of American politics, we should try to stop this wildly swinging pendulum in the middle...
...On the one hand, Americans embrace direct democracy...
...Indeed, it shows American character is still as Alexis de Tocqueville described it: We swing on a pendulum with excessive deference to popular opinion at one extreme, excessive deference to authoritative rule at the other...
...BY JEFFREY H. ANDERSON AS A POLITICAL SCIENCE professor who created one of the computer rankings that determine which two college football teams will meet in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), I find the controversy over the rankings mirrors American political culture...
...This season, Oklahoma was the only undefeated team and was the consensus No...
...Certainly Sen...
...After Oklahoma's loss, USC and LSU vaulted ahead of Oklahoma in the coaches' and sportswriters' polls...
...The moderate middle ground of representative government is often distrusted...
...As Tocqueville writes, "In that immense crowd which throngs the avenues to power in the United States, I found very few men who displayed that manly candor and masculine independence of opinion which frequently distinguished the Americans in former times, and which constitutes the leading feature in distinguished characters wheresoever they may be found...
...Embracing the extremes of unchecked public opinion and authoritative rule is unhealthy...
...that refine such opinion...
...In all walks of life, it is increasingly common for the god of public opinion to be thoughtlessly honored...
...Among the top three teams, only Oklahoma had a victory over another top-10 team...
...In each of these arenas, we have somehow lost sight of the crucial question: Have the people spoken well, or are they just babbling...
...1 in the BCS standings...
...In their zeal for overthrowing a BCS system that does not unquestioningly embrace public opinion, fans are willing to leave behind their customary place at the altar of public opinion only if they are allowed to transport themselves to their other favorite altar, that of authoritative rule...
...While this would seem a most unlikely result in a nation so generally devoted to popular opinion and popular rule, it nevertheless does occur...
Vol. 9 • December 2003 • No. 16
