Now that the college football season is over, we can all agree on which team is best, can’t we?  Well…no.  We can’t.  There is no mechanism for defining “best“.  Only the champions.

In some sports, best and champion are the same thing.  In sprinting, for instance, world records, repeating accomplishments, multiple races among the elite several times every year make it easy to contrast athletes and performances.  We know who is best and who is champion.  Usain Bolt is the best sprinter in the world and multiple Olympic champion.  Tennis, golf, and other individual sports are set up for the best players to face off against one another on a regular basis.

Team sports, and particularly football, don’t have the same distinction.  Who is best is much harder to determine than who is champion.  We determine a champion by specific guidelines and circumstances: win the BCS championship and be named #1 by the majority of voters in the polls.  There are also the unwritten guidelines, such as be from the SEC or win all of your games or play in more memorable games or be in the best media market or have a Heisman Trophy finalist.  These unwritten guidelines inform those voters that eventually determine the champion.  But they have nothing to do with determining best.

A playoff wouldn’t effect the problem one bit.  It would be a new way of determining who the champion is, but not the best.  Even a round robin approach in which every team plays every other team still doesn’t determine who is best.  This is because best is completely different from champion.

The difference is best is an evaluation of talent and performance, while champion is the achievement of a specific goal under specific guidelines.

The funny thing about Alabama winning the championship is that it does little to change the fact that Oklahoma State was the more deserving participant in the game.  This is because our usual means of determining best were put up against that gut feeling from watching that one loss to LSU.  Statistics, strength of schedule, wins against quality opponents, and even signature victories put Alabama 3rd or 4th.  Even the simple statistic that rematches heavily favor the losers of the first match-up demonstrates that LSU should win the split and be named champion or best.

And yet there is something that still likes to think of Alabama as best.  Something we really can’t define: something much more important than this one game.  It reminds me of a controversy from years ago.  Notre Dame, then #2, upset #1 Florida State in a huge regular season contest.  Notre Dame was riding high for all of 6 days.  The following week, they were upset by Boston College and the one-loss Seminoles went on to edge out the one-loss Irish for the National Title.  At the time, critics were angry, because Florida State had lost the head-to-head match up.  And yet, there was something appropriate about Notre Dame losing their chance because of a humiliating loss.

When it was all said and done, however, I never felt bad for Notre Dame.  Their coach, Lou Holtz no doubt went across the country reminding recruits who the “real” champions were.

For us, best isn’t really measurable.  Champion is.  Instead of worrying about which choice or option is best, we should be thinking about which option helps us become champion according to our own guidelines.  Because if the BCS has taught us anything, it is that the team that deserves to be in the game the least often ends up hoisting the trophy.