Not happy with the actual results of this season of college football? Grab a copy of “NCAA Football ‘12” and simulate it. I completed the annual ritual this week and, as usual, the results were amusing.
Boise State snuck into the BCS National Championship Game and defeated Texas A&M for the crown. South Carolina, Utah and North Carolina State won their respective conferences. And Houston finished unranked.
Results like these are obviously video game material, but that is what the NCAA franchise has come to offer us: A sneak peek into a world of college football where only the computers are in charge.
It might seem unworldly for NC State to play in a BCS bowl game, and we all know there’s next to no way Texas A&M _exceeds_ expectations. But take a moment of pause to ask yourself… what would you think of this year’s actual results if they had been computed the same way? Would any of us believe that Oklahoma State would blow a 24-7 lead to lose to Iowa State, or that Oklahoma would be on pace to lose three times?
Shit happens in college football. “NCAA Football” does its best to emulate it.
And the game portrays some trends and occurrences that uniquely correspond with what we often see from the actual game — such as Notre Dame being overrated and the Big East putting out a less-than-worthy champion. (I can’t decide whether Texas A&M’s blowing of a two-touchdown fourth quarter lead in the simulation’s title game was a coincidence or not.)
Of course, the game is not without its flaws: No living and breathing linebacker boasts a 6-foot vertical. And in real life, most wide receivers understand the concept of coming back to the football.
And we know that even if those flaws were eliminated, football is never as simple as a computer simulation. The human element — that under-the-weather, us-against-the-world meter — keeps football or any sport from being about what the paper says going in.
In real life, fumbles aren’t the result of odds probabilities. Planes go down and sex scandals erupt. Players experience uplifting speeches, relationship issues, streaks, slumps and all of life’s in-between.
Real life also proves our pre-season note-taking can be devastatingly wrong. We learned this year that Tyler Wilson _can_ fill Ryan Mallett’s shoes and the rebuilt TCU defense _is_ capable of giving up 50 points in a game.
But in “NCAA Football,” a player ranked 85 will consistently play no worse than an 80.
The thing is, we all realize it’s only a video game. We know, at least in principal, that complex humans demand more reasoned assessment than what a computer system can give them.
We understand that, but yet it’s the Bowl Championship Series’ system of perceptive and statistical analysis we use to stage a field of champions.
In the BCS, there’s not even the simulation of matchups; it’s just the paper… and the polls of coaches and journalists that too often subscribe to those statistics.
This isn’t to discredit the value of factual data: Comparison fuels discussion and discussion fuels the fun of the game. Statistics help us comprehend a 120-team sport we otherwise couldn’t keep up with.
But as the fallacies of “NCAA Football” highlight, a game created, played and enjoyed by humans just doesn’t equate when that personal element is tossed by the wayside.
A computer system is only as efficient as the humans that develop it. And I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of Utah running the show in every version of “NCAA Football.”