Car Buying Lesson from NCAA Football

I doubt you have ever compared buying a car to the Bowl Championship Series. Surprisingly, they do share some characteristics.

The BCS rankings are a decent measure when you look at the NCAA as a whole. It isn’t until you start comparing the top 5 teams does the system show its weaknesses. The same can be said for Automotive Consumer and JD Power rankings. The top 5 cars and teams are so comparable simply using a comparison matrix are not good enough.

Last year the BCS was all kinds of messed up. If we look at Alabama’s BCS experience we see just how close everything is. Alabama lost to A&M in a heartbreaker late in the 2012 season. To keep its hopes of a national championship alive Bama needed Kansas State, Oregon, or Notre Dame to lose. In what some Alabama fans call poetic justice, both Kansas State and Oregon lost the next week. The final week saw 5 one-loss teams and 1 undefeated team. Alabama got the bid and killed the number one ranked team in the nation. How does that relate to car buying?

When you are looking for a car it does help to see what the experts say. Their rankings, on the other hand, should be taken with a grain of salt. Most cars have similar technology, gas consumption, and reliability. Just like the top 5 in football, the top 5 cars are all elite in their own way. The only real way of telling which car is for you is by comparing them side by side. Until you have driven every car on your list you don’t know which one is for you. The worst thing you can do is have buyer’s remorse because you didn’t compare for yourself. The key is not to end up like the 04 Auburn Tigers and sit at home wondering what if.

Take a lesson from the NCAA and implement a playoff system. It is the only way for the best team, in this case car, to wind up on top.

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