Which is harder basketball or football?

Basketball.
To win a tournament of 68 good teams is EXTREMELY hard.

 

I actually think it's a push. How many programs have won national titles in football since the 105 scholarship limits went into effect in 1992? 15 total, by my count, in 33 years. Every single one of those has been a high level program with lots of money, and, with the exception of Clemson, they are all in elite football conferences.

In that same stretch, 16 different programs have won hoops titles. We are the only legitimate "football school" in that list (unless you count Baylor or Arkansas), and most of those schools did have a track record of success previously (6 were first-time winners in that stretch: Arky, UConn, Syracuse, Florida, Virginia, Baylor, though if those have since won multiple titles).

I think it is marginally more plausible for a program not traditionally considered a basketball power (or close to it) to put together a good roster and make a run in March to title than it is for a football program to do so. The closest examples we have to that date back to pre-1992 (Colorado, Georgia Tech, Washington--and each of those only won a partial title in the polls).

 

I think it may be a bit easier to win a BBNC versus football, because you really only need a handful of good players.

 

Which is harder? Basketball or football? For several years football was much softer for the New England Patriots.

 

The easiest/most straightforward calculation is to assume all teams that make the playoff are equal, then build complexity from there.

College Basketball (64-team bracket, no byes):
1/64≈1.56% for any team.

College Football (12-team playoff):
Teams with a bye (seeds 1-4): 1/8=12.50%
Teams without a bye (seeds 5-12): 1/16=6.25%

 

There are 134 FBS football programs and 362 division 1 basketball programs. Football is less competitive but basketball is harder. If you have fewer teams vying for the championship that does not make it harder, that makes it less competitive.

Football playoff games now start with certain teams playing at home and only having to win 4 games (or a minimum of 3) to win a championship. All of the college basketball games in the playoffs are at neutral sites, and you have to win 6 games to win a championship. The possibility of playing one team or another to advance is much greater in basketball than in football. Therefore, it is almost impossible to gameplan not only because of the permutations, but also because of the period between games, two days on the weekend.

Referees' calls or non-calls lead to scores almost on every possession in basketball (free throws, goaltending, shot clock violations, or the lack thereof), whereas in football, a referee's call very rarely leads immediately to points.

The regular season in football is like a playoff game; however, because conferences are mandated to play a minimum number of conference games, records can get severely skewed depending on which conference you are in. Also, because of the physical nature of football, a great team playing in a tough conference might not get an opportunity to compete for a championship, and even if it does, it is generally far more battle-worn than a team coming out of a less competitive conference.

There are various ways to score in football: kickoff returns, fumble recoveries, field goals, safeties, extra points, punt returns, interceptions, rushing touchdowns, and passing touchdowns. There are three ways to score in basketball: 2-pointer, 3-pointer, and free throw.

I give the edge of difficulty to basketball for those reasons.

 

But since none of our football national titles game in a playoff system, I took the question to be independent of the current system.

 

I agree with you but have a much more simple argument. In football the better team wins nearly all the time. In basketball upsets are much more common. In baseball it is even more likely that the lesser team wins.

I don't know if that makes winning a Natty "harder" in basketball but it makes it less likely that the best team wins it all.

 

I understand, the OP mentioned the 3 championships which weren't won in the current system. Since there have been changes here & there in how championships are won, I was looking at how they might compare going forward.

 

Next step.
Football has 85 scholarships vs 15 for basketball. Assume this ratio, 5.67, reflects the variance in winning football (we'll leave basketball alone as the base case) so you have a std deviation of sqrt(5.67) ≈ 2.38. This means football’s performance fluctuates more due to the number of players, reducing the effective win probability. So for football the probability of winning goes from 50% to 0.50/2.38 ≈ 0.2101. Probably too harsh of a penalty?

Football with the new probability:
Bye teams (seeds 1-4, 3 games):
Probability: (0.2101)^3 = 0.927%

Non-bye teams (seeds 5-12, 4 games):
Probability: (0.2101)^4 = 0.195%

Alternate approach.
Apply the 5.67x variance as a direct reduction to the tournament win probability (instead of on a per game basis as calculated above).
College Football (12-team playoff):
Teams with a bye (seeds 1-4): 1/8=12.50%/5.67 =2.2%
Teams without a bye (seeds 5-12): 1/16=6.25%/5.67 = 1.1%

So we're close to @rserina "it's a push".

I don't stand by any of these numbers, I'm too old for this.

 

My purely anecdotal take:

It is harder to win in football than it is basketball. The reason?

In basketball, while the best team does not always win (except for the NBA), you can win with collecting a bit of talent. In our case, we had the team built nicely (not elite but resolute) and we got the final pieces with Martin and Chins. Nothing like that can happen in football. Texas could have been the most talented team but they had a brain fart in how to play the QB position. And so they let the football equivalent to our basketball team - Notre Dame - win the game

Now onto the championship game. Our resolve and team chemistry gave us the edge to win, even though we were down 12. Compare that to the football championship. OSU had to patently lose that game instead of ND magically pulling it off at the end of the game. They were talented (probably 1b or easily 2nd in sheer talent) and resolute. Could they/did they make mistakes? Sure, but their pure horsepower difference overcame them. And so...game over.

So, in football, all you need is quality QB play, a great ground game to compliment it, a damn fine and deep defense and coaches who can identify where and how to exploit the other team. That to me is WAY harder to accomplish than in basketball. Just ask Sark and UTx.

 

That was not the example for this year

 

Basketball, there are more quality teams in competition, but baseball NCs are the toughest. Due to pitching you don't put your best team out there every game, can easily get upset.

 

Baseball was not in the original discussion but even with double elimination baseball is the hardest for so many reasons.

 

Yeah, baseball would tilt towards the team with the deepest roster of good pitchers.