Imagine if the Bowl Championship Series -- a misnomer if there ever was one in the sports world -- ran Major League Baseball.
For one, the San Francisco Giants would still be searching for their first World Series win since moving west to California in the 1950s. And the St. Louis Cardinals might still be tied with the Oakland Athletics with only nine World Series titles.
With the conclusion of another laughable college football season lauding a faux champion, baseball fans everywhere can be thrilled and thankful no such fraud exists in their favorite sport.
Imagine it: some random powerbrokers in a dark room somewhere arbitrarily decide who they want to play in the World Series every year.
Who would stand for this sort of thing in America's pastime?
No one -- leading anyone to question the intelligence of the average college-football fan who believes the BCS is "real", but that's another question for another day.
The Giants wouldn't be celebrating their second World Series title in three seasons; the New York Yankees might be celebrating instead, since they finished with the best record in the American League last year.
The Yankees would have faced the Washington Nationals in the World Series, and the Giants -- with the third-best record in the National League -- would have been at home watching on television, ever wishing for a shot, a chance, to prove themselves.
The Detroit Tigers wouldn't have been in the World Series, that's for sure. The BCS would never have let it happen, since the Motown boys finished with the seventh-best record in the AL last year.
Major-league baseball remains truly American -- the little guys have a chance to earn their way to the big riches, instead of being pushed aside for a lucrative payday that has nothing to do with how good a team is, or how well they've performed.
In college football, you just need a big fan base willing to spend every dime on their team, and voila! You can guarantee the BCS strings get pulled in your favor, whether you deserve it or not.
Thank goodness for baseball and apple pie -- America at its finest.
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