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Raging at the BCS
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I can't believe that I am already seeing pre-season college football rankings. This column and one that will be written soon are in direct response to those rankings.
Let’s put a few things in perspective as far as football goes. The NFL gets what it plays for and NCAA football gets what it pays for. I hold absolutely no truck with the Bull S### Championship Series. This year was no exception. The BCS got exactly what it wanted with the National Championship match up. They got vindication. The fact that that vindication came from within the BCS itself, just doesn’t matter.
The preseason pundits were proven correct by a system in which sports writers pander to their regional audiences and computers weigh the merits of data that is put into them by people, who are fallible. Garbage In Equals Garbage Out. And the BCS computer programmers have taken the GIGO theory to new levels. I don't hold the programmers responsible. They have to work within the parameters set up by the BCS.
The BCS was vindicated by the fact that two of the preseason top five ranked teams (Florida and Oklahoma) played for the national championship. The BCS was further vindicated by the fact that UF and OU were the conference champions from the two most powerful conferences of the 2008 season.
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But wait…What about Texas??? Didn’t Texas beat Oklahoma at a neutral site in October of 2008???? Wasn’t Texas ranked ahead of Oklahoma until the last week of the regular season when Oklahoma manhandled Oklahoma State, who at the time was ranked twelfth???? How do you move Oklahoma ahead of Texas, when Texas owns the head to head match up??? And why would you want Oklahoma over Texas in the National Championship Game to begin with??? Doesn’t Texas and Mack Brown have a better record in big games than Big Game Bob Stoops and the Sooners??? Haven’t the Sooners embarrassed themselves in the last few BCS games that they’ve played in??? For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the BCS that decided that Oklahoma would be the Big Twelve South Division Champion by ranking them ahead of Texas in the final regular season poll. Was it simply decided that we, the public, wanted to see a Tim Tebow, (who if I hear how great of a person he is one more tim...I'm climbing a clock tower and going postal) versus Sam Bradford National Championship game, so Oklahoma got the inside track???
None of that matters. None of it matters one iota. It doesn’t matter because, the BCS seeks validation and vindication in all of its bizarre doings. Going into the season Texas was ranked number eleven in the pre-season polls and Oklahoma was ranked number four. So, at the beginning of last season the “experts” thought that Oklahoma was a better team than Texas. Despite what happened on the field in October, they proved that Oklahoma was better than Texas, by sending Oklahoma to play Florida for the big enchilada. (And yes, I know that BCS rankings don't make an appearance until week five or six. The rankings that I'm talking about were the AP and USA Today polls)
The sanctity and relevancy of the National Championship is of little concern to the BCS. I can honestly say that I preferred this gaggle of idiocy when we had a “Mythical” national champion that was voted on by sports writers and coaches in the AP and UPI polls. We might have had a few split national championships and a more than a few arguments, but at least we didn’t eliminate solid chunks of the college football world from even being considered for the title. You see, the BCS doesn't even recognize the achievements of certain teams due to their conference affiliation.
I wll delve deeper into this in the next article.
To that end, I also think that with Utah out there and undefeated, that if I were Florida that I would have almost been ashamed to hoist that crystal football at the end of this year's NGC game with Oklahoma.
I personally cannot stand Florida, but this is not to disparage their team. Florida at the end of the regular season was clearly the best team in college football. Oklahoma was hot at the time, but they were the beneficiaries of nonsensical BCS jackassery, much as they were in 2003, when they couldn’t even win their conference championship game but got the bid to the NCG anyway. That year USC got aced out of playing in the National Championship contest, because of superficial computer data. LSU slapped Oklahoma around in January, 2004 and Florida slapped them around in January 2009.
The BCS system is corrupt and wrongheaded. I don’t care if it is the only game in town and we’re stuck with it until someone convinces the collective presidents and athletic directors from the top tier of NCAA football conferences and the folks from Notre Dame, (who get special consideration because they are independent….the same considerations are not extended to Navy or Army, who are also independent), that it might actually be more profitable to have a play-off. These people are dead set on keeping the money that the bowl system generates for the BCS conferences and are scared silly that if the system changes too much and moves away from the current debacle, that they and their conferences will suffer some sort of undisclosed financial hardship.
The main reason that there is no college football play-off is because of the revenue stream that comes from the bowl system. That is the be all and end all. These pariahs that support the BCS posture about the loss of class time hurting the student-athlete, when in all actuality, the true student athlete, (when it comes to big time college football) went by the wayside at least fifteen years ago when individual conferences and Notre Dame began striking their own television deals with the networks. They can squeal about the extra games being unaffordable for their students and fan bases to attend all that they want to. The reality of the situation is that they don’t care if there is one student in the stands during a bowl game, as long as the corporate sponsors and their invitees show up and foot the bill.
It’s all horse crap. It’s all about the almighty dollar; nothing more and nothing less.
BCS bowl game ticket prices are already out of the range of most of your fan base anyway. The only students that can afford to go to these games have parents that are well to do and can afford to throw a few thousand dollars away. Other than that, the stands are filled with rich alumnus, corporate guests, the celebrity crowd that always seems to find its way into these things and generally a passel of people that really don’t give a hoot who wins the game to begin with. They just want to be seen and be able to say that they were there.
BCS bowl game ticket prices are already out of the range of most of your fan base anyway. The only students that can afford to go to these games have parents that are well to do and can afford to throw a few thousand dollars away. Other than that, the stands are filled with rich alumnus, corporate guests, the celebrity crowd that always seems to find its way into these things and generally a passel of people that really don’t give a hoot who wins the game to begin with. They just want to be seen and be able to say that they were there.
Now, imagine if we could convince the collective body of doofuses that are calling the shots on this thing that playing an extra few weeks’ worth of play-off games, (during which most of their student bodies, including the football team are on winter break), would enhance their coffers even more than the present system, due to the fact that you can rent mid field out to even more sponsors and they in turn can bring in even more corporate lackeys, henchmen, wheelers, dealers, movers and shakers to entertain, because they’d have more games to do it with. Your rich alumnus base could travel to as many games as their school could win. The celebrity crowd could make the play-offs the social event of the year. They’d get to show their arrayed beauty in a different city every week. That would be paradise for the narcissistic and banal brigade. In the long run, a play-off would be more profitable than this travesty that is called the BCS.
The kicker is that the bowls could stay intact. You could still play the bowl games with the second tier teams that do not qualify for the play-offs and everyone, including the general public would be happy.
You could even delay bowl invitations and get teams that were eliminated from the playoffs to play in the bowl games as a consolation prize. The jack holes that are so worried about their conference revenue stream could get paid twice at the end of the football season and have more cash to wallow in and to entertain blue chip athletes and their families.
But, it will never happen, because these starchy stuffed suits that are running the BCS are wedged so tightly into the box that they, themselves built, that they can never get out without losing face. After all, they have trumpeted the advantages of the buffoonery that constitutes the BCS for a very long time. Their big argument is that the BCS gives us a true national champion……unless you count 2003, when several polls had USC, (who got cheated out of their deserved berth in the NCG game by BCS computers that favored Oklahoma......imagine that), ranked number one instead of LSU.
At the very least, Mr. President and Athletic Director, come up with a few less feeble reasons for not having a play-off than the crock of cow pie that you’ve given us so far. When it comes to the bowl system, you obviously don’t care about the athletes or their educations. You don’t care about the student body or the school’s fan base. You don’t care that the system has become so corrupt, wretched and twisted that BCS officials need a brace of sportswriters to screw their pants on in the morning. You don’t care that we as a nation are quickly losing interest, because we are tired of seeing the same teams playing over and over again for the National Championship.
So, please, I beg of you; Show us the respect that you would a three year old and stop blowing smoke into our sphincters. Admit that it is about the money, so that we as a college football watching nation can come up with a scenario that will incorporate a play-off and put the desired wherewithal into your coffers and let you save face.
As a final note....I wold love to see what would happen if the NFL simply scrapped their playoff system and decided that the Super Bowl would be played by the two teams that ESPN had rated the highest in their power rankings at the end of the season.
Essentially, that is what you end up with when it comes to the BCS. The BCS puts two teams upon a pedestal and says to us, the unwashed masses, "Here are the two teams that we, the governing body have decreed to be the best in the land and they shall play for the National Championship".
What a load.
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