Well, it is the first week of December and you know what that means, recovering from Thanksgiving, getting ready for Christmas and, for sports fans, enduring another year of the purile inanity of the Bowl Championship Series (or BCS) system.
The BCS was created, in theory, to accomplish two things: (1) have a non-contested national champion in Division I college football; and (2) preserve the football "bowl" system, especially the traditional January 1st Bowl Games. The problem is that these have always beeen mutually exclusive goals. It really goes back to the BYU Cougars winning the national championship when they played (because they were contractually obligated to) in the Holiday Bowl.
This year the controversy is on four fronts (although the media is really just talking about two). First of all, Auburn, who went undefeated, does not get a chance for the national championship, that goes to two other undefeated teams, USC and Oklahoma. Auburn gets to play the twice beaten Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl; which leads us to the second problem. Instead of undefeated Auburn playing the also undefeated Utah in a bowl; Utah, because they are not part of a BCS conference gets relegated to to the Fiesta Bowl against a clearly undeserving Pittsburgh team (because Pittsburgh is in a BCS conference and since they won that decidedly weak conference, they have to be in a January 1st bowl). Utah's inclusion is simply a face-saving token by the BCS, they really don't want any non-BCS team in any of the BCS bowl games. This leads to the third issue this year. Cal, even though they were ranked 4th in both of the polls, got jobbed out of the Rose Bowl (which traditionally is a Big 10 vs Pac 10 game). With only one loss (to USC) Cal dropped in the BCS rankings, even though they won and Texas moved ahead, even though Texas has been idle for two weeks. Well, not really idle, their head coach apparently tried to break the school budget working the phones in a successful effort to influence the vote of the BCS. So, the Rose Bowl, instead of getting a much better and much more deserving Pac 10 team, instead gets Texas against Michigan (who only gets the Rose Bowl because of a tie-breaker in their own conference). The Rose Bowl people will put on a happy face, but I expect that there will be more than a few vacant seats at the Rose Bowl this year.
The final outrage, at least to me, is that there is another undefeated Division I team, namely Boise State (who, in fact, have won something like 20+ games in a row) also is victimized by the BCS. Does Boise State get a January 1st game, well no, they get the wonderful Auto-Zone Liberty Bowl, albeit against a very good Louisville team, so it should be an entertaining game, but hardly the financial payoff that Boise State deserves. But with an undefeated season the best Boise State could do is get to 9th in the BCS ranking. They actually dropped a place in the last poll, even though the won their last game by about 100 points. Virigina Tech somehow managed to move from 12th to 8th (ahead of Boise State) by beating the 10th ranked University of Miami. I'm just not sure how that is possible, but it did ensure that Boise State would not play on January 1st.
The BCS system is clearly a dysfunctional creation of the monied and powerful (and east coast) special interests. It is proven itself to be patently unfair and frankly, a thoroughly un-American system. At the beginning of every summer training camp, every, and I mean EVERY Division I coach should be able to tell his players that if they work hard and win, they too have a chance to win the National Championship, but they can't do that, because the BCS is designed to stifle the lesser teams.
Only the teams in the BCS conferences really have a chance to be the National Championship. Oh, I forgot, there is an exception. Notre Dame is an independent school, not in any conference. But of course, when the BCS was put together there were special provisions created to ensure that The Fighting Irish (and all of the fan revenue they can generate) would be included in the system.
Every year it seems that the BCS tinkers with the system so it will "work better." Take last year. Even though USC was Number 1 in both of the polls, they dropped to third in the BCS and were jobbed out of the National Championship game. They got the Rose bowl and disassembled their opponent and were able to claim a share of the National Championship with LSU. Well, of course even though LSU is in a BCS conference, they are one of the marginal teams and can't command the fan base that USC does, so this year the BCS tinkered with the system to make sure that wouldn't happen again.
Do I sound cynical, well, I am somewhat cynical by nature. But one does not have to be a cynic to see that money and special interests have been allowed to run amok in Division I college sports, especially football.
Back to the objectives of the BCS. As I noted they are mutaully exclusive goals, and because of that they system will never work. Unless all of the stars align and USC and Ohio State go undefeated and finish #1 and #2 in all the polls with no other Division I team with less than 2 losses and it's the Rose Bowl's turn to host the BCS Championship game. Then I guess there would be no controversy, but it still would not justify the continuance of the BCS, even broken clocks are right twice a day.
As far as the first goal, an undisputed national champion, the only real (and thoroughly American) solution, is to have a play-off system. Just like they already do in Division Iaa, II, III, and NAIA. For some reason the extra games in those divisions are not a detriment to the "student athletes" and their studies (one of the most banal reasons given for not having a play-off system in Division I). A lot of Division I schools could also eliminate their "non-conference scrimages" where they have some lowly team come in, pay them some money and then obliterate them on the field so their backups get a chance to play. That would free up a one or two game sin the schedule for a lot of schools. This would mean scrapping, and I mean entirely scrapping, the bowl system as it currently exists.
But, if it is more important to have the bowl system retained, and I understand that this creates a lot of money for schools, which hopefully go to more than a coach's salary. If you keep the bowl system unchanged, then let's go back to the free for all coaches and other "human" polls and just live with it, remembering that once in a while BYU or even Boise State might be the national champion.
Whatever happens I hope that the BCS will be tossed onto the rubbish heap of bad ideas as soon as possible.
Posted by Narnia3 at December 6, 2004 4:37 PM | TrackBackI agree that the time has come to scrap the BCS system. It has done nothing to alleviate the confusion over who is truly the national champion. A playoff system certainly makes more sense (which is probably why it won't happen anytime soon). Even if we don't have a playoff in the near future, eliminating the BCS would be a step in the right direction.
Posted by: Daddypundit at December 15, 2004 6:43 AM