Break Up The BCS!
It’s a damn shame that Texas pulled it out last night; oh, I don’t doubt the accuracy of the official’s ruling but I would have liked Nebraska to have knocked them off. No, here’s the real crock of dung in this college football mess: Alabama, Texas, and Cincinnati, schools from the “traditional” conferences whose bosses run college football like their own personal cash-cow, have all finished the season with perfect 13-0 records…as have TCU and Boise State, schools from newer and smaller, less-traditional conferences. Five undefeated schools, yet we are supposed to accept that a committee whose power is vested in the larger schools will decide that Alabama and Texas are the only ones worthy of being crowned champion. Cincinnati’s left outside looking in, and to add further insult to injury, and to protect their precious “Big Conference” schools from getting upset, it now looks like the fix is in to have TCU play Boise in a bowl game, a game no one wants to see. I want TCU/Alabama and Boise/Texas, dammit. But goodness me, we can’t allow the possibility that one of our precious SEC or Big-12 teams gets knocked off by a dinky mid-major, now can we?
Enough with this Bowl crap.
You want to keep these silly bowls? Fine. Seed the top 8 teams amongst your precious traditional big four bowls, with the winners meeting the week after in two games to decide who will face-off in the true National Championship the week after that.
End of story, a real champion.
Fun, Life | Mr. Bingley | 
December 6, 2009 8:12 am
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I never understood why they went to the bcs system. The previous system worked exactly as well for a century.
We don’t need to have a single clear national champion. It’s kind of a fake concept anyway because there are too few games and too much variability in each team’s performance. That is, any college team can look pretty good or pretty bad depending on the week.
And the old way of having the AP poll and the UPI poll and various other organizations declaring their opinion of rankings worked fine and allowed for lots of debate.
Now everyone is stuck to one system that still can’t deliver, by design, a clear champion. We have the same result but more centralized control that favors conferences over independents, that favors established power schools over upstarts, and still is incapable of making anyone agree on who the champion should be.
And did I hear the other day that congress was investigating the bcs method? Lord help us, football will never be the same.
Skyler you are exactly right. This BCS is BS. The old bowl system worked great. They had games you wanted to see in places you wanted to go to and if there was no clear cut national champion so be it. The debate was the thing and is what made it so fun. If they don’t have a playoff it’s all BS and just proves it’s about the money for a few. The crap they spew about “academics” being compromised because of a playoff being at the same time exams are being administered is just too laughable to even consider. Seems the Division II and III or whatever they call them now can do it and I would bet those players probably have a higher grad rate than the Division I guys save a few schools that I don’t need to mention.
Arizona 21
USC 17
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Run the playoffs in January, no real compromise to academics at that time since finals are over.
January is too late, that would be a whole month off. If you have a playoff it should finish on Jan 1 or close to it. Way to go Zona!
FWIW, I think the right two teams are playing. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t be up to what I think or what you think or what a bunch of people think. My formula is different than yours, Mr B.
I say have 16 conference champions in a 4-week tournament. Let the conferences decide their champions any way they want. Those not in a conference now can join one, form one, or sit out. Do not seed the tournament. Have a blind draw and let the chips fall where they may. Assume nothing.
Let the bowls go back to what they originally were; reward to the teams for a good season and an economic shot in the arm to the host city.
I’d love a 16 team tourney, Rob.
It just burns my butt like a bad curry how they are having TCU play Boise.
And then they’ll say “oh but they didn’t play anybody“.
Dunno. The BCS bowls don’t start until January as it is. Run the non-BCS bowls as they are now constituted and then do the BCS playoff system in January on the days before or after the the NFL playoff games. Every other year you could have the BCS final game on the two week break weekend before the Superbowl.
Probably more exciting than the Superbowl anyway.
🙂
Alabama and Texas have already played 13 games, Yojimbo. Cut it back to 10 or 11 and quit scheduling out-of-conference. It would only add one more week, maybe two, and NCAA Division 1 football would determine their champion the same way every other sport does, including their own at the lower levels. In the ARENA.
Rob: But then you get back into the theorectical argument, and that’s all it is, about academics. Those out of conference games provide valuable funding to those smaller non-conference schools. Two years ago a smaller Texas school played the U of A here in Tucson(I forget their name, but I’m not getting old or anything, geez!). We only have a 57,000 seat stadium which was only about three-quarters full yet it provided the biggest payday for the athletic program for the year.
You can just imagine the money that Tumwater Tech gets when the agree to get crushed at one of the bigger stadiums like the Big Ten.
Bingster: Yeah, I’d like to see TCU and the Blue Carpet People play other BCS schools. I think the NCAA is afraid of that scenario so they matched them. I almost screamed when I heard that matchup.
The only reason I say to not schedule out-of-conference is so they can play more in-conference games (To better determine their champions) and the revenue the cupcakes get now could easily be offset by giving them a piece of the fantastic cash cow we are now creating and they’d get it without getting their brains beat in by an bigger, faster, stronger opponent in its home stadium.
Rob: If you could assure that I’d be all for it. The Appalachian St over Michigan probably happens only once every 50 years or so. Those 50-7(and it’s only 50 points because the team manager is playing quarterback by the third quarter) games don’t make for good television.