When I started this blog I wanted to avoid complaining about the sort of things that everyone else complains about. You can go anywhere to hear someone bitch about traffic or the weather. I consider it a point of pride that this is the number one place on the web to hear complaints about folding women's underwear. Every once in a while something comes along that is so heinous that I can't help myself from jumping on the bandwagon and spewing hatred at a vastly popular target. So allow me to become one of the millions of other people to say that the BCS is the worst thing to happen to America since prohibition.
Since it's inception there are two things that the BCS has been enormously successful at; making money and pissing people off. Not a year has gone by where a significant number of college football fans haven't been screaming for the end of the BCS. For every time the BCS has gotten something right (the epic Texas/USC game for example) there are at least 5 blunders. A lot of fans believe that college football needs a playoff to decide a national champion and I'm sure they have many good points. Personally I don't feel this way, frankly I never saw that much of a problem with the old system. Most years there was a team that ended up being better than all of the others and voting on a national champion wasn't that difficult. (Assuming they win their bowl game, regardless of who it would have been against, this year's LSU would have been a unanimous champion) A playoff would be able to eliminate all of the ambiguity about who the best team in the country was, well, that is if the right teams were even allowed to compete in the playoff.
Here is where the hypocrisy of the BCS is most evident. Due to the conference tie ins they have always shunned teams not from one of the 6 BCS conferences, most notably Boise St. Schools like Boise don't have a prayer of playing in the championship game unless the are undefeated and frankly they probably won't make one of the lesser BCS bowls either. This year Boise went 11-1 and their only loss was to TCU in a game that went right down to the last play of the game, when Boise missed a 39 yard field goal. That's it. That's their season. They get the honor of playing a 6-6 Arizona State team in the Las Vegas Bowl. It doesn't matter that they went to a "neutral field" and throttled Georgia. (You can easily make the argument that his was a far better road victory than anything Alabama had) It didn't matter that TCU is a damn good team in their own right. Once Boise, Houston and TCU chalked one in the loss column their chances for playing in a BCS bowl were eliminated. Why would we expect anything different when a playoff is created?
Excluding smaller conference teams from the overall championship is shameful but good points can be made about the easier schedules they play and I'm willing to concede this. Although I do get sick of hearing about how great the SEC (pronounced ESSSS EEEEEEEEE SEEEEEEEEE!) is. Have you taken a look at the bottom of that conference? Kentucky, Ole Miss, Miss St and Tennessee were some of the worst teams in the entire country this year. I'm pretty sure Miss St would have only won 2 or 3 games in the WAC and I guarantee Mt Union would blow them off the field. I digress. The thing that I really hate about the BCS is how the smaller conference schools are kept out of all the BCS games. This despite non BCS schools having a 5-2 record in BCS games, which is a little misleading since Boise St and TCU played each other a few years back. I would like to think that there was some devious reason that these schools were kept out of these games, that there was a secret cabal working against them out of fear that if the Boise States of the world rose up their football dominance would wain. That's not the reason though, at least not the primary reason. It all comes down to money.
The BCS always says that it's about making the best games possible and that is an outright lie. If it was Houston and Boise would be playing in BCS bowls this year. Instead Va Tech and Michigan got at large bids. Are you kidding me? Michigan and Va Tech are fine teams but let's be honest they would get blown off the field by Boise St. Case Keenum and Houston would put up around 90 against Michigan's horrific defense. So if the teams aren't being chosen because of superiority on the field there is only one explanation, money. Va Tech and Michigan travel extremely well and have hordes of well to do fans who will spend loads of money at the bowls.
This is the root of what makes the BCS such a sham. The old bowl system never pretended to be about anything other than making money. At the end of the day if you thought BYU was still a great team despite them not being invited to a big money bowl like the Rose Bowl then it was no problem to still vote for them in the final poll. The BCS introduced itself as a solution to the problem of the best teams not playing each other because of bowl affiliations, the whole purpose was to get the best teams playing each other. Yet they decided to keep a system where excuses could be made to get the teams that would draw the most people and make the most money while selling it to the people as something completely different. Nothing has changed. If the name on the front of the jersey says USC or Alabama there is a vastly greater chance you will be playing in a BCS bowl than if it says TCU or if your turf is blue. And that's not right. The only chance a team like Boise has is to quit it's conference and go barn storming. Play 8 road games a year against SEC teams. Force them to no longer have the power to ignore you. Of course this would never happen even if Boise had the balls to do it, no one would schedule them. Those non conference games are already reserved for La Tech and the Citadel.
It's time we just blow up the whole BCS. I don't care if we revert to the old system or start a playoff, I'm just sick and goddamn tired of the hypocrisy.
PS - Oklahoma St was hosed. I wanted to get to this point but I've rambled long enough, Alabama had their chance against LSU at home and blew it.
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