Why I HATE The BCS
It’s not often I use the word ‘hate’ in my vernacular. It is a word that is typically reserved for the parts of life that impact humanity in adverse ways, or to describe the rawest of emotions we feel when a severe injustice has been done to us.
But I hate the BCS. I really do.
The BCS–Bowl Championship Series–is the selection system that decides which teams play each other in which bowl games at the end of the college football season. You’d think that it would be in the best interest of a system like this to pit the best teams in the country against one another: #1 plays #2, #3 plays #4, #5 plays #6 and so on. But the BCS is NOT about competition.
It’s about money.
Now, I love money as much anyone else. I get that college football is big money. But what burns my ass is how the #2 team in the nation–Oklahoma State–can go on the road with their Heisman candidate quarterback, Brandon Weeded, and lose to unranked Iowa State in double over time. Weeden–again, a Heisman Trophy candidate–threw THREE interceptions, all in clutch time with the game on the line. And in the end, the underdog prevails. Weeden and the Cowboys should be referred to a JOKE-lahoma State and be booted from the Top 10, but instead, are snuggled up at #5 and #6 in the AP and USA Today polls respectively (The AP polls are voted on by the Associated Press sports writers, and the USA Today polls are voted on by the college coaches). By the way, we can also refer to JOKE-lahoma State’s in-state brethren, Oklahoma as CHOKE-lahoma since they continue to show their true colors and lose to lower-ranked teams when winning matters most.
It is worth noting that the USA Today poll is comprised of coaches votes; when does a Division 1 college football coach have time to sit and watch a full game by any of these teams, unless that team happens to be an opponent their own team is to face? How ‘educated’ are the college coaches, really? How can these coaches vote with any certainty, other than reading the newspaper write ups on Sunday morning?
Moving on…
As we peruse the rankings we see the Oregon Ducks, after surrendering a second loss of the year, the most recent one at home against unranked USC, still sitting at #9 in both polls. Wow. After losing twice in one season, Oregon should be Or-ee-GONE!
There are some legitimate one-loss teams in the Top 10 that deserve a shot at a BCS game: Alabama, Arkansas, Stanford and Boise State all have good reason to play in BCS bowls.
Boise State being among the best of these will likely not even get a shot a BCS game despite being #7 in the AP and #8 in the USA Today poll. And all for losing by one point to a tough TCU squad on a missed field goal. Just like Oregon…who will likely play in a BCS game, despite losing twice. When Boise throttled Georgia in Week 1, the “experts” called it a lucky win against the bottom-feeders of the SEC; now Georgia is playing for the SEC Title. For the record, Boise State has lost three–3–games in four years. Georgia, Oregon, and Oklahoma may lose three games this season.
Don’t forget Houston. Houston? Yep, they sit at #8 and #7 in the AP and USA Today polls. And why not? I mean, they’ve put up an impressive 11-0 record over perennial powerhouses like North Texas, Georgia State, and the oh-so-impressive escape from Louisiana Tech. Yes, I’m being sarcastic.
My point is this: if there was a real system that pitted these teams against each other in head-to-head match ups we’d actually see what Houston was made of. We could see a team like Boise State who has owned Oregon for the past few years prove its worth, and perhaps match up against arguably the best team in college football, the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Instead, we just may see a rematch of the SEC Title game as LSU hangs in (the only unbeaten team remaining in the top 5) and will like play The Tide for all the marbles.
Yep, this is the system we have, and the lazy mentality of “We can only work with what we’ve got” will keep college football on its current path. Why not keep the big money bowl games, and use them as the top slots at the end of a tournament, similar to how college basketball is run? You could actually see the eventual National Champion play in the Rose and Fiesta Bowls, for instance, on their march to the Title Game. The revenue would be huge.
But more importantly, the college football landscape could drop the excuses as to why a non-BCS Conference team “doesn’t deserve” to play a perennial BCS team because of “strength of schedule”. We’d finally see who the best team in college football truly is, as opposed to the ones a computer (and a bunch of over-worked coaches and myopic journalists) decides should compete for the trophy.
It is time for a change.
