I like football. Not exactly your garden-variety, Earth-shattering confession. Perhaps I should ellaborate. I enjoy watching football. In my younger days, I used to enjoy playing some sandlot games at parties, largely because as a 6’4″, 200+ lb. guy, I was fast enough to knock a quarterback or two on their lower posterior regions. Never played ball in High School (broken bones being a potential career-ender for musicians) or college (never took it seriously, nor did I go a school that had an NCAA team). Nonetheless, I enjoy watching the game, but you’d hardly call me a fanatic. I follow the Cowboys and UT, and try to keep up with LSU, and that’s about it. Watched the Fiesta Bowl tonight, and was struck by a couple of things…
- Colt McCoy is a pretty amazing quarterback.
- It was a trip, watching Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer sitting next to each other in the Fox studio, and having to pretend not to loath each other.
- The second half of the game was really exciting (the first half, not so much).
- UT deserves to be playing for the National championship.
- The BCS system is a complete joke.
Because of what can only be called an arbitrary and capricious glitch in the BCS computer methodology, UT was cheated of a chance to play for the title. Instead, Oklahoma (a team UT beat handily) will play against Florida. Did we determine this the way the pros do, with a playoff ladder? Nope. Not in college ball. But the college basketball guys have no problem with playoffs. From the NCAA tournament, to the Sweet 16, down to the Final Four, basketball has the right idea. Which begs the question, why in the HELL can’t we have playoffs for the national championship? There is an answer. Actually, there are several. Pick the one or ones you like:
- Tradition
- Bowl Organizations
- A Corrupt NCAA
- Big School Athletic Programs
A lot of this is because of the “we’ve always done it this way” nonsense. Most of it is because the Lords of the Bowl Organizers don’t WANT a playoff system, since they rotate the big game between the “Tier One” games. Or something like that. They keep jiggering the system so nobody will really know what’s going on. Then there’s the NCAA – a group who has a vested interest in preserving the status quo, and of course the big schools themselves, who like the money they “earn” from their team’s bowl game apperances.
Forget for a moment that a playoff system would be fair, and would crown the BEST team, rather than the one that some computer speculates is the best. Forget that a playoff system would remove all ambguity from the bowl games, removing the ability for a team that didn’t get to the big show (say, UT) make a legit claim to being the best. The problem is that a real playoff system would make the games a lot better, without destroying the bowl games.
In a playoff system, each bowl game would be a semi-final (the tier one bowls) or a quarter-final (the second tier bowls). Why wouldn’t that be enough to get a crowd? You’d get MORE football, and a REAL champion.
The problem is, I have no idea how to make this happen. None of the stakeholders in the system are willing to make this kind of change, and until fans insist on it, nothing will happen. So once again, we will have a National Champion who will hear a large part of the country whispering behind their backs, believing that they’ve won under false pretenses.
Nothing more to say on this, I suppose. But I sure wish we could ditch the BCS and have a real playoff system.
Hook ’em Horns!
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