BCS Nonsense

Congratulations to the Houston Texans and Coach Gary Kubiak on their first win!!! 

I will write more later, but this BCS mess is driving me crazy!

The BCS is a bad joke. Not, because the championship game is a bad joke. Rather, it is a joke because the polls are a joke.

  We have been told for years that college football is the one sport in which every week is a playoff. Suffer one loss and you are done. Then, we were told that one late loss would end your chances of the vaunted National Championship. Okay, that sounds semi-logical in what passes for logic in college football. But wait; is this really how everything is determined? Ummm, NO!

    First of all, there is hypocrisy in the polls. Every poll argument begins and ends with its own poll as the evidence. For example, a team is ranked high because they beat another highly ranked team. Okay, who said that ranking was valid? I offer the famous USC. Their “quality wins” are vs. Arizona State and Ohio State. Arizona State has two wins and four losses. They have beaten Stanford and Northern Arizona. Wow! That makes Arizona State a “quality win”? Ohio State is six and one, but they can’t score.

     I will also offer Oklahoma. Their “quality wins” are against Cincinnati and TCU. Cincinnati’s big win is against Rutgers. Oh, I forgot, Rutgers is one and five. TCU’s big win is against Colorado State. Colorado State is three and three.

     Okay that all sounds confusing so let’s try to do a line by line comparison of common or comparative opponents.

USC (4-1) L                                       Utah (7-0) W

Oregon State (3-3)                               Oregon State (3-3)

So, USC has to win 3 more games in a row to have as many wins as Utah and lost to their one common opponent? USC is ranked 4 in one poll. Utah is ranked 13^th. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Let’s look at the logic of losing. In other words, if you lose to a team and THAT team loses someone else you would have another “loss by association.” So, USC has a 4 and one record. But, if Oregon State is better than USC, then let’s look at who Oregon State lost to- Stanford, Penn State, and UTAH-yes UTAH. So, USC’s true record would be 4-4. If you did the same with Florida, they would be 5-4 with losses also to Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and South Carolina.

           Now, I am sure that is a little bit of a stretch. But let’s look at the attitudes of the pollsters. Let’s assume Texas Tech wins its next two games and enters the Texas game at 8-0. By then, they would have also beaten a number 15 (or 16 depending on the poll) Kansas team. If Tech loses, the pollsters will say, “See, we told you they weren’t that good.” But, they would have played the number 1 team in the nation and that would be their only loss. So who would have a better loss? -  Tech losing to Texas or USC losing to Oregon State? Not even close!

           Let’s look at tradition. I have long believed that college polls are one year behind. They are voting on a name like Michigan, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, etc. I now believe that they are working decades behind. If we are going to go on the trend of being a proven program-then why is Boise State not in the top ten. No one remembers the great bowl game where they beat the great Oklahoma? What about Utah? They demolished a supposedly “superior because they are from a BCS conference” Pittsburgh team. The argument in the polls against BYU, Utah, Boise State, is that they don’t have that marquis win. But the perennial top ten teams won’t schedule them. And once the system begrudgingly forces these teams to play them in a bowl, they win and it’s too late.

In the last 2 years, Texas Tech is 15-4 and beat Oklahoma. In fact, Tech has beaten Oklahoma two of the last three seasons. Oklahoma is ranked ahead of them? BYU is 17-2 since the start of the 2007 season.  Boise State is 28-3 and beat Oklahoma since the start of the 2006 season. In the past few seasons, only Utah, Boise State, and Texas has finished undefeated. Only one even got to play in the national championship game. In every other sport in college and the professional ranks, EVERY team starts the year with the idea that they can win the championship. I don’t care about a playoff; I care about a polling system that excludes.

            There are currently nine undefeated teams in Division I. (I refused to call it that other name.) If we are lucky, controversy will abound when 4 undefeated teams remain after the end of the regular season-all from non-BCS conferences-Boise State, the Utah-BYU winner, Tulsa, and Ball State. There are only 2 at-large BCS bowl bids. Who will go? Remember when BYU won the National Championship? Did that ruin college football? Remember when NC State and then Villanova won the college basketball National Championship?

           Those days are gone as the rules have changed. That seems strange as the pundits claim that we have more parity than ever before. Hypocritical, yes.

I have a simple solution. Eliminate the idea of BCS conferences. It currently amounts to an extra division-so the other teams have no national title. Then, pollsters vote by record groups. The undefeated are voted for and ranked. Then the one-loss teams are voted for and ranked. Then the two-loss teams. . .  Finally, every conference MUST have a conference title game. They will never be eliminated, so just make it fair for everyone. I am sick of watching Ohio State get a free pass. Due to money and TV exposure, the big names will still play each other.

I will offer one other, very different solution for those of you that like the idea of a playoff system. Now this is an interesting idea. In basketball, they have conference challenges-the ACC-Big East Challenge, etc. Why not do the same in football? During the regular season, pair the conferences regionally - example, the Mountain West-Pac 10 Challenge, the Big East-Conference USA Challenge, etc. This would be done 5-weeks before anyone starts conference play. Then, ensure that all conferences have 2 divisions just like the SEC and the Big 12. They would all play conference title games and that would still leave a few weeks for rivalry games and other scheduling.

When there are multiple one loss teams there is no solution except a full-fledged playoff. This idea, however, would ensure that everyone has a chance and eliminate the elitist “you-are-a-nobody” polling.

Should Oklahoma State, Utah, BYU, Texas Tech, etc. be excluded? What do you think BCS stands for? BCS - Buffoons Crooks and Sharks

PS- Congratulations again to Coach Kubiak and the Houston Texans.