BCS Bustin': The Week in Realpolitik

"You lost to OU earlier!"

Yeah. In Norman. Let's see WVU and the cutesy offense of the year go into Norman. Big 12 Championship isn't in Norman. We're better than we were then, they're worse. But that's cool. Everyone keep sipping the Kool-Aid of a team from the Big East that lost to South Freaking Florida and OSU. That's cool. We're happy to go in as the most underrated #1 in history.

Much like Kansas, it doesn't bother us any.

LSU is a terrific team. But it can't close. It just can't. When it absolutely has to get it done, it folds. And allowing a bazillion yards doesn't speak well for that dominating defense.

I'm pulling hard for Missouri to come through because a WVU - OSU BCS title game would match two teams with pretty shoddy resumes.  WVU has a win over the #23 BCS team and a loss to #21.  OSU is not much better with a win over #18 and a loss to #15.  And that is all.  I would have to boycott such a matchup.  The best strategy this year (and probably in general) is to play in a BCS conference without a title game and schedule a bunch of out of conference patsies.

The neutral college football fan should be lamenting Oregon and LSU's falls from grace (Or cheering for an OSU vs. WVU debacle, hoping for some reform to the system).

Go Mizzou!

I think it would be difficult for tOSU or WFV to make such a claim.  That might be the "official" result but discerning observers  would do well to give this result little credence.  

SMQ is quite right in what I take to be his intimation that a win by tOSU over a healthy USC would give them a superior claim to being "National Champion" than a win over WFV, BCS blessing or no.  

However, a tOSU win over USC combined with an Ilinois win over Florida in the Captial One, and completed by a Missouri win over WFV (which would necessarilly be preceeded by a win over OU at a neutral site - avenging their only loss, at OU) might indeed render the Tigers Mythical National Champions.  

The reason for opposing a playoff are not new but remain compelling (if not quite venerable):  1) maintaining the significance of the regualr season, and 2) the tradition of the bowls.  The second argument is of course more of less compelling depending on the extent to which one views tradition as a particuarly appealing aspect of CF.

Moreover, I'm somewhat dubious that a playoff would always definitively determine the best team in a given year.  As Lou Holth so often says you get a different team every week.  On this point the 2007 season supports his postion in a notably powerful way.  Injuries, emotions and other factors might yield a different result but on this point than the BCS or the polls but not necessarilly a better one.  

True, the championship would have the merit of being "decided on the field" and that would seem especially attractive this year when there are no clearly superior teams and a decision on the field would yield a result at least as good as any other.  Most years, however, we can with some clarity identify the superior teams and a thorough evaluation subsequent to a compelling bowl matchup would often yield at least as valid a result of the said playoff while retaining the intensity of the regular season and the tradion of the bowls.  

None of this should be construed as a defense of the BCS, which has the notable appeal of both diminishing the significance of the non "1/2" matchups and, especially with the advent of the "National Championship Game", trashing an important part of the very tradition which constitues a principal argument against a palyoff.   Prior to this advent the system worked perfectly, I would argue, precisely 1 of 9 times.  The USC/Texas matchup in the ACTUAL Rose Bowl was in my view superior to any alternative, even say a 4 team plaoff which would have inolved No. 3 Penn State, a triple overtime winner over 5 loss Florida State.  

In general a 4 team playoff incorporating the bowls would seem the best way to go.  It would have the merit of preserving virtually the entire value of the regular season as well as the bowl tradition.  This might be suboptimal in years such as 2005 where we had two teams which pretty clearly stood head and shoulders above the crowd or 2007 where we really have no clue, but over time the right balance would be struck.  

Let me add this.. I graduated from Penn State but I was born a tarheel fan.  I've heard the praise and adulation of March Madness all my life and I hate it.  I hate how college basketball decides their champion.  Go 20-12 in a BCS conference, .500 in conference record piss around for 4 months, sneak into the tourney, win 6 games(less than 1/5 of the overall schedule) and you crown yourself champion.

How great would college football be if every year a 6-5 team with a 4-4 conference record showed up in January.. won 4 games and crowned themselves nat'l champ.  Awesome.

Secondly, the MNC isn't the end all goal.  Sure its great for the media and leads to discussion but any Big 10 fan will tell you their goal is to win the conference and play in the Rose Bowl.  Prior to the SEC championship game, that was the goal in that conference.  

There are so many problems with a playoff I can't even begin to count them.. You'd have to add auto births for small conference champs(Sun Belt, MWC, etc.) doing that adds at least 6 teams to the mix that are just bad.  As soon as you do that you need to increase the field to 16 teams.  So the difference between your #10 team and your #11 team(after auto births) is the difference between playing for a national title and playing in a bowl that won't exist in 4 years.  Umm.. Yeah.. Fuck that shit.

The media(who sucks btw) advocates a playoff because rational comparison of teams and making an actual determination of who the 2 best teams in the country are via watching the games and looking at actual data is too difficult for their liberal arts degree carrying minds to accept.  

Look, the beauty of the system now is: you have 2 teams playing for a mythical national championship, you have multiple polls that can split the title on a whim, you have BCS games that represent a major step in the history of a program, and you have bowl games providing a destination for alumni and a celebration of the grind and the parity of college football today.  People may trash the humanitarian bowl but at the end of the day its a bowl just like anything else.  The #3 team is going to play in one and is not going to be crowned a national champ just like the #48 team.  I don't feel that way about the NIT tournament.  Either you are in a bowl or you are not, or you are in the Big Dance or you might as well be home.

And if you feel wronged by the system.. fuck it.  Throw up a banner celebrating a 12-0 season.  The 1994 Nittany Lions went 12-0, weren't pushed at all, crushed Oregon in the Rose Bowl, finished #2 behind Nebraska.  Nebraska was the champ, who cares?

The other added beauty of college football is that no matter what happens on the football field you can always look that irate Big 12/SEC fan in the eye and say, " I'm sick of discussing this around your 20 year old pickup truck, I'm going to finish this discussion behind the wheel of my Benz."

As for one playoff scenario that I find very appealing, Dan Wetzel of Yahoo lays a 16 team playoff out, including what that would look like this year, assuming the currently favored teams win this weekend.  Link here:
http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news;_ylt=AsHyFMatQmwwXDayNHMEzWE5nYcB?slug=dw-playoff112707&prov= yhoo&type=lgns

I've always been bothered by the BCS and how it presets the "superior" conferences, which essentially becomes a self-fulfilling mandate.  This 16 playoff format would do away with that and maintain the integrity of the regular system.  It may not be perfect but it's miles ahead of the mess we have now.

Btw, what's with the Benz comment?  I guess it's nice for you to have one but I personally couldn't give a shit.