Bowl Championship Silliness - Part Deux

As you might remember, I expressed some rather pointed opinions about college football and the BCS back in early December. Well, it's BCS bowl week at last, and quite frankly, I really don't care. I'm a Notre Dame fan, so I haven't had any real rooting interest in the college football season since about mid-September. So I have no real investment in the outcome of any of these games. My primary concern is to be provided with compelling, and entertaining football, and once again, this year has convinced me that the BCS is basically powerless to even provide that on a consistent basis.

Take for instance, the Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl was blessed with an automatic hold on USC as the Pac 10 champion. USC is the marquee program in college football right now, and after some midseason struggles was thought by many to be playing the best of football of any team out there by the end of the season. Whether that's true or not is a matter of opinion. Furthermore, since the Rose Bowl lost the Big 10 champion (#1 Ohio State), and thus had the first pick from amongst the remaining teams who were eligible for the BCS. Sitting out there was Georgia, who along with USC was widely regarded to be playing the best football in the country after a couple of early season losses. No brainer, right? Nope. According to BCS rules, since the Sugar Bowl lost the SEC champion to the national title game (LSU), the Rose Bowl was not allowed to pick another SEC team unless the Sugar Bowl consented. And then, rather than grab another compelling team like a West Virigina, the Rose Bowl decided to preserve the traditional Pac 10/Big 10 matchup by picking Illinois, a 3 loss team that was at the low end of the BCS eligibility rankings. So, instead of an incredibly compelling matchup between USC and Georgia, we were all blessed with two absolute yawners, as USC blew apart Illinois and Georgia routed Hawaii, who, perfect record aside, had no business going to a BCS bowl. The wonder that was last year's Boise State/Oklahoma game aside, the rule that forces the BCS to take a team from a non-BCS conference if they finish in the top 12 of the final BCS rankings is going to do more harm than good to the BCS in the long term, in my opinion. Lastly, the Orange Bowl, for reasons I can't begin to comprehend, chose to take a Kansas team that had beat exactly no one all year, over the Missouri team that had given them their only loss at the end of the regular season, giving them a Va Tech v. Kansas matchup that has all the intrigue of watching paint dry. It may end up being a great game, but I guarantee you, no one not associated with either of the schools involved is getting excited by it. So, of the 4 non-title game BCS bowls, exactly one, the Fiesta Bowl between WVU and Oklahoma, featured a truly interesting matchup.

This is the end result of a system where the parties sit down and do their best to provide equal protection to everyone's financial interests, rather than focusing on putting the best overall product on the field and allowing everyone to benefit from that. The rules are setup to make sure each bowl (the bowls being individual players in the system) gets one prime drawing card as often as possible, and to make sure the 6 BCS conferences are treated roughly equally from year to year.

As I said in my previous entry, I'm not really offended by the lack of a playoff, I'm bothered by the hypocrisy I hear coming from those who are BCS proponents. However, if we're going to be given this system, is it really that much to ask that it be designed to provide compelling matchups more often than not?

As an aside, I have gotten a laugh or two at the hypocrisy of some BCS proponents in the media who have been pushing the idea that either USC or Georgia, or both, should have gotten a shot at the title game, since they are playing the best football right now. One of the key arguments that people in favor of the BCS make is that it makes the regular season the playoffs, and makes every game important. Suggesting that team A should go over team B simply because team A is playing better at the end of the season completely invalidates that argument, because it makes the games at the end of the season more important. USC had a terrible loss to Stanford, and lacked any real signature wins. Georgia lost two games early, and didn't even play in the title game of their own conference. If there was a playoff, they'd probably have gotten a shot, but the simple fact is that they didn't earn their way into the top 2 spots with their entire regular season, and for a BCS proponent to give them bonus points for the way they finished is laughable at best.