BCS Myths

In the category of debunking the "greatest regular season in sports" let's look at some of the gems in the first week of the 2009 season:

North Dakota State v Iowa State
South Carolina at North Carolina State
Troy at Bowling Green
Villanova at Temple
Coast Carolina at Kent State
North Texas at Ball State
Eastern Kentucky at Indiana
Utah State at Utah
Oregon at Boise State

Beyond Oregon-Boise State and perhaps Utah-Utah State does anyone care about any of these games? Remember, it's the "greatest" regular season in sports so obviously all of these teams have a shot right?

Wrong. Even if Iowa State were to go undefeated and win the Big 12, their chances of playing for the national title are zero. The same is true with all of these teams. We already know what happened to Utah after they went undefeated. Compare that to any sport where there is a playoff where EVERY team at the outset of the season has a shot at playing for the title. Knowing that your team has absolutely no chance of even playing for the title regardless of how many games is not fun.

As I listened to Eric Kuselias fill in for Colin Cowherd this morning, I heard Eric claim that Utah took the money of an automatic bid because "sometimes you have to choose between paying the rent and your principles". The problem I have with that sentiment is that it dooms us from ever actually fixing the problem. If the system is so corrupt that any noisemakers can have their silence bought then we will never get rid of the glaring inequitiy and insanity of the BCS. It is the reason that Congress had to break up Standard Oil because no one else had enough power to do it.

Furthermore, to say that Utah now "has a chance" at the title is a laughable. Just because they are going to get a BCS bid does not mean they are going to get a chance at the championship. All that means is that they'll get a higher paying bowl. They will still be snubbed for being in a weak conference. In short, they took Monty's offer and didn't get the goat but didn't get the car either and we the audience are stuck wearing the donkey outfits.

Another common argument I'm hearing about Utah is that they "should have been happy" with the bowl they got. They should be happy with a BCS bowl. This is akin to saying that Rosa Parks should have been happy to even be on the bus. She should have been happy to be "allowed" to walk to school or even go to school. What rubbish. Trying to gloss over manifest inequity with "you should be happy with what crumbs we gave you from the table" is conceitedness a outrance (thanks Mr. Buckley).

As I have said on many occassions, there are no reasonable arguments against a playoff. Every other college and professional sport does it, so can the FBS or whatever they call Division I these days.

As I listened to Eric Kuselias fill in for Colin Cowherd this morning, I heard Eric claim that Utah took the money of an automatic bid because "sometimes you have to choose between paying the rent and your principles". The problem I have with that sentiment is that it dooms us from ever actually fixing the problem. If the system is so corrupt that any noisemakers can have their silence bought then we will never get rid of the glaring inequitiy and insanity of the BCS. It is the reason that Congress had to break up Standard Oil because no one else had enough power to do it.

Furthermore, to say that Utah now "has a chance" at the title is a laughable. Just because they are going to get a BCS bid does not mean they are going to get a chance at the championship. All that means is that they'll get a higher paying bowl. They will still be snubbed for being in a weak conference. In short, they took Monty's offer and didn't get the goat but didn't get the car either and we the audience are stuck wearing the donkey outfits.

If we take the way back machine to the origins of the college bowl game, we find that it was a gimmick to draw people to Pasadena and generate more interest in the Rose Parade. It was akin to hat day at a baseball game. The only reason good teams were chosen is that an 11-0 Michigan team would draw better than an 0-11 team. The "reward" was really saying "you have played well enough to generate enough fan interest that we think you will fill seats at the game and make us money". In other words, even if you played the toughest season of any team in the nation and went undefeated, if there was no buzz about you, you were worse than a team with a couple of losses but more fan interest. To show you how little people cared about "a reward for a good season", because of Michigan's 49-0 drubbing of Stanford in 1902, the next year they switched to chariot racing replacing one gimmick for another. That lasted for more than a decade before they decided to return to the gimmick of football. During the 1930's, the "tradition" was to use exhibition games for things like charities.

The only "tradition" about the bowls is that they were always about making money and never related to rewarding teams. That is why changing the system is so difficult because while most intelligent people have moved past the desire to watch exhibition and onto the desire to watch real competition, the individual bowl sponsers will only do it if they personally will make more money. Even if a system is put in place that makes more on average for teams and game sponsers, if some of the old bowl sponsers personally will not make any more, they have enough power to kill the idea. Because the individual bowl sponsers and conferences have so much influence into any change, the only way change is going to happen is with an outside entity forcing the NCAA to put a real tournament into place. Thus, while the idea of Congress interferring with how colleges determine a football champion seems pedantic, it is likely the only way that we'll ever get rid of the bowls and the BCS.