Each year I enjoy a college football season until the end of the final weekend. It’s like watching a movie that you’re really liking, thinking might be worth the $10…then comes the stupid twist at the end.
The final BCS standings are college football’s stupid twist.
They say college football has the most meaningful regular season. Well, it also has the most meaningless postseason.
We have two undefeated teams going to the BCS National Championship game (surprise, the two with the most money and tradition). As Texas slipped by Nebraska, it “earned” the right to play Alabama.
And this time, the two BCS busters have been paired against each other. So, we will have no David vs. Goliath, no idea if TCU or Boise State is better than its BCS-conference counterparts. But we do get the mouth-watering matchup of Georgia Tech and Iowa in the Orange Bowl…
Let’s get this straight: three teams that won all of their games have absolutely no chance at winning a title. Doesn’t something about this strike you as wrong? Would this ever be possible in any other sport?
There better be some anger about this. But there probably won’t be. Because the teams left out are TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State. I guarantee you if it were Ohio State, USC and Notre Dame that were undefeated and left out of the championship game, there would be some ire.
Supporters will say we have two big-name, traditional championship powers in the title game and they’re both undefeated, so the system worked.
Well, that’s flat out wrong. Once again, this system will leave us with more questions than answers. Tell me why Texas is better than TCU, Cincinnati or Boise State. Two of those are non-BCS schools but Cincinnati won the Big East. Why is another undefeated BCS conference champion not even realistically considered?
It’s not like the Big XII was a far-and-away superior conference this season. It finished the season with two ranked teams. Texas played no one of merit in its out-of-conference schedule. TCU scheduled and beat Clemson. Boise State beat Oregon. Cincinnati played at Oregon State and won. All of those opponents, eight or more win BCS schools.
Texas’ toughest out-of-conference opponent? UCF, in Austin. That’s a joke. The only two ranked teams Texas beat were Oklahoma State and Nebraska.
TCU beat BYU and Utah. Cincinnati beat West Virginia, Pittsburgh and Oregon State. Cincinnati beat more teams that finished over .500 than Texas and the Longhorns had an extra game.
This is why I hate the BCS. It rewards being favored in a poll based on preseason hype made three months ago and simply living up to your hype. If you’re not in the preseason top 25, good luck. You not only have to win all your games but you need the big names ahead to fail. So, a Cinderella national champion in the BCS is pretty much impossible.
You can make a case for Texas going to the national championship. They’re a good team that went undefeated. The problem with this system is that name always wins out. There was no doubt that Texas would go to Pasadena, which would be fine if three other teams also hadn’t lost a game.
In eleven years, the BCS has produced two good national championship games. That’s less than 20%. That kind of approval rating gets you kicked out of office.
College football’s postseason has 34 games; only one means anything. ONE out of 34.
I know it’s not happening soon but kicking this money-driven, greed-ridden BcS to the curb for some sort of playoff is the only way to determine a real champion. Every other major American sport has some form of one; to maintain its respectability, college football must follow that lead.
Connor I totally agree with you on this! Teams, like Texas, should be penalized for not scheduling tougher out-of-conference opponents. It's also unfair to reward teams that play in a conference championship game. Is the BCS selection committee so naive to not realize that a road win over Pitt, a #15 team that was VERY talented this year, or a neutral field win over a #22 team that had to win 8 straight just to make it to the conference championship. TCU not only beat ranked opponents, but dominated them. They've beaten 7 teams in a row by more than 30 points each, including Utah and BYU who were both #16 at the time. As far as the matchups, they're pathetic. Like you said, Iowa vs. Georgia Tech? That's supposed to be an interesting matchup? If I'm Cincinatti, TCU, or Boise State, I'd seriously consider declining the BCS bid. Show the selectors that teams won't put up with this every year, maybe if you finally send a strong message, someone will listen.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely! It’s ridiculous. Boise State has gone unbeaten in two straight regular seasons. It beat Oregon at home and on the road. Yet last year the Broncos were left out of the BCS and this year they were low man on the undefeated totem pole. Next year, they play Virginia Tech and Oregon State, so if they go undefeated and still don’t make it, I don’t know if they ever will.
ReplyDeleteBoise was 16, TCU was 17 and Cincinnati was unranked in this season’s preseason poll. Texas was 2, Alabama 3. The underdogs never had a chance at bypassing them. There’s no reason why Boise shouldn’t be top 5 in the 2010 preseason poll. It loses just five seniors and returns all its key cogs. But you still have schools like Ohio St. scheduling all of its out-of-conference games at home (only one against a BCS school) and Texas playing Rice, Wyoming and Florida Atlantic. Even better would be to just remove these agenda-setting preseason polls that are made before games are even played.