Bill Holden & BCS Madness
by Andrew Leigh
If you’re like me (and who isn’t?), you’ve been distracted today, and not very productive. (Well, that’s me every day, but I digress.)
Instead, you’ve been counting down the minutes to 5:15 PM (PST) tonight, when the BCS college football championship game will begin — on Fox, check your local listings. (There’s a Hollywood reference for you, thereby justifying a college football post on a Hollywood blog.)
As of this writing I don’t know who’s going to win (*cough* Florida *cough*). While I’m going to watch the game, I’m not as excited about it as I should be.
Partly that’s because I don’t really care for either Florida or Oklahoma. (I’m rooting for them both to lose.) But also because there are a bunch of other teams that equally deserve to play in the championship.
Off the top of my head, here are this year’s major one-loss teams, prior to the bowl season: Alabama, USC, Penn State, Texas, Texas Tech, Florida, and Oklahoma. And don’t forget Utah and Boise State, which both finished the season undefeated.
All of them (well, maybe not Boise State) deserved a shot at the national title. And guess what? In a playoff system, they would.
College basketball does it. Baseball does it. Hell, even water polo does it. So why don’t we have a college football playoff?
We actually do. Three of the four major college football divisions (Division III, Division II, and the division formerly known as IAA) hold playoffs
Only the most important division of all, the so-called BCS, is holding out, clinging to the antiquated bowl system like Norma Desmond refusing to give up on her acting career. (Another Hollywood reference, yay!)
Bowl TV ratings this year are down and have been declining for some time, which I think reflects the general frustration of the college football fan
Like William Holden in “Sunset Boulevard,” you want to grab the NCAA by its faded dressing gown and shout, “Wake up! The bowl audience left years ago.”
The Orange Bowl, for instance, pitted the ACC champion, 9-4 Virginia Tech, against 11-2 Cincinnati, the Big East’s title holder. Not surprisingly, the lackluster matchup scored the Orange Bowl’s lowest ratings since the BCS’s inception.
But imagine the ratings if that game was part of a playoff, with the winner going on to compete in the next round? Heck, imagine the ratings for all the playoff games. They’d make March Madness look like a minor neurosis.
The BCS was created to end the fiery debates that followed every season without a clear-cut victor. But by putting all of its eggs in the proverbial basket that is the BCS championship game, the BCS has made a gooey mess out of all the bowls. Yech.
During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama flung promises at his supporters like one of those T-shirt air cannons at a monster truck rally. >Amidst healing the planet and lowering the oceans, Obama said he’d also work to get a college football playoff system in place. Tell us it wasn’t just a tease, Mr. President-Elect, like Bill Clinton’s middle-class tax cuts.
Take it from me: if you want an easy re-election campaign, forget the economy and the war on terror. Install a college football playoff, and you’ll land states you’d otherwise never dream of — like Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia, even Utah. The west coast will become even more of a lock, and the swing states of Florida and Pennsylvania will swing decisively your way.
So, join me tonight in toasting the new college football champion. Even if at the end of the game, we still won’t know who it is.
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20 Comments
Pac-10 went 5-0 in the bowl series. Will the pundits *ever* give it the respect it deserves? Especially after Alabama was humiliated in their contest?
Texas barely beat Ohio State. USC crushed Ohio State, and crushed Penn State, who beat Ohio State. USC and Utah were ripped off. None of the ranked teams were punished as harshly as USC after it’s less-than-7-point loss to Oregon State.
I completely agree with this article. It’s a farce to put Oklahoma over Texas when they lost to them by 10 points! And not knowing if Utah or USC would beat Florida/Oklahoma is just a complete let-down to college football fans. The BCS system does not serve its fans well.
It’s an exhibition game. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yes! A playoff system would be fantastic.
It’d be March Madness on steroids.
And, no, the Pac-10 will never get any respect until it does something to deserves it.
Grrrrr. Wayfarer, them is fightin’ words. Too bad I’m such a pussycat. Still, pistols at dawn, my friend.
Wouldn’t that be a great way to thin out the liberal herd? Revive the tradition of the duel. They don’t even know how to hold a gun, let alone fire one.
“Violent ground acquisition games are a crypto fascist metaphor for nuclear war”. – Derick Lutz (Back to School) as played by Robert Downey Jr.
Hey, congratulations to Florida for winning a TAINTED football title. Yes, I’m a Utah fan, no, I don’t care how “tough” Florida’s, Oklahoms’s, Southern Cal’s, Texas’, Penn State’s schedules were, they all freakin’ LOST ONE! Two, in Penn State’s case. There’s only one team which FINISHED undefeated. (That means NO LOSSES, all you media boobs who can’t seem to recall there IS a Moutian Time Zone.) Fire all the yokels running the BCS, put real sports enthusiasts in there and set it up right!
John the Libertarian, just wondering how your transitive math computes Penn State very soundly spanking the Oregon State team that beat USC. You know, the Trojans, who played a flawless offensive home game– er, Rose Bowl and gave up 400+ yards in that alleged “crushing.” Whatever, really. Road games are a b for pretty much everyone except Utah, the glorious 2008 season’s in the rearview and August can’t get here quickly enough. At least pitchers and catchers report in a month.
Riverrunner,
the thing that irks me is that the BCS ranks all these teams on non-conference games, then turns around and doesn’t seed any worthy match-ups!
(Partly because the paper-tiger SEC is afraid of USC, and now Utah.)
Oklahoma lost to the 5th-ranked defense. What a joke the Big 12 turned out to be. Imagine if Florida were playing USC’s number-one defense. Tebow would’ve been held to 7 points. This system is a travesty. Don King should be holding court over the BCS, that’s how ridiculous it is.
All of the conferences participating in the BCS agreed to the rules. The University of Florida just happened to WIN the National Championship by playing by those rules. UF didn’t write them, they just did what they needed to do to claim the grand prize.
When schools like Utah align themselves with a BCS conference they will qualify to be condsidered for the National Championship. Until then, don’t blame the system. (and by the way… whining is so disgusting)
And you cannot blame the media boobs for not knowing where the “Moutian” Time Zone is. Many would be hard pressed to locate the “Moutian” part of America.
Eporvaznik,
USC didn’t show up to play in its first conference match against OSU. Look, Utah only beat them by 3. When USC wants to turn it on, it’s suddenly 24 points up. Then they slip into cruise control. Penn State didn’t earn 400 yards against USC, they were *allowed* 400 yards after getting the stuffin’ knocked out of them. Pete Carroll has to learn that this is a big hair show of running up style points and humiliating your opponents, NOT showing grace or sportsmanship.
All I want to see is USC or the Utes against the Gators. That would me make me happy, m’kay?
John the Libertarian,
EPorvaznik is right. USC didn't let up, and if fact all the announcers stated they wouldn't because they never do. Penn State just played much better and didn't make as many mistakes the second half. The first half was the worst they played all year in terms of mental mistakes and unforced errors.
But he's also right that a loss is a loss and USC won that game outright, exploiting some serious weaknesses in Penn States pass coverage. I just wouldn't call it a "crush"ing loss.
I agree with you that going 5-0 in bowl games is a big statement. Just like the Big 10's record in bowls games is an indictment against that division.
But on to the topic of the article, playoff system – YES!
I couldn’t possibly be less interested (well, maybe if it was Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi giving a speech on how they thought the government should be run). I stopped caring about Bowl games 4 or 5 years ago. I remember eagerly waiting for New Year’s day, so I could park in front of the TV for 12 hours watching football and arguing who should be #1. Now about a week after New Year’s, we get the championship game on a Thursday night between two teams that may or may not even deserve to be playing in the game.
I owe the College Presidents a debt of gratitude. Now I find much better things to do with my time than to watch their games (and see their sponsors). Thanks guys, I appreciate the help.
The BCS isn’t perfect, granted. Today, Texas, Utah and USC all have a complaint that they should be # 1, not Florida. But then you see the problem with a playoff. You’d need at least two more rounds of games to determine the champion. Did you see the number of players being carted off last night? And some of them may have career ending injuries. Can you imagine what two more games would be like? To say nothing of that little thing called classes.
Now someone would say OK -start with 4, 8, 16 teams and hold the playoff so the Bowl games reduce the number of playoff games. 4 would be too few obviously – you’re at 4 now, after all the games. 16 would be too many – how do you discriminate 14,15,and 16 from 17,18 and 19? Computers, Polls? They will complain, even if they have little chance of winning it all. Still the point is to be fair. So the reasonable number would be 8. Right now the only way you could have an 8 team playoff is the six major conference champions(ACC, Big East, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Pac 10 and two other teams). Those two other teams would be sticklers. This year it would be hard to exclude Alabama and Texas, both 12-1. That means Utah doesn’t make the playoffs. (If you include the Mountain West as one of your conferences, you leave little room for independents or other good teams- someone will get the shaft – and do you know they are really better than the ACC champion if you leave a major out?).
Ironically, Utah probably wouldn’t have made an 8 team playoff this year (even if they might have been better than some conference champs- but how would you tell that?) In the final analysis they will finish higher than they would have in a playoff system that excluded them. A playoff would have the same problem the current system has – someone will make a claim of being left out.
In addition great games like Texas/TexasTech, Penn State/Iowa and Alabama/Florida would be less meaningful because the loser would still likely get into a playoff. USC might have won this year, and some other years with a playoff, true, but a playoff would have meant their loss to Oregon State would have meant nothing, because they would still get into the playoffs. Try telling the thousands of Oregon State fans who swarmed the field after their victory it meant nothing.
Was Oklahoma/ florida the best game? Maybe, maybe not but it was certainly in the class photo. A playoff system wouldn’t necessarily be fairer or have the two best teams (depending on upsets and pairings). It would still be the best team on a single day.
“paper tiger SEC” You must be joking.
Much has been mentioned elsewhere about the PAC-10 going 5-0 in the bowls this year. Sorry, the SEC had 6 victories, finishing 6-2 – the most representation of any conference. So Alabama doesn’t show up in their bowl game against Utah. Makes sense. They had no chance of winning the national title, but Utah did … so they out-played ‘Bama.
Then South Carolina lost. So 2 SEC teams but it still has more bowl victories than the PAC-10. And what’s that number again … 3 national title won by SEC teams in the last 3 years. How many we won by the PAC-10 in the last 3 years? Oh yeah. None.
Paper tiger, indeed!
“Allowed.” Yeah, with the starters USC (smartly) played the whole game, OK. A loss is a loss, but Penn State’s implosion in the 2nd quarter didn’t help USC at all, huh? All right, all focus now on next season and hoping Penn State doesn’t lose Maybin to the NFL.
>> The BCS system does not serve its fans well.
The BCS wasn’t built for the fans, silly. It was built *solely* to make some folks (and companies) extremely rich. Sadly, it is doing that so it won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
BTW….Texas fan here. Disgusted….but not enough to throw a fit.
I’m going to say something controversial here. Probably the most controversial thing that’s going to be said on this site: I don’t actually want a playoff. I know every college football fan is supposed to hate the BCS and long for an 8 team playoff (which will almost always leave undefeated teams like Utah and Boise State out in the cold, incidentally, anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves), but I don’t.
Tell me, at what point was it decided that a single-elimination tournament was the only possible way to determine the best team? Single-elimination tournaments are far too dependent on luck, especially when the elimination condition is a single game rather than a series. So I applaud college football for being the only sport with the courage to think outside the box.
That being said, the BCS is clearly broken. It obviously got things wrong this year (Utah was 1, then Florida, USC, Texas, Oklahoma). I have some ideas on what would fix it, the two big ones being first to schedule some better out of conference games, and the second to make the championship non-binding. We get an ambiguous answer, but so what? Embrace the doubt!
A 16-team playoff would work. First, restrict the number of regular season games to 11.
There are 12 major conferences. Each conference should be organized like the SEC (notice the number of SEC teams winning national champtionships … gee, wonder if conference structure has anything to do with it?). This means there is a conference championship game at the end of the regular season. The conference champion goes into the Sweet 16.
There are 4 at large that could be filled by the teams ranked in the AP/BSC/USA-Coaches top 16 but weren’t conference champions. (Oh – and to appease the NCAA nitwits, maybe reserve one spot for Notre Dame if they merely get 6 wins.)
Thus you get your 16 teams. All others go into normal bowl games, so they get a 12th game. Playoff teams end up with between 13 and 15 games, which is only 1 more than what UF and others had this year.
There! Problem solved. The NCAA can name the championship game after me for solving their dilemma – The National Championship Ed Bowl.
I am a huge college football fan in the Upper Midwest and here is my take.
The BCS is broken and should be eliminated or fixed. I watched all of the “BCS Bowls” and the common denominator was either one or two of the teams was either rusty, flat or both. The Sugar Bowl was the best game. The Fiesta Bowl was good but not great. Same with the National Championship game last night. The Rose and Orange both were iffy. Therein lies my question, “How can a team(s) be sharp with anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks from its last game?” Some kind of playoff is needed in addition to some continuity from the last game to get the best and highest quality football.
Utah and USC impressed me the most in this bowl season (and I hate USC). Utah looked very SEC like in handling Alabama. USC’s receivers destroyed Penn State. I don’t know about anyone else but it would sure be interesting to see the height of the USC receivers vs. the speed of the Florida secondary.
Ed, you are on the right track but why not take the top 16 teams as rated in the polls. Or, the champions of the “BCS” conferences plus the top ten teams as rated in a “non champions” poll. The first round would be played at the home stadiums of the higher seeds. The quarterfinals, semifinals and final would then be played at the major bowls. Any teams that had good seasons but not qualified for the playoff would fill in the other bowls. I like your idea of shortening the regular season to accommodate a playoff because there are too many Florida vs. The Citadel type match-ups in a season. No disrespect to the great institution of The Citadel, however, its football team does not belong on the same field as the Florida Gators.
Ultimately though we have to get away from a system where a computer decides which two 11-1 teams out of eight will play each other in a National Championship game four weeks after they have played their last games. It should be decided on the field and through a playoff type system. It would be nice on New Years Day to see a doubleheader that consists of two semifinal games with true meaning. Stadiums would be full and TV ratings through the roof.
Finally, I believe to get a playoff implemented the current cast of characters has to be changed. The college presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors and the football coaches are the biggest obstacles to a playoff system. An independent “commission” with input from the conference commissioners, athletic directors and football coaches would probably be the only way to get something done. Thats the hard part.
I am a Wisconsin fan and the Badgers had no business being in a bowl game this year as no 7-5 or 6-6 team should. The Big Ten was down with a 1-5 record in the bowls. I believe the Big Ten has some catching up to do to compare to the SEC. A start would be splitting the 11 teams into two divisions and having a Big Ten Championship Game.
Just some thoughts!
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