-Jeff Brown
My
following thoughts are shared by at least 98 percent of the American Sports
Nation: college football’s Bowl Championship Series does not work.
It never has, and it never will.
Despite this, the BCS has remained
the determining postseason system for perhaps the most prestigious and popular
sport in the United States. Every other major sport ends its season with a legitimate
playoff that determines a distinct champion while the BCS does not. Ever since
its implementation more than a decade ago, the BCS has extinguished the
integrity and clarity of college football’s pageantry. This year was no
exception.
Sports fans across America were
awed by the topsy-turvy autumn of college football. Some watched in delight as
their teams flourished (Hawaii, Georgia, Kansas) while some anguished at the
sight of their teams’ failures (Notre Dame, Michigan, South Carolina.) The top
team in the nation changed at least five times during the season, and every week
it seemed like the top 10 teams in the country would be reshuffled with another
10. After a wild three months of the regular season, college football
enthusiasts sat on the edge of their couches, glued to their big screens,
watching the BCS rankings, awaiting the new bowl matchups.
Some rested easily. Some probably
shattered their screens with their remotes.
Well here we are in mid January,
still in awe and disappointment after viewing a lackluster bowl season. Here’s
what happened…
The Rose Bowl Game’s outcome certainly did not deserve a parade. The mighty Trojans of USC stormed into Pasadena and annihilated the Fighting Illini of Illinois 49-17. Though Illinois showed flashes of greatness from running back Rashard Mendenhall, the USC offense led by quarterback John David Booty ran all over the Illini.
The most gruesome slaughter of these sub-par games was the Sugar Bowl. The Georgia Bulldogs, quite disgruntled after being snubbed out of the National Championship, took their rage out on the mid-major Hawaii Warriors, defeating them 41-10.
The Fiesta Bowl was actually an upset, but a blowout. The West Virginia Mountaineers, who would have played for the National Championship had they not been shocked by rival Pittsburgh at the end of the year, made quite the statement when they beat Big 12 Champion Oklahoma 48-28.
The closest and most boring of the games was the Orange Bowl. Mark “The Walrus” Mangino and his Kansas Jayhawks upended the favored Virginia Tech Hokies 27-24. Though the game remained marginally close all the way until the end, neither team delivered a stellar performance.
And of course we had our National
Championship game: the supposed no. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes squared off against the
Southeastern Conference champions, the Louisiana State Tigers. ESPN and many
other sports broadcasts had conveyed that Ohio State had more motivation after
being blown out of last year’s National Championship by the Florida Gators.
Needless to say, history would repeat itself.
ESPN’s Pat
Forde wrote, “If you've ever seen lions maul a water
buffalo, you've seen the last two title games.” LSU dismantled the Buckeyes in
every aspect of the game in the second and third quarters, and as the final
whistle blew, the scoreboard read 48-28. The Tigers stood in the midst of
confetti and cameras, becoming the best team in college football, as
quarterback Matt Flynn hoisted the glass championship trophy over his head.
Though
many Tiger fans, including myself, are exuberant after seeing LSU take the
championship crown, it wasn’t a perfect season.
The job of the BCS is to match up
the best two teams to play for the championship. This year, the placement of
the teams in the National Championship Game instigated much dispute and anger.
LSU had two losses, Ohio State one. There were teams like Kansas and Hawaii who
had one and no losses, respectively, but are said to have played much easier
schedules. There’s Georgia, who had also lost two games but was ranked ahead of
LSU before the SEC Championship Game, in which Georgia did not play. There was West
Virginia, who would have reached the championship if they hadn’t been dealt
their second loss by underdog Pittsburgh.
After all has been said and done,
we have a two-loss champion. We have the Bulldogs and Trojans barking and
barraging to BCS officials, claiming that they were snubbed out of the
championship. We have criticism that Illinois and Hawaii should have never been
in a BCS game. We have constant griping from teams such as Missouri and
Michigan, exasperated that they were left out of these prestigious games. And
we are all very, very frustrated.
So what’s the solution? Have a
playoff.
The only year the BCS worked was by
coincidence in 2005, when USC and Texas were the only undefeated teams
remaining (and we all know how that game played out.) With that exception,
there have been teams that have been snubbed and there have been years when
there is no distinct champion, such as this one. A playoff would solve that.
My solution is to have a playoff
similar to the National Football League. Have 12 teams play for the title, with
a wild-card round, a divisional round, a division championship, and then the
National Championship.
The idea seems so simple and makes
so much sense, but sportswriters claim it will never happen. The current system
feeds unfathomable amounts of money towards the universities, who obviously
can’t complain. Yet from what we’ve seen, this greed has ruined the pageantry
of the sport. Until the BCS is abolished, we will never have one-true champion
of college football.