With Liberty and Injustice for All...
12-0
With a phenomenal season record like that, you would think that your team would have a shot at playing for the national title. You knocked off several ranked opponents and won not only your conference, but beat your rivals and teams from the power conferences.
Yet the Utah Utes and the Boise State Broncos will not be playing for the crystal football in South Florida on January 8.
Yet the Utah Utes and the Boise State Broncos will not be playing for the crystal football in South Florida on January 8.
Instead, that night college football fans will watch as the Oklahoma Sooners play the Florida Gators in a less than neutral Dolphin Stadium. Their records (12-1 and 12-1) are blemished. I'll be the first to admit that the Big 12 (especially its South Division) and the SEC were the best conferences in college football this year. However, what makes these two one loss teams any better than USC, Penn State, Texas, or Texas Tech (all with 11-1 records)? If these teams had played in conference championships then they too would likely have 12-1 records.
In addition to these snubbed BCS squads, my original point still rings true. Boise State and Utah are UNDEFEATED. I have no reason to root for these squads. I'm a Purdue Boilermaker fan from the Midwest and have never been to Utah or Idaho. Yet I can't help but want to pull my hair out when I see that these two undefeated squads are locked out of the championship. In fact, Boise State will even be locked out of the BCS altogether.
What else can these schools do? They have won every game that they have played this year (something that no other schools can claim). Yet they happen to play in conferences that the NCAA has deemed inferior. To be fair, there are a lot of bad teams in the WAC and MWC. Idaho, New Mexico State, San Diego State, and Wyoming were atrocious. But, schools like TCU, BYU, and Nevada help bring in balance. The SEC and Big 12 are not without their doormats either. Baylor, Iowa State, Mississippi State, Auburn, and even Tennessee were awful as well.
Even if you feel, for some odd reason, that the Utes and Broncos shouldn't be playing for the national title, I think you have to admit that they deserve to be a part of the most prestigious bowls, the BCS. And yet, the Broncos look to be excluded from this group in favor of the ACC and Big East champions. Virginia Tech has an extremely impressive 9-4 record against the stellar ACC this year and the Cincinnatti Bearcats, although 11-2, played in a Big East that was arguably no better than the MWC or WAC this year.
Ultimately it boils down to the same point that I have been making over the last few years. In college football, if the only metric we have for truly comparing teams is wins and losses, then how can teams with better records than those in the championship be denied their shot at glory? To say they can't compete is ludicrous, all you have to do is look at Utah in 2004 and Boise State in 2006. Sadly those two teams won't get a chance to play each other to decide who is the best team in football this year.
Labels: BCS sucks, Boise State, CFB, Florida Gators, Oklahoma Sooners, The Siets, Utah Utes
posted by The Siets @ 5:18 PM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
"How can teams with better records than those in the championship be denied their shot at glory?"
I'm an Oregon State fan, but I live in Boise. If you look at the two teams schedules -- and take out the two teams they both played -- then EVERY team on Oregon State's schedule, if BSU had played them would have been BSU's toughest game of the year. And EVERY team that BSU played this year, if OSU had played them, would have been OSU's easiest game of the year, by far.
BSU and Utah are good teams, but they would be .500 teams at best in one of the BCS conferences.
A system that places such an over-emphasis on "not losing" favors the small schools in really weak conferences. Playing Mexico State and Louisiana Tech is not the same as playing USC and Cal.
This kind of disagreement is just one more of a thousand reasons why we need a play-off system.
Everyone would be better off if they just quit worrying about a true college football national champion. There is too much money in the current system. The BCS only works when there are two teams that are obviously better than the rest of the field. People complaining about how the BCS picks the two teams that play in the "national championship" game are missing the point. There is no system that can work unless it involves more teams.
Last year a team that lost to Kentucky and Arkansas won the "national championship". They won by beating a team that lost to Illinois. The undefeated "little team that could" Hawaii got embarrassed by Georgia. Most years there is not a clear-cut national champion.
I personally could care less about a playoff or a national championship game, since my team is never good enough. The only way that the system will change is if the colleges, conferences, sponsors and the NCAA can make more money with a playoff than with the current bowl structure. If people hate the BCS so much and want to change the system, they need to quit watching the BCS games. Low ratings could send a message to the powers that be that no one cares about a championship game that cannot definitely choose the best college football team in the country.
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