BCS: Inspiring Retarded Opinions Since 1996

December 2 – How can so many people that cover football be so stupid? The degree of short-sighted, judgmental, ludicrous logic getting blasted out over the airwaves during broadcasts of college football games is reaching an atomic level, and something truly must be done. Fast.

I’ve been waiting to write this column for awhile. Its kind of daunting, you know, trying to encompass all the stupidity raging in the broadcast universe in to a pithy, concise blog entry. But I can’t take it anymore. This BCS mess has left me with no other recourse.

Let me start by saying this: I’m not a Michigan fan, and I’m not a Florida fan. I’m an Iowa State fan. I kind of tend to root against the Big 10, but I also kind of root against the SEC, so that pretty much cancels each other out. I definitely had no desire to see USC in the title game, so you’re not reading sour grapes. I have no dogs in the fight.

So, let’s get to it:

Most of the arguments getting thrown around for why Michigan does not deserve to play in the National Title game are absolutely fucking insane! The last 72 hours or so, most media members have gotten behind Florida, pushing for their inclusion in the title game, trying to make an impact on voters. And this is fine; everyone’s entitled to their opinion. As long as the methods you use to arrive at it aren’t completely retarded. Here’s an opinion, for example, that I think is totally valid:

“I’ve seen Florida and Michigan both play several times this year, Florida beat a great running team in Arkansas, and a great passing team in Tennessee…I think Florida would win on a neutral field.”

You see, that…I can’t really argue with. The guy (or gal) has seen them both play, and thinks Florida would win if they played each other. Fine. Can’t argue with it. But I’m going to rundown the opinions I can argue with, and must argue with, because of their sheer criminal lunacy.

“I’ve already seen Ohio State vs. Michigan. The title game should be a matchup we haven’t seen.”

Let’s get one thing straight, before we begin: Should the goal of the BCS be to provide interesting, unique matchups, or to provide fairness? Is it any wonder that most of the goons you hear spouting this are employed by a network likely to benefit from a unique matchup??? Look, if the goal of the BCS were to provide ratings, and “interesting matchups”, then let’s just play the whole season, then lock 12 network executives in a room, let them fight out who the most people would watch, and fuck the ratings altogether?

Achieving the highest possible ratings should not be the goal of a body governing college athletics. Fairness should be. If the team people feel is the second best team in the country has played the #1 team every day for the last millennia, but they’re still the second best team, they deserve to be in the national championship game.

“Michigan already had their chance to prove they’re the best team in the country. Let someone else have their chance.”

Uh, OK. We’ve got a couple problems here. First of all, this statement presents a false condition for “proof.” It equates “proving they’re the best team in the country” with “beating the team currently ranked #1 in the country.” But if a team were capable of proving they were the best team in the country during the regular season, there would be no need for the postseason at all. Ohio State hasn’t even proved they’re the best team in the country yet. If you believe in the existence of bowls, or a playoff, or whatever, you must also believe that a team can not prove they are the best team in the country during the regular season.

Secondly, why should Michigan’s loss to Ohio State be any greater proof that they are not the best team in the country than Florida’s loss to Auburn? Or Louisville’s loss to Rutgers? Or Oklahoma’s loss to Texas? Or Wisconsin’s loss to Michigan? This argument presumes that losing to a team during the regular season means you won’t be a better team than them during the bowls. Well, then…why do we not give Auburn the automatic SEC bid? Well, they lost to Georgia. I guess we should give Georgiathe automatic SEC bid then. Didn’t Florida already prove they’re not better than Auburn, who proved they’re not better than Georgia?

Of course not! A team is judged on the entire body of work, and not just one head-to-head matchup. (Which is actually lucky for Florida, since their one less is much worse than Michigan’s.)

A team shouldn’t be allowed in the title game if it didn’t win its conference.

I agree with this one totally, with one caveat – a second place team can get in…if the first place team is the other team going! Proponents of this theory cite the Oklahoma incident, from three years ago, when the Sooners got drilled by Kansas State in the Big XII title game and still made the championship, then gagged against LSU. But there was a big difference there: the other team in the title game wasn’t the consensus #1 team in the nation! Let’s just say for example, that a team, just call them…Michigan…happens to be the second best team in the country, and they have the misfortune of playing in a conference with the #1 team in the country…and let’s say, in all fairness, that Ohio State is truly, really the #1 team in the country, and any single team in a conference with them would finish second. Why on earth should Michigan be punished for this misfortune? I repeat: the goal of the BCS Title game should be to pit the BEST TWO TEAMS AGAINST EACH OTHER. Period. The goal should not be ‘excitement’, it should not be a ‘cross regional matchup’, it should not be ‘originality’, it should be FAIRNESS. If a team would win every other conference in America, but happens to play in one with the one team better than it, they deserve to be in. No doubt about it.

Margin of victory shouldn’t matter.

This one is freakin’ unbelievable. This one represents my biggest single problem with sports journalism: vast oversimplifications of problems to fit an answer in to a sound bite. You only get two real opinions on most topics from ESPN talking heads. Either “yes, definitely” or “no, definitely not.” It’s the Stephen A. Smith school of analysis. The network heads coach these guys to have a firm, strong opinion, and commit to either yes or no. These are the same kinds of guys that think Congressmen are weak when they want to take time to explain a position, and don’t want to let their thoughts get boiled down to either “support the troops” or “cut and run.” That’s a whole ‘nother column, but the point on margin of victory is this: When two teams have the exact same record in wins and losses…what else do you have other than how they looked winning and losing? Evaluating teams based on margin of victory got such a bad name a few years ago when some computer rankings gave teams totally huge points for 60 point wins, and the computer geeks switched things around so that every win counted the same. Which is colossal bullshit.

Here’s the deal – it’s a sliding scale. A 13 point win is much, much more impressive than a 3 point win. You win by 2 TD, the game may have never been in doubt, that’s a huge 10 point difference. The difference between a 20 point win and a 10 point win is a little less than the gap between 13 and 3. And as you move up in margin of victory it matters less and less. Like, a 50 point win vs. a 40 point win? Who cares? Both teams were still only playing for the orange slices and juice boxes at the end of the third quarter. The problems with those old computers is that they counted every point as equal, when they clearly aren’t. But instead of acknowledging that it’s a little more complicated than YES or NO, they scrapped that way of thinking altogether.

So, on style points: Florida has looked really, really average in several of their wins this year. They beat South Carolina because of countless Gamecock mistakes, including letting three kicks get blocked. They barely beat Georgia, a team that was on life support at the time. They held off a Florida State team with a lame duck coordinator and no cohesion whatsoever. And did you see them tonight against Arkansas, how absolutely out-of-sync and terrible they looked before the fumbled punt turned the whole game around? Arkansas is a very good football team, but how in the world does a coach like Urban Meyer let this sequence happen:

Horrible play, incomplete pass, time out, horrible play, cool fake punt, horrible play, no gain, time out, horrible play, time out, 60 yard punt fumbled in the endzone for a TD. In the span of three minutes, on the biggest stage they’ve played on this year, they went from their own 15 to a TD with two sacks, one 8 yard completion, a fake punt for a first down, and spent all three of their timeouts midway through the third quarter. If we’re going on style points, the Gators just got kicked off Project Runway.

Here’s the final assessment: if the people running college football and the networks were interested in fairness and not lining their pockets on the back of college athletes, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Ohio State would be playing Louisville or Oklahoma, Michigan would be playing Florida, and the winners would be playing in Glendale for all the marbles. The arguments for the BCS have never been thinner. “It makes every game a playoff.” Are you kidding? Do you think Michigan and Ohio State would have stopped getting after it knowing they’d still make the final four? And by the way, its not even true! Either Michigan or Florida lost one of their playoff games, and is still going to get in to the national title. So, I guess….er….it makes every game a playoff game…except one…whichever one a good one loss team decides to lose. What a joke.

Maybe Florida is better than Michigan, I really don’t know. They’ve beaten more bowl teams than Michigan, albeit not as impressively. They haven’t really beaten a team with a high level QB yet, and Michigan has done that in Brady Quinn. I personally don’t know. If you think Florida has looked better all season long than Michigan, I can’t argue with you on that opinion. But at least don’t pull out any of the patently absurd arguments above.

And also, try not to take a Louisville Slugger to your television when Rece Davis smile while telling you “this is the controversy that keeps you watching.” Yeah, I guess in the same way a car accident is controversial.