My take on the BCS/FBS
After the Mountain West Conference received bad news from the BCS on Wednesday, It seems as if there will never be a fair and just way of crowning a National Champion, in the current BCS format, that is. After the conference lobbied for a playoff, and for all conferences in the FBS to have a fair crack at the title, they failed.
Here is the complete statement:
“Today, the Mountain West Conference has executed the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) agreement and the attendant rights agreement with ESPN. While the Mountain West has expressed serious concerns with the various fundamental flaws in the current BCS system, our various good faith initiatives to generate reform have thus far not been accepted.
Therefore, the Mountain West believes it has no choice at this time but to sign the agreements. If a conference wishes to compete at the highest levels of college football, and the only postseason system in place for that is the BCS, no one conference can afford to drop out and penalize its football programs and student-athletes.
The Mountain West will continue its efforts for change, including a request for dialogue with representatives of the BCS. Our goal is to ensure the eventual outcome of these endeavors is what our universities and student-athletes need, what the vast majority of American sports fans want, and what is long overdue: an equitable system.”
After listening to one of my favorite ESPN radio personalities, I felt a bit insulted. Yesterday, Colin Cowherd, said this. “Any educated person realizes a team like Utah should not be able to play for a National Championship.” I consider myself a pretty educated guy, especially when it comes to NCAA football, and I could not disagree more. He even went on to make excuses like, “the only reason they beat Alabama is because they had more to play for.” Um, so? What’s your point? That’s what I like to call lack of execution and lack of coaching on Alabama’s behalf, and a great job by Utah of striking first and early. That is why the games are played, Colin.
Sadly, all of these conference powers are all in the so called FBS, and are all talented (but not necessarily deep, but I will get into this subject at some point) but none of these teams will EVER have a REALISTIC shot of winning it all: Boise State,Utah, BYU, East Carolina, Houston, Troy, Florida Atlantic, Fresno State, Buffalo, TCU.
So heres my question. If you are the head coach of any of these teams, or the teams in there conferences, how do you psych these guys up, knowing damn well that you will never be at the top of your sport? It’s just flat out not fair, and here is my opinion of a couple of solutions.
1. Have a 16 team playoff, and eliminate the preseason rankings, so everyone has a fair shot. Having 16 teams in the playoffs will give most teams a fair shot, while keeping a lot of the major bowls to generate money. The playoff games will be the bowls. But I don’t believe you can have a playoff without doing away with preseason rankings, because in the end, it will always be the same teams.
2. Here’s the one I like the most. Take the Mountain West, Sun Belt, WAC, Conference USA and MAC, out of the FBS, and make a sub-division of the FBS. Call it the FBS-2, or something to that effect, and take the lower tier bowls, and make one of them the championship game. I like this one, because they are still technically FBS teams still, they will still generate money, and there will be a championship of their own that all the conferences can take part in, just like the 6 “power” conferences of the BCS.
Neither of those are perfect solutions, but I think either of them would be great alternatives to what is going on now. I just don’t think it’s fair that more than half of the teams in the FBS automatically know that no matter what they do, they can’t win the National Championship, and to me, that makes it a flawed system.
This is a subject I can go on and on with, and look out for more blogs like this one in the near future.
What do you think?
I like option 2, and I actually think that’s more feasible. They should go out on their own and do their own thing, and the BCS peeps won’t care. It will take serious intervention, probably up here in Washington, to force them out of their current scheme, and it just doesn’t have enough political will right now and won’t anytime soon. Too much other important shit to deal with. It’s wrong, but as Congressman Ted Poe says, that’s just the way it is.
Dave
July 10, 2009 at 11:17 pm
You know what Coach2626 life isn’t fair and it is no surprise that the college football BCS bowl selection is not either. I agree with Cowherd. A team like Boise is not battle tested like many of the big conference teams. It is completely different when you have a month to prepare a team that is not familiar with playing an offense like yours. Such was the case for Utah during their impressive BCS wins. But imagine that same Utah team in the SEC you really think they stand a chance. The big conferences have their pick of the best high school talent in the country. You know what it takes to convince a black kid from the projects to go to Salt Lake City?????? For this reason they will never have the talents the bigger schools do and it will never be fair.
Phil
July 14, 2009 at 11:58 am