Sittin’ here watching the bowl games, wondering – is this the fix we’ve been looking for?
Hardly…
I grew up fuming at the whole college bowl game situation. Too many conference/bowl tie-ups. Too many great teams (my favorite in particular) unable to play for a national championship, while every single other NCAA sport and division had some sort of playoff system.
The solution? What we have now as the BCS system, complete with
- uneven conferences being treated as all equal.
- four or five conference championship games that are either really meaningful or dangerous to a great team.
- other conferences (Pac 10, Big 10-actually-11, etc.) with no forced championship game, getting a free pass into the bowls.
- twice as many games so that everybody gets a chance – after all, we’re ALL winners, aren’t we? (We used to joke when a team had a lousy year that they were going to the Toilet Bowl. Now, lo and behold, we actually have a half-dozen of ‘em!)
- EVERY SINGLE bowl game of ANY type has a conference tie-up. “Big 10 #6 vs. SEC #8.” Are ya’ KIDDIN’ me? There is now no such thing as an at-large team.
- A single championship game decided a week-plus into January between a hybrid of two polls and a stack of computers. Four other BCS games bearing the same bowl names and locations, but lacking the same luster. (With all due respect to Cincinnati and West Virginia, really?)
Just for nostalgia’s sake, I thought I’d take this year’s year-end AP rankings and results, and see what they might produce in a 70s bowl scenario. Take a look and tell me, do you really think we’ve made things better? [click to continue…]
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