Tag Archives: BCS

The True National Champions

Psrhea, Sports, , , , , ,

Oklahoma and Florida can battle for the BCS. But we’ve already crowned the true national champ.
by Rick Reilly

NOTE: This is a reprint of an article that appears in the current edition of “ESPN The Magazine“. It is worth reprinting here because it couldn’t be more right — daveydoug
Some gifts people give are pointless: Styling mousse to Dick Vitale. An all-you-can-eat card to Kate Moss. The BCS Championship given to Oklahoma or Florida.

It means nothing because the BCS has no credibility. Florida? Oklahoma? Who cares? Utah is the national champion.

The End. Roll credits.

Argue with this, please. I beg you. Find me anybody else that went undefeated. Thirteen-and-zero. Beat four ranked teams. Went to the Deep South and seal-clubbed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. The same Alabama that was ranked No. 1 for five weeks. The same Alabama that went undefeated in the regular season. The same Alabama that Florida beat in order to get INTO the BCS Championship game in the first place.

Yeah, that’s how it is now in the shameful, money-grubbing world of college football. If you’re Florida and you beat Alabama, you get a seat in the title game. If you’re Utah, you get a seat on your sofa.

Hey, remind me: What do they give out for one of those BCS things anyway? It’s been so long since I cared. Something from Sears? This is the sixth year in the past 10 that the title has been in dispute under this cash-grab, fan-dis, monopoly that the BCS has created. Which is why the title game just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s like being named Miss Ogallala. Or Best Amish Electrician.

Just take a look at the teams that think they’re worthy of being called national champs:

USC? Great year. Wonderful. Let’s all go to SkyBar and celebrate. But it lost to Oregon State, a team Utah beat.

Texas? You think beating Ohio State by a nubby three points gets you the title? The Big Ten was 1-6 in bowl games! That’s like pinning David Spade!

Florida and Oklahoma? They lost. Utah never did.

So that’s it. Utah is the national champion. The Utes should probably have two now, actually. They went undefeated in 2004, too, and their coach still thinks they were the best team in the land. Smart fella named Urban Meyer. Coaches Florida now.

By the way, we’re calling our title the “national” championship because it actually includes the whole nation-all 119 Division I schools-unlike the BCS, which includes 66. Yeah, the BCS somehow eliminated the middleman-the NCAA. The conferences these schools play in take their dump trucks full of cash straight from the TV networks and fairness can go suck a lemon.

Do me a favor. Call Ohio State president Gordon Gee and ask him why he won’t support a playoff. He’s one of the most powerful presidents in the NCAA. He could get it done. If he says anything other than, “We don’t want to share the loot” then you know he’s lying his bow tie off.

“This is not how we normally do things in America,” says Utah president Michael Young. “In America, quality usually wins, not conspiracy. And there’s a reason people usually enter into a conspiracy. It’s money. You make money doing it. And those that are in on the conspiracy want to stay in and keep everybody else out.”

Sure, BCS blowhards will hand you schlock about how the college football season is like a playoff, how it’s an elimination tournament every week. Really? Well, how come Florida and Oklahoma weren’t eliminated with their losses? Utah ran the table, beat everybody set in front of them, including Ala-damn-bama in no less than the Sugar Bowl, and gets the bagel.

Oh, by the way? It was Utah’s eighth straight bowl win, the nation’s longest streak. Among the losers during that run? Let’s see USC, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, and now the legendary Houndstooth Hats.

“What else do we have to prove?” asks Utah’s magical quarterback, Brian Johnson. Good question. He and the Utes essentially whipped Alabama at home. Handed Nick Saban a garlic necklace to wear the entire off-season. Stepped on his team’s neck 21-0 in the first three possessions and never looked back. Let’s see. Who was it that was losing to Alabama until nearly six minutes into the fourth quarter? Oh, yeah. Florida.

What, you want the Utes to win a spelling bee? Make a prize-winning souffle? Knock up Angelina Jolie? What?

It just slays me. It really does.

Call Myles Brand, president of the asleep-at-the-wheel NCAA, and ask him if he and his greedy presidents are going to stand in defiance of president-elect Barack Obama, who wants a playoff and wants it yesterday.

Ask Brand what he’s going to do if Obama starts asking the Justice Department to look into anti-trust hearings against the BCS. The Utah Attorney General has already launched an investigation into that very thing. Or ask him what he’ll do if Obama asks the Department of Education to consider withholding federal funds from these schools that have entered into this secret club called the BCS. You don’t think playing in the title game means millions in general-fund donations for a school? That’s as unfair as anything Title IX fought against.

Until all these people do the right thing, I’ll be celebrating with the true national champions-the undefeated, untied Utah Utes. (Our new slogan: Utahk about a team!)

Lemonades for everybody!

— Rick Reilly —
“Life of Reilly”
ESPN The Magazine


I Don’t Watch Beauty Pageants!

Psrhea, Sports, ,

I’m sorry, but I just can’t get jazzed over the bowl season any more. Even with Cal, my alma matar, in a postseason bowl the whole idea of it is so absurd, so surreal, so asinine that me wasting even one brain cell on it and trying to apply any semblance of logic to it is just giving it way too much credibility it so clearly does not deserve.
 
I wanted to at least try to get into Cal playing at AT&T park against a team and a school I absolutely despise (Miami, Fla.), but then I saw what some of the other bowl matchups were and — like every season since that heresy of a bastard mutation of an institution, the BCS (Bull Championship Shit), came into existence — just threw up in total revulsion. 7-5 South Carolina gets to play on New Years Day but Cal at 8-4 has to settle for the Emerald Bowl (no disrespect intended). Texas Tech, at 12-1 and with a tougher schedule of anybody not named Texas or Oklahoma, not only doesn’t even get a chance at winning their conference but also has to settle for a non-BCS bowl while Penn State, Cincinnati, Virginia Tech and Ohio State — all ranked behind them — get to play in the BCS…
 
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME!!!
 
If this sounds like the continual sour grapes I’ve felt since Cal got fucked out of the Rose Bowl in 2004, that is only part of it. As I’ve come to realize, with the Bull Championship Shit there is always at least two schools every year that get fucked like this. Want to explain to me what the rankings mean to all the schools ranked ahead of Cincinnati and Virginia Tech? [And don’t give me any excuse about the Bearcats and the Hokies won their respective conferences. That just doesn’t fly. I could see the reason behind a ranking if there was a comprehensive playoff system like basketball’s NCAA Tournament, but since there isn’t then what good is it to Texas Tech when being “ranked #7” (sarcasm intended) doesn’t get you anything other than the Cotton Bowl, but the schools “ranked 12th and 19th” (sarcasm intended) get the prize?]
 
So South Carolina gets to play on January 1st because it’s Steve Spurrier and it’s the SEC and in Tampa it is much more likely that those rabid football fanatics from the South will turn out and spend lots of money and the viewing public is much more likely to tune into the Gamecocks rather than those tree-hugging hippies from Berkeley who don’t have national recognition and don’t spend money and won’t come all the way out to Tampa and who wants them there anyway because they’re left-wing commie nut jobs and they’ll just come out and picket and protest something.
 
If the Bull Championship Shit ran the NFL then the Cowboys and Patriots would have played in this past January’s Super Bowl; to hell with the playoff. If the Bull Championship Shit ran major league baseball then the Red Sox and Cubs would have played in this past October’s World Series; to hell with the playoff. Because those matchups would have gotten bigger ratings and made the sponsors happier and raked in more cheddar.
 
Everybody and their mother knows that the NCAA could put an end to all of this — and everybody and their mother is equally aware that the NCAA is not even remotely interested in putting an end to all this. Two reasons: (1) There is way, way, WAY too much money from underwriters and sponsors of the bowl system that the NCAA just doesn’t want to give up. And (2) A comprehensive and fair playoff system will in some years get you undesirable matchups in the championship game (like Boise St. vs. Oregon) that just won’t generate any national interest. So it is in the NCAA’s best interest to maintain the status quo and keep teams like Notre Dame and Alabama at the top of the food chain. (Don’t laugh; Fox Network was horrified when the Rays and Phillies made it to the Fall Classic. And ABC was jazzed a few year’s ago about their TV contract with the newly formed ACC superconference with power schools Miami, Florida State, Clemson, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Boston College until the very first ACC Championship had Wake Forest vs. Georgia Tech).
 
I like watching college football. There are teams I love (Cal, Oklahoma), teams I like (Ohio State, Florida State, Sac St., San Jose St.), teams I respect (Every school in the Pac-Ten, Penn State, Texas Tech, Auburn, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Marshall, Air Force, Navy, Army, Hawaii, Boise St, Fresno St.) and teams I despise with every fabric of my being (Texas, Miami, Florida, Alabama, LSU, Nebraska, BYU). I like seeing whose good and who could go to the NFL, and who would look good in a Niners uniform (which is the only reason I watched Saturday’s SEC Championship). I like the head-to-head matchups, the school rivalries, the color and pageantry. But where they stand, whose good and who isn’t, who’s better, and who is going where when the season ends? I just don’t care anymore.
 
The NCAA in general and the Bull Championship Shit are two of the most archaic institutions that exist today. They are so archaic they are like something right out of the 12th century Inquisition. I have more respect for the WWE, the UFC, and any number of alphabet soups that are boxing’s “sanctioning bodies” (sarcasm intended) — and I have absolutely no respect for any of them.
 
The NCAA has succeeded in turning Division One college football into a beauty pageant…
 
…I don’t watch beauty pageants.
 
– daveydoug