If any season was able to illustrate this any better I can't recall it. The BCS system is a complete joke. The only undefeated team, Hawaii, finally moved into tenth place on the USA Today and Harris Poles but only because every other team ahead of them has violated the pooch this season. Yet the BCS still ranks them no higher than 12th. If you are a non BCS school you almost have no chance of playing in a bowl game even if you win every game and they lose some of their games. The system is rigged to reward elitist schools from the major conferences. Those same schools don't want to schedule games with non BCS schools such as Boise or Hawaii because, low and behold, they might get beat and lose their spot in the big $$$ BCS bowls. So the non league games tend to be against the wipping boys of the NCAA such as Division III powerhouses like Portland. If there was ever a case to be made to set up a real playoff system it is the 2007 season but it will never happen because the big bad BCS schools won't let it happen. Real competition and the cinderella stories that fans talk about years later are nearly impossible in the current system and that's just how the major conferences want to keep it and the money.
Hold on a minute. Missouri was unranked at the beginning of the year, but is now ranked number 1 and will go to the championship game against West Virginia should both win, as expected next week. Neither of those teams are big name teams. There is opportunity for teams to advance.
BCS allows for judgement based on many objective and subjective criteria. It allows sports enthusiasts (those who rank in the various polls) to do something we all love to do, compare teams to each other that have never actually played. For example, would the 2007 Patriot offense beat the 1985 Bears Defense?
I was formerly in favor of a playoff system, but cannot think of a meaningful and fair way of implementing it for hundreds of college teams.
How to implement it would be fairly simple, but it would msot likely do away with the treasured bowl system. Basically pre and mid-season rankings really mean squat, At the end of the season you either A: take the top 16 rated teams for a championship playoff requiring at most four more games to get to the champions. or B: Take the conference Champions for all the Division I conferences and they duke it out for the win. This option may require a re-alignment of the teams between conferences as I currently count 11 conferences at that level. So we'd need to either eliminate three conferences or add five to avoid needing play-ins to keep the proper nubmer of teams.
I personally think method B (once the conference issues get fixed) would be the best becuase, usually the powerhouse schools would get their due and they would win most years. But it would give the undefeated WAC champion or MWC Champion a fair shot at the title. These schools are all Div I so technically they should be at least to a degree on par when it comes to talent and capabilities. I know this isn't the case but to a dgree it is supposed to be.
Thus each team needs to Win it's conference if it wants a shot at the crown. And the Hawaii's, Bosie States (of last year), Utah's(during Urban Meyer's year of domination) and BYU's (Of Crowdens first year (sorry if I spelled his name wrong)) who so totally dominate their conferences a fair shot at proving how good they really are, or how weak their conferences really are.
Can the BCS, and bring us a true National Champion Playoff series in December and January. We can call it the Winter War(TM me) and market it like they do March Madness.
Such a system won't prevent the craziness we've seen this year with an average of five top ranked teams falling each week (or at least that's what it has seemed like) but it will in my opion restore some sanity to the concept of a True National Champion.
no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing... the truth of God will go forth till it has penetrated every website, sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done
I'm undecided about the BCS. In this case, with Hawaii, I think they deserve their ranking. Look at their schedule. The only ranked team they played is Boise State who has a weak schedule as well (Boise State's only other loss was to a Washington team that is currently 4-8 and has played a much tougher schedule).
Boise State's win last year against Oklahoma was impressive but not national title impressive. They barely beat an Oklahoma team that was ranked No. 11. (vs. their No. 5 ranking) and had lost twice before to the likes of Oregon and Texas (Oregon ended their season with 6 losses including a bowl loss to BYU, Texas ended their season with 3 losses).
If these teams want to be taken seriously they should toughen their non-conference schedule a little.
The system for bowl rankings is obscenely out of touch with reality. When you have a team in the Division I-A who is undefeated ranked LOWER than a team with LOSSES, then Houston, we have a problem. And it stinks like last weeks fish.
And like it or not, the 'major' teams get placed into preseason and midseason polls based on 'style points' from how their schedule got stacked.
The only way to repair this mess is to rank every team as equal in the division and jumble up the schedules in a true lottery system for the season schedule for each team. There would no longer be any traditional rivalry season breakers and makers because no one would have a clue who they would be playing within their division from season to season. Or maybe you could let them pick ONE traditional rivalry game and the lottery fill out the rest of their dance card.
Then, you would be totally free to take the teams with the best win/loss records and stack them up for a 16 team full on 4-game championship. The weaker teams would be weeded out eventually by natural attrition and some traditional powerhouses would find out that they are legends in their own minds.
just look at what has happened to the top 25 this season!!
Even Jimmy the Greek would have lost money on that bet!
It worked for our Council's Pinewood Derby . . . no one knew from Tiger to Webelos who they would be racing and they advanced on MERIT not on favoritism.
Alert! BYU may still qualify to go to one of the big BCS bowel games!
The only fair way of evaluating the best teams is to have every team play every other team once during the season. Make the college football season have as many games as MLB and you can truly have a #1 team.
Alert! BYU may still qualify to go to one of the big BCS bowel games!
I'm soooo not watching that.
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"The promptings of the Holy Ghost will always be sufficient for our needs if we keep to the covenant path. Our path is uphill most days, but the help we receive for the climb is literally divine." --Elaine S. Dalton
and market it like they do March Madness.
