The conference championships are completed and it's not that one year Vince Young played USC, so the BCS's answer is a stupid one. Yes. Yes, it is that time again.
this "On Notice" board from 2006 is remarkably apropos today save for the hatred directed at random SEC mediocrities who failed to beat Florida
If the BCS hadn't popped out of its mother in midair above a dorsal fin, this would be the moment when it jumped the shark. Since it did we have to invent a new term for a terrible thing everyone hates reaching maximum troll. The BCS just Clay Travised all over us.
Anyway, every year at this time I pull out the MGoPlayoff proposal. I don't do this in any real hope it will make a difference, since anyone who could assemble our current system will botch a playoff just as badly. I don't really know why I do it. Maybe it makes me feel better—yes, there is a hypothetical version of college football that makes a goddamn lick of sense.
The goal!
CREATE A SINGLE TEAM WITH THE DEFINITIVELY BEST RESUME. College football is unique amongst sports in that the national title is essentially decided by eyeballing it. The only thing the BCS changed was to take the one team people used to eyeball and turn it into two. Hinton:
What we should be asking instead is, why does college football and college football alone insist on wedging itself into this ridiculous corner year after year? When did we concede to leave the results of a sport to a cacophonous, ill-informed debating society? How have we convinced ourselves that dragging statistics and resumés and eyeball tests to the podium — along with preconceived biases that trump them all — can possibly deliver a satisfying answer?
Obviously, it can't. Any answer to an unanswerable question is the wrong answer.
Literally every observer who has ever laid eyes on the Bowl Championship Series has mocked it as an absurd anachronism, and continues to mock it to this day. Rightly so. Every sane observer within the sport has mocked it as an absurd anachronism. Seriously: Voting on the better football team? Are we still doing this? We're really going to do it again? Deferring to polls and algorithms in a competition that keeps score? Why are we still doing this?
Because of the unique structure of college football, a playoff can be constructed to be inherently satisfying. That is: you can make something that always leaves one team alone atop a pile of skulls no one else in the country can match. This is obviously not the case right now.
The key components!
RESTRICTED FIELD. No 9-3 teams. Maintain as much of the importance of the regular season as possible. Keep out anyone who could win three straight and still reasonably have an AP vote go against them.
HOME GAMES. Helps with attendance, prevents people from having to travel multiple weeks, helps maintain importance of regular season, makes the guys at the bottom wade through a tougher task and helps bolster their pile-of-skulls argument.
BYES. Again, importance of regular season and pile-of-skulls argument.
NO AUTOBIDS, MAX TWO TEAMS PER CONFERENCE. Autobids can suck it. So can third place teams in their own conference. Also no first round intraconference matchups.
FINAL AT THE ROSE BOWL. Iconic. Would become one of the great traditions in American sports.
This year's version based on the final BCS standings:
1. LSU vs winner of 4. Stanford and 7. Boise State
2. Alabama vs winner of 3. Oklahoma State and 5. Oregon
Arkansas is left out because of the two-teams-per-conference rule; Boise and Oregon flip to prevent a conference matchup. The first two games would be this weekend with the second round on January 1st (2nd this year) and the final a week after. Anyone outside of the final four can go to whatever bowl they want, so this hardly touches the bowl system. The net result is removing one BCS bowl in favor of the playoff.
An eight team version of this is less ideal but also acceptable; that would see Kansas State and Wisconsin on the road in the first round against the SEC teams. Autobids are awful. Clemson and West Virginia can win three straight games here and still not be as worthy as LSU.
The pointlessness of existence!
Don't bother telling me it's not happening. I know.
After the jump: blogpoll ballot time. Sure to endear me to Alabama fans even more.
Here you go. No deltas because I forgot to vote last week while I was bathing in the sweet feeling of not wanting to throw up after the last game of the season.
MGoBlog Ballot - Week 15
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings»
ALABAMA. Admittedly, this is a protest vote, but Nick Saban voted Oklahoma State #4. Die in a fire.
If I had a real vote that affected anything I'd burn it in the name of not having a divisional rematch for the title game. Save your arguments about putting the "best two teams" on the field. We have no idea who the best two teams are. Alabama's schedule is weak, they didn't strangle Penn State with the authoritah Wisconsin did, and their best win is against Arkansas, which seems like a paper tiger itself. The only thing we know about Alabama is they lost to LSU at home and a rematch literally cannot produce a satisfying outcome.
If this doesn't destroy the BCS, nothing will. It won't.
BIG TEN FUTZERING. Yeah, MSU above Michigan. It's razor thin now but going 1-1 against Wisconsin in the way they did is a net asset Michigan does not have. Wisconsin, meanwhile, has to be sick to their stomach about the back to back Hail Mary incidents, either one of which going the other way would probably have gotten them to the title game.
BAYLOR! Your guess is as good as mine, man. I had them 9th, and then 20th, and I gave up. Hypothetically: is this what Michigan looks like if Rodriguez is around for year four?
CLEMSON? Oh, Clemson. What the helling hell. I find you to be so very Clemson.
YOU TRY TO FIND SOMEONE OTHER THAN ND FOR THE LAST SPOT. Go ahead.
[UPDATE: Well done. I left South Carolina and TCU out. South Carolina slots in at 14, TCU at 20, and GT and ND disappear.]