As a result, we know that this weekend’s Southeastern Conference showdown between Florida and Tennessee is not remotely a matchup of 9-1 equals; rather it is a battle between a BCS 4.03, a rating which has Florida on a path to the national championship game, most likely against an undefeated Miami team, and an 8.95 also-ran, a number that would send Tennessee to some New Year’s Day consolation prize.
Please tell me what outside of the BCS computer distinguishes Florida, which lost once to 7-3 Auburn, from Tennessee, which lost once to 7-3 Georgia. Or for that matter from the other one-loss teams, Texas (to 10-2 Oklahoma), Illinois (8-3 Michigan), Oregon (8-2 Stanford), Nebraska (9-2 Colorado) or even Maryland (6-4 Florida State). It’s obviously not the record nor the caliber of the team that beat them. And in the case of the two Southeastern Conference rivals, Florida and Tennessee, it sure isn’t the caliber of their opposition outside the SEC games. Florida braved Marshall and University of Louisiana at Monroe before taking on archrival Florida State. Tennessee had Memphis, Syracuse and Notre Dame and was punished because the formerly Fighting Irish, scheduled years ago, had a lousy season.
No, Florida is being rewarded principally for one thing: they ran up the score against their opposition (44-10 over Kentucky, 52-0 over Mississippi State, 73-13 over lowly Vanderbilt, 55-6 over Louisiana-Monroe), and evisceration of opponents plays far better than a spasm of sportsmanship with those who vote in the weekly polls. Nebraska may have played a tougher schedule and may have run up some landslide scores, too–but it made the mistake of not only losing, but of losing big. Actually not only losing big, but losing on national TV. Actually not only losing big on national TV, but, worst of all, losing late in the season when one loss seems to count as two.
You may be getting the idea that I am not a big fan of this football grotesquerie, the BCS. And you would be right. It is as incomprehensible as calculus, a meld of multiple systems that casts as pseudoscience what is, in fact, random and arbitrary. And whether it yields us Miami versus Florida, Tennessee versus Nebraska, or Texas versus Oregon, it is no more valid a system than the writers’ and coaches’ polls that served the same purpose for so many years. Indeed it’s worse because the polls at least, on occasion, came up with different answers and fostered some spirited debate in the nation’s beer halls.
This kind of impassioned debunking of the BCS usually is a prelude to a call for a playoff tournament, akin to college basketball with perhaps four, eight or even 16 teams. After all, Michigan at No. 16 is a solid contender, a definite for the on-any-given-Saturday club. But I like to foster the illusion of the student-athlete, so a lengthy playoff tourney is not my first choice. I just want to go back to the old way and get my bowls back. The BCS has completely ruined my New Year’s weekend. If I never got invited to anyone’s New Year’s Eve party, I at least had the consolation of waking up perky to the delirious prospect of a day’s worth of intriguing college football matchups.
This year, under the old system, that might translate to Miami-Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, Florida-Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl, Tennessee-Texas in the Fiesta Bowl and Illinois-Oregon in the Rose Bowl–all with national-championship aspirations and possibilities. The permutations would be unlimited. Now one game, not even on New Year’s Day, counts, and the rest are so inconsequential as to send me channel-surfing for the last holiday broadcast of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Well, maybe for Jimmy Stewart, but not for me. Because this year the BCS rotation dictates that the top two teams meet in the Rose Bowl. And that means they’ve finally stolen my favorite bowl game. Why on earth should Miami and Florida go to Pasadena when they have a perfectly good bowl, the Orange one, in their own backyard, convenient to both universities’ fans? The Pac 10-Big 10 rivalry is football’s most engrossing and has consistently produced the most exciting football of any bowl matchup. I am a Pac 10 fan both by temperament and by a grad school stint on the West Coast. My favorite Rose Bowl was 1970 when Ohio State came in undefeated and ranked No. 1 to play a middling Stanford squad led by the great quarterback Jim Plunkett.
That was the heyday (actually the Hayesday) of Ohio State football. Coach Woody Hayes was the master of the “three yards and a cloud of dust” attack, a relentless assault up the gut that wore out the opposition–if not from the physical punishment than from the tedium of the design. Ohio State was a prohibitive favorite, and it took the opening kickoff and pounded the ball upfield. But the drive stalled around Stanford’s 40 and on 4th and 1, Ohio State got stuffed. On its first play, Stanford ran a double-reverse pitchback to Plunkett whose long pass took Stanford to Ohio State’s 1-yard line. The romp was on. A year later, Stanford did it again to an undefeated Michigan team. I would spend almost a decade living in Chicago and cleaning up by betting Pac 10 underdogs against Big 10 loyalists on New Year’s Day.
The best argument against the BCS is history. Because sometimes you get the real championship game during the regular season. Such a case was one of the most famous games in college football history, the 1966 showdown between two undefeateds, No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 2 Michigan State. With the score 10-10 and more than a minute to go, Notre Dame took over the ball on its own 30. Despite having an all-American quarterback, Terry Hanratty, at the helm, Notre Dame coach Ara Parseghian called six straight running plays and meekly settled for the tie.
Parseghian was vilified by the fans and the press. But the final AP poll was far kinder, awarding 9-0-1 Notre Dame the national championship ahead of both 9-0-1 Michigan State second and Bear Bryant’s Alabama squad that finished 11-0. The beauty of that method is that even today, in a few strategically located bars, a ferocious football debate will break out over that game and the injustice of that national title. That doesn’t happen with the BCS. It’s cut and dried and, most often, eminently forgettable. The post mortems seldom endure past the next morning’s paper.
