Another Bowl Championship Series season is over and none of us really know who the best team in the country is. We had an inkling this could happen early on when little Appalachian State knocked off Michigan on its home field to start the season. After that it was a weekly series of domino's which resulted in twice beaten LSU ending up the national champion after pounding Ohio State on Monday night.
Was LSU the best team in the country this season when it all ended? I have serious doubts if they were the best team in their own conference, let alone the country. Husky fans saw a sampling of what Ohio State had to offer this year. The lowly Huskies had them on the rope for most of the game. It took a dramatic turn around in the third quarter fueled by the Husky not so special teams for the Buckeyes to come out on top in that one.
Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl? Sure they were undefeated, but their signature win was over that same lowly Washington team that led them by as many as 21 points in that season ending contest. The match up with Georgia showed that unlike Boise State the year before they didn't belong in the BCS playing that type of schedule.
The two best teams in the country at the end of the season were USC, and Georgia. USC demolished Illinois in the Rose Bowl. The Illini of course didn't belong in the game even though they did upset Ohio State earlier in the year. Georgia, or Missouri where much more worthy opponents. Still the Rose Bowl insisted on a Pac Ten/Big Ten match up and what we got was an old fashioned massacre.
Missouri could have been there at the end, but two losses to Oklahoma during the regular season sealed their fate. Oklahoma? The Sooners ended up getting totally humiliated by West Virginia.
The BCS is not a perfect system, we all know that. The only way you are going to have a true national champion most years in this age of parity is have an eight team seeded play off which involves the top four bowls. Week one would have the January 1st bowl. The winners would advance the following week, and finally two weeks after the first you would be able to crown a true champion of college football.
Who was the best team at the end of the season this year? I would have to go with USC followed closely by Georgia. I don't think either of those teams would have had a problem beating Ohio State, or LSU.
There is always next year, and the BCS admittedly has gotten it close, if not right in most years since its inception, but parity is a fact of life now in the BCS. I think in the future we will see more messes like this year than true championship contests to end the season.
College football needs a playoff involving the major bowl games. They need to get that accomplished in the next TV contract.
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I dont get the rose bowl...they keep claiming its tradition, but if the best pac 10 team and the best big 10 team dont play then how is this tradition. it was #1 vs #1...now its Whose best thats left. also they keep talking about a playoff like it would destroy the kids education...like they care. saying that it will run into the spring semester (umm, so does basketball??) and that it would lessen the meaning of the regular season games...if your .500 (6-6) your eligible...there are 32 bowl games and the best ones were by far played before the new year. The ratings for the game were 3rd worse and if that trend continues..ie OSU gets in again with a patsy non conference schedule, they will continue to drop.
What about the pac 10 getting no respect. we went 4-2 in our bowl games with the only loses were BYU over UCLA (who was without their head coach) and Texas over ASU (no reason why excempt over matched maybe?). we are the USC and everybody else conference despite our conference teams going out and playing the toughest schedules in NCAA...7 teams in the top 25 toughest schedules. I just get worked up about this east coast bias (i live in Philadelphia) and it gets annoying.
hope everyone has a great day.
I like the Big Ten/Pac Ten tradition, but you need to have the champions play each other in the Rose Bowl. At the very least, a week after the bowls, pick the best two remaining and have them play in a plus one format.
That means an extra game a week or two later for the last two teams standing.
SOS should come into play as well. the Ohio St houldn't have been in that game because of their OOC schedule. Anybody with that OOC schedule shouldn't even be considered for the BCS championship. IMHO
On the other hand I have outlaws near Baton Rouge,my sister-in-law watches the Tiger every game. I rooted for them as they were giving OSU their annual butt kicking by what ever SEC team they play. Maybe if OSU played a real OOC they would be better prepared to compete with the SEC
Is 8 enough? By that I mean is an end of year playoff that only involves 8 teams really going to be big enough so that the "national champion" is crowned? Or will there always be one or two teams for which an argument can be made should have been included and might possibly have won, particularly if the 8th seed makes a run and wins it all.
The beauty of March Madness is that it is 65 teams. While there are always a few teams that argue that they should have made the tournament, none of them can really make the argument that they would have won it all.
I think that one of the great things about college football is that we can argue for years about who the national champion was or should have been. We all still argue that UW should have been number one at the end of the 1984 season, even though BYU was undefeated. I can't even tell you, and don't really care, who won the NCAA basketball tournament in 2006, let alone in the mid 80's.
I know that I am in the minority, but I would love to see the BCS go away, and a return to traditional bowl matchups with traditional polling done at the end of the season.
the only problem with that is there no winner...this is a society of winners and losers. Good v. Evil. With the way it was and is set up we get no clear winner. America wants to know who IS best not who we think is best. A playoff with 8 teams would give us a better understanding. Of course there will be arguements on who #8 should be, but i would argue who 8 is than #1. They are robbing kids the opportunity to prove they are the best. USC and Georgia have legit reasons for believing they are best but we will never know and those kids have been robbed the opportunity because the universities that they play for and make a great deal of money for dont care about them. They care about money and hide behind "traditions" that they obviously dont care about because the rose bowl is the only BCS bowl that tries to uphold the Big 10 Pac 10 battle, though now we are privileged to watch a #1 in conf v #2 in conf which in recent memory has been horrible. I just find it a joke how these 80 year old men try to talk and act like they care about the education of these kids...some do i am sure so i hate to generalize, but the big programs i just dont see it. if they cared about these kids they would listen to them when they are the ones who want a playoff and prove they are the true #1. Another thing i dont get is when they say it will make the regular season games less attractive...what are they talking about. how is a regular season game any less important now than before...in fact it could mean more. if you lose that 3rd game you might not be the 8 seed or if you lose 2 games your now the 6 seed. i dont hate NFL regular season games because they are regular season games. they are just as fun to watch regular season than post season. I cant stand the BCS (Bull Crap System)
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