BULL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES - NCAA Division 1-A Football is Sports' Biggest Fraud

January 8, 2007 | L.N. Smithee

[L.N. Smithee]

It's the major college football conferences' morbid fear of the equity the nation embraces and celebrates every March that makes NCAA Div 1-A football the biggest fraud in American sports. College basketball fans fondly remember the Davids that slew the Goliaths, even though most of those teams didn't win it all; Valparaiso, Hampton, Gonzaga (now recognized as a perennial power), George Mason, an 11th-regional seed that defeated TWO 1-seeds to make it to the Final Four last year, and Villanova, which did defeat mighty Georgetown (led by Patrick Ewing) to win a real national championship. Villanova won ON THE COURT IN A REAL TOURNAMENT, not on some stupid, labyrinthian, deliberately obtuse amalgam of computer data, regional bias, and politics (Urban Meyer this year, Mack Brown in 2004).

If you could read the minds of the Presidents and ADs of the football factory schools, they are probably ruing the day they allowed Boise State (under pressure) to play a BCS bowl instead of simply disrespectfully relegating the Mountain West champion to the Pioneer Purevision Las Vegas Bowl, which is the template. Don't argue with me about that, just check the NCAA football website. It's there in black-and-white; under normal circumstances, the Mountain West champion plays the college that finished fourth in the Pac-10. That's a fair fight, right? Ha! The Mountain West champion defeated the Big 12 champion!

Here's the dirty little secret the NCAA won't discuss: Under the current system, of the 112 Division 1-A college teams, 52 of them can't possibly win a national championship no matter what. All teams in the Mountain West, MAC, WAC, Conference USA, and the Sun Belt conferences are just playing for the chance to play in a bowl against one of the runners-up in the monolithic conferences: the SEC, the Big Ten, the Big 12, the Pac-10, the Big East, the ACC or Notre Dame, the 1000 lb. gorilla that sleeps anywhere it wants. (Think the Irish really deserved to be in a BCS bowl this year? What a joke.) The so-called National Championship game is a private party for the elite. No George Masons, no Villanovas. There are guards at the gate to make sure Cinderella won't crash the ball.

The stupidest thing about 1-A grid is that if there was a REAL tournament like there is for every other level of college football, the Road to the National Championship would rival the Super Bowl. Don't buy the nonsense about how a playoff would hurt the schools financially. It's a crock. According to a New York Times story on December 31, 2006 (italics mine):

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The bowl system is not a financial boon, compared with the potential yield of a playoff. Although the bowls have poured hundreds of millions into college coffers, teams have turned down multibillion-dollar offers for a tournament-style postseason. In the most recent television negotiation, the Plus One model [that is, holding the National Championship game after the five BCS bowls, which would determine the participants] would have been worth an extra $40 million.

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There is near-paralysis in the fatcat conferences regarding progress toward a playoff. The article goes on to say the Big Ten and Pac-10 schools' presidents are against a playoff because it might permanently do away with their traditional places in the Rose Bowl. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and Oregon University president Dave Frohnmayer said the Big and Pac 10s "would prefer to return to the old bowl system -- which had no mechanism for matching No. 1 vs. No. 2 -- rather than have a playoff." It's not surprising that the Big 10 honcho wouldn't be adaptable to change. After all, this is the conference that kept the name "Big Ten" after an eleventh college joined it. Jeez Louise, even Andy Katzenmoyer can count to eleven, but the college presidents can't?!

The college presidents, by the way, know they're full of it. But because they are who they are -- the heads of institute of higher learning -- they get away with not giving real flesh-and-blood reasons why they won't agree to a football tournament while having no complaints about the fact that their schools participate in every other NCAA tournament. Especially outrageous is the notion that Division 1-A athletes would be academically disadvantaged by a playoff, missing study time and exams in that month in-between the conference season and the December and January bowls. Dispensing with this is easy. For a moment, forget the fact that many of the best teams are made up of scholarship players that limped out of high school and/or junior college GPA-wise (hello again, Mr. Katzenmoyer); some of those young men have a shot at making a living in the NFL playing for more money than a valedictorian might dream about (whether of not they have the smarts to manage the money is another issue entirely). On the other hand, what about the guys at schools like Appalachian State, who won the Division 1-AA title ON THE FIELD? Some of them might make the cut at a pro camp, like Jerry Rice from Mississippi Valley State, Walter Payton from Jackson State, or Tony Romo from Eastern Illinois. But when you get down to Division II and III schools, only once in a blue moon does anyone emerge from the playing field to NFL glory. Once those fellows have played their last game for their alma maters, it’s time to go to work doing something that ain’t football. Those guys need to study more than the 1-A guys, right? And yet, their institutions still decide who’s the best on the gridiron.

What's really amusing, though, is going to the BCS website, which is an exercise in defensiveness. Check out the links in the upper right corner, which are a compilation of articles saying something -- anything -- good about the current BCS system. Usually, the links are to articles that have nothing to do with fairness, and more to do with the pageantry of the events and how half of a couple dozen teams get to finish their season dancing on the turf, even if a victory only means the team was saved from a .500 season (or, in the case of Florida State, a losing season). Never mind the fraudulent, dishonest, corruptible nature of determining a championship game by polls. It's all about the chillllldren.

The funniest of the defenses linked on the BCS website was published in the San Jose Mercury News on November 30, before the USC-UCLA game that knocked the Trojans out of the #2 spot. Written by Jon Wilner, it is entitled “BCS keeps a bracket away another year; System has worked, but there remain a few questions.” Bold is mine:

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Three days from Bowl Championship Series selection day, and the biggest winner is not top-ranked Ohio State, surging USC or hanging-with-the-big-boys Boise State.

The biggest winner is the system. It's working -- again.

It delivered a pulsating November.

If USC beats UCLA on Saturday, the system will deliver the national-title matchup most of the nation wants: Ohio State vs. USC. And if USC loses, it will deliver Ohio State-Michigan, which might not be perfect but is hardly the doomsday scenario needed to push the lords of college football closer to a playoff.

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Oh, heaven forbid.

Oops.

As we know now, USC lost, and we DIDN’T get Ohio State-Michigan, we got Ohio State-Florida. Here’s how Wilner characterized Florida’s shot at the title game as he was touting how well the BCS was “working”:

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In anticipation of low-grade controversy, here's a selection day primer:

Is USC in the title game?

According to BCS analyst Jerry Palm, it's highly unlikely the Trojans would fall from the No. 2 spot if they win Saturday. They hold a 0.01 advantage over Michigan in the computers, a margin that could expand with a victory but certainly won't shrink, and also lead Michigan by 97 points in the Harris poll and by 46 points in the coaches' poll.

``Half the voters are going to have to change their mind between USC and Michigan,'' Palm said. ``That's not realistic unless USC wins on a bad call -- that's what would have to happen.'' No. 4 Florida, which plays Arkansas in the SEC title game, has even more ground to cover: 183 points in the Harris poll, 86 points in the coaches' poll, plus a deficit in the computers.

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Oops. USC lost outright. And Michigan didn’t even play, but some voters in the poll decided that Florida, which won the SEC title game, somehow became better than the Wolverines, who only lost to the reigning #1, overnight. Florida poll-vaulted all the way to #2 despite being bogged down at #4 in all three determining factors.

One of the mysteriously selected Harris Poll voters, former Washington State coach Jim Walden, actually voted the Gators #1 over Ohio State, saying he didn’t think the Buckeyes could survive Florida’s schedule. Oh, yeah, “the schedule.” It doesn’t matter if you win all the games set before you, someone with a vote can still think to himself, “I don't care if they won all their games, that's not good enough!” If you don’t grasp the lunacy of this stance, consider if the batting champion in baseball was determined not simply by the percentage of at-bats resulted in hits, but also by the ERA of the pitchers that the batter faced. If you think that makes sense, you're beyond help.

Here’s what Wilner wrote about Notre Dame, who don't need no steenking conference:

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Is Notre Dame in the BCS?

The Irish are No. 10 in the latest standings and have completed their regular season. As long as they're in the top 14 on Sunday -- bet the college fund -- they will receive an at-large berth to the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl.

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While Wilner was sure the Dame would be in one of the signature bowl games even if they were barely in the Top 15, this is what he had to write about the only other undefeated team in the nation:

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Where's Boise State headed?

The Fiesta Bowl, in Tempe, Ariz., makes the most sense geographically. Plus -- there isn't a polite way to say this -- no one else really wants the Broncos. They're a nice story, but they aren't much of a TV draw and probably won't sell many tickets beyond the Idaho state line.

The Rose, which has the first two picks of teams in the at-large pool, won't take the Broncos. The Sugar, which picks third, won't take them, and the Orange, picking fourth, doesn't want them.

That leaves the Fiesta, where the Broncos will face the Big 12 champion (Nebraska or Oklahoma).

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The way that Boise State was held at arm’s length shows that sometimes money and you-know-what talk at the same time.

So the system that was “working” fell completely apart just days later. Now, remember, not only was this posted on the BCS site in its own defense, it’s still there! I guess they figure you might miss it if they remove it, or hope you'll just read the headline and not the actual story.

Now, Florida won the game tonight fair and square. Congratulations to them, they beat the odds and proved their doubters wrong. Who knows, maybe if there was a legitimate tournament, they would have defeated Boise State to prove they were the best team. But they didn’t, and we'll never know, just like they don't want us to know -- they just say, "Take our word for it," and that's supposed to be good enough. Well, it's not good enough for me, and I know I'm not alone.

As far I am concerned, the Florida Gators' “championship” is as hollow as that crystal football that serves as the trophy. And it will continue to be the Empty-AA championship game until the dinosaurs who keep Division 1-A college football a two-tiered society that rewards mediocrity, intellectual dishonesty, and fundamental provincialism get over their love affair with archaic traditions that prevent the sport from fulfilling its potential as a national cause celebre.

[Arkinsaw]

The rant is pretty good except for:

Oops. USC lost outright. And Michigan didn’t even play, but some voters in the poll decided that Florida, which won the SEC title game, somehow became better than the Wolverines, who only lost to the reigning #1, overnight. Florida poll-vaulted all the way to #2 despite being bogged down at #4 in all three determining factors.

The fact that Florida proved this part way wrong on the field. Probably ought to yank that part out of there.

[Phlap]

Can you say gambling? I can. That is what we are talking about. Not student athletes and national champions.

[Hatteras]

"Who knows, maybe if there was a legitimate tournament, they would have defeated Boise State to prove they were the best team. But they didn’t, and we'll never know, just like they don't want us to know --"

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a Florida Gators fan but I did pull for them over the Mighty undefeated Ohio State Buckeyes. (What can I say? I'm an underdog kinda guy...)

I'm all for a playoff system. Lord knows they had plenty of time between the end of the regular season and last night, but this guy is a whiner.

First off, for the past two or three months we have been hearing that a BCS #2 position will determine who gets slaughtered by the mighty Buckeyes. Buckeyes this, Buckeyes that, blah, blah, blah... Now, the Gators come in and make the mighty Buckeyes look like a bunch of school girls and hand them their @$$e$ and now we hear, "Well, the Gators are okay, but they didn't have to play Boise State!"

Give me a frickin' break...

A playoff system would be much better than the current BCS crap but if I were king? We're going back to five major (sponsorless) bowls, Rose, Cotton, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta (sorry Atlanta), all played between New Years eve and New Years day and absolutely, let me repeat myself here so we all understand, ABSOLUTELY!...... no more Rock'em Sock'em Robot commercials!

As a matter of fact, since I will be king, there will be a new law. A business can not repeat a commercial more than twice in one week. Man law.

[Defendingliberty]

Just found this...
All three games (the Rose Bowl remains on ABC) that aired on Fox are down from the games in last season's comparable time slots, and the Louisville-Wake Forest game in the Orange Bowl posted the lowest number ever for a BCS game at 7.0.

The previous low was 7.4 for the Utah-Pitt Fiesta Bowl after the 2004 season.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/4447602.html

[TaxRelief]

You should rewrite this with the correct numbers, and explain the current system a little more clearly, then repost.

It would be very interesting if it was explained more concisely and accurately.

[RabidBartender]

I would love to see them do away with "polls". 65 jock-sniffing writers shouldn't get to determine who the champion is - the football field should, through a playoff system.

Free Boise State!

[Tanniker Smith]

Frankly, I don't care about the "championship", and I think that there are so many "bowl" games now that it's ridiculous. And the names of some of them ... most of them don't even have names, just sponsors. Now if you're in the "Blockbuster" Bowl, at least that sounds exciting. On the other hand, if you're in the "socks.com Bowl", well, not so much.

[Hatteras]

"On the other hand, what about the guys at schools like Appalachian State, who won the Division 1-AA title ON THE FIELD? Some of them might make the cut at a pro camp..."

Kevin Richardson. Remember the name...

[PetroniDE]

Here is a solution to this mess.

1) Buy a trophy.
2) Declare Boise St. 2007 Football Bowl Subdivision National Champions.

Here is some logic for you.

Florida lost to Auburn
Auburn lost to Arkansas
Arkansas lost to USC
USC lost to Oregon State
Oregon State lost to Boise State

Who did Boise State lose to this season? NOBODY !!

Save the argument about strength of schedule and "didn't play nobody". How many SEC teams play non-conference road games? Think any SEC teams would play Boise State home and home?

[randita]

Football fans can gripe all they want, but what will have more sway are the advertisers who spent a ton of money buying second half spots that nobody watched, because it was such a lopsided game, people switched the channel or went to bed (I chose the latter--the boring nature of the game coupled with a martini did me in).

[jammer]

You get my vote for king!

But, can you make an exception for the "DAD got HOSED" commercial? I've seen it 50 times and still laugh uncontrollably!

[Phantom Lord]

Here is the biggest problem. Far to many people care far too much about how a sports team does. A win or loss by your favorite team has ZERO actual impact on your life.

[Triggerhippie]

For the record: Under the current system, of the 119 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (sheesh!) college teams, 52 of them can't possibly win a national championship no matter what.

Mathematically speaking of the 119 NCAA teams, 118 can't possibly win the national championship.

As a Gator fan, I'd love to see a playoff. Florida will, more likely than not, be in the hunt year after year. Notre Dame, Boise State, and many other severely over-rated teams will be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Once again, Boise State played a barely winning game against a highly over-rated team. This was their ONE "tough" game the whole year. Move them to the SEC and they would take their rightful place behind Vandy and Kentucky. Sorry about the truth...

[Triggerhippie]

See post #33.

[AxelPaulsenJr]

2006 Boise State Football Results

August 31 Sacramento State W 45-0

September 7 Oregon State W 42-14

September 16 at Wyoming W 17-10

September 23 Hawaii W 41-34

September 30 at Utah W 36-3

October 7 Louisiana Tech W 55-14

October 15 at New Mexico State W 40-28

October 21 at Idaho W 42-26

November 1 Fresno State W 45-21

November 11 at San Jose State W 23-20

November 18 Utah State W 49-10

November 25 at Nevada W 38-7

January 1 vs No. 11 Oklahoma W 43-42

Not exactly the toughest of schedules.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Loads of nonsense. Why is the Boise State any more worthy of recognition than Grand Valley State which was also undefeated?

There is no real doubt among football fans that Florida is the best team in the country.
UF
USC
OSU
WIS
LSU
AUBURN
ARK
would all clean Boise State's clock. Particularly the SEC schools.

[Hawk1976]

Please chalk any snippiness in my earlier post up to not having my morning coffee yet and being rushed.

I would like to see a sixteen team playoff system myself.

The school president's won't bite because semesters end right about that time in December (finals). The president's and the AD's also like the money the bowls generate. I agree they could get more with a playoff system and parallel bowl games.

[GOP_Raider]

Look, my team (The University of Utah) played in the Fiesta Bowl against a very bad, very unworthy Pitt team in 2004. If they held Boise State at arms length this year--and I don't disagree--then we were held at several arms lengths in '04.

If you ask me, this wouldn't be an issue if BYU hadn't been awareded a national title in 1984 based on little more than being lucky enough to be the only undefeated team in the country that year.

[dufekin]

Cut the regular season from twelve game to the traditional ten, run the traditional bowl match-ups in late November or over Thanksgiving weekend (requiring six wins to enter), then conference championships the first weekend of December. Every conference must hold a championship (most likely BCS #1 v. BCS #2 in the conference).

Then run a 16-team tournament over Christmas break. Every team meeting at least two of the following criteria gets an automatic bid: conference champion, won a bowl game, in the top 16, undefeated regular season. Other bids go to the teams with the highest BCS ranking. The BCS can rearrange matches only to the extent necessary to prevent rematches of previous games.

The bowls will generate money because they will determine whether a team gets into the tournament and quite possibly whether a team gets to play in its conference championship. The tournament will generate money because it alone will determine the national championship. The winner plays at most 16 games, compared with the 14 games now common and the 15 games possible with a pre-season classic (now abolished).