But I'm with you on this one . . . No team should be considered for a national title if it comes from a conference that doesn't have a championship game. You'd think the voters should have learned this lesson after last year's debacle for Ohio State, eh?
“You’d think the voters should have learned this lesson after last year’s debacle for Ohio State, eh?”
Yep, because we all know that a team like OSU could win it all! After all, look at 2002 when Miami was so dominant, there’s no way... ooops.
Sorry, I really disagree with this premise.
Ohio St. had the best conference record in the Big 10. They win the conference. No champioship game needed.
USC tied for the best conference record in the Pac 10. They beat ASU head-to head. They win the conference. No championship game needed.
Conference championship games exist mainly to be revenue sources. Determining the conference's best team is incididental, if it occurs at all.
To begin with, a conference's 2 best teams don't necessarily play in the title game if they are from the same artificially created division (please see Oklahoma/Texas in most Big XII seasons). Sometimes a conference's 2nd best team is locked out when it loses a tiebreaker to another team from their division (please see Georgia this year in the SEC).
Undefeated Nebraska pooched a Big XII championship game against a 5 loss Texas team. Despite this, they still played in the National Title Game. What did the Big XII championship game mean that year? Absolutely nothing. Did this weekend's SEC championship conference game settle anything? Nope.
LSU struggled to beat a mediocre Tennessee team. Yawn.
What if UT had won? Would that have made the SEC a stronger or weaker conference? Wouldn't UT have then been more deserving than Georgia for the BCS title game? (Beat them head-to-head, won division, won conference)
I blame the SEC and Arkansas for this entire BCS mess. If the SEC hadn't been greedy and pulled Arkansas away from the Southwest conference:
1) The SEC wouldn't have expanded into a 12 team, 2 division conference.
2) The SEC wouldn't have needed a bogus conference championship game.
3) The Big XII would still be the Big 8.
4) The Southwest Conference would still exist.
5) The Big Least would not exist for football.
6) None of the other conferences would have followed the SEC's lead of stealing teams, realigning into divisions and creating conference championship games.
7) The stooopid overtime rule would never have been needed and football games could still end in ties (as God intended).
8) The Cotton Bowl would still be a big deal.
9) The Fiesta bowl would still be just a Phoenix businessman's greedy dream.
10) Conferences would still be sending their champs to their traditionally affiliated bowl games.
11) East Coast sportwriters and weenie computer geeks - neither group ever actually played football - wouldn't have such a profound influence on a weekly basis into our sports conversations.
How is the current system any better than the old "mythical championship?" A college football national champion is still just a myth - no matter how many confernce championship games, computer weenies, or ESPN talking heads you throw at it.
Two problems with that. First, conferences with <12 teams are forbidden to play a conference championship. (And in smaller conferences, like the Big East everyone already played everyone once and it becomes redundant.)
Second, Conference title games are nice money for the conference but they represent only the opportunity for the #1 team to get tripped up.
Make the argument, in all seriousness, that the Big Ten, for example, earns something other than money in adding a 12th team and staging a title game.