JoBu's Third Annual Defense of the BCS

I'm no more tired of answering for college football's postseason than college basketball fans are tired of trying to change it.

By Jordan Burchette
Maxim.com

Once and for all, I’d like to hear your stance on the BCS. I’ve had a “friend” or two tell me the BCS is just one of many reasons college ball sucks—yes, their blasphemies know no end. So, help me out here. I’m not informed enough to defend the thing by myself.

–Crimson

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sincere pleasure to present to you our Third Annual Bulbous Defense of the BCS. The rules are simple: 1. Know more about college football than what’s transpired within your zip code since September, and 2. If any of the following statements apply to you, stop reading and click here.

I watch televised golf.
Nothing beats the excitement of three weeks of basketball.
I enjoy stamping on kittens with shoes made from the leather of Venezuelan children.

Now that it’s just us, it’s time we came clean about the BCS’s original intent: to address the 6’4”, 320-pound flaws in the previous system. When championships were determined solely by opinion poll, subjectivity, along with Jurassic conference-bowl affiliations, became the target of purists and infidels alike. The advent of the BCS partially resolved the old argument, but gave detractors something new to wail about, namely the unnatural role of computers coupled with the subjectivity of opinion polls in determining a champion.

So here we are, teetering on the precipice of a proposed playoff system consisting of no fewer than eight teams, and as many as 32. Proponents argue that, as with the NCAA basketball tournament, a playoff would not only determine a “true” national champion, but would do so in dramatic fashion…Am I the only one who finds the NCAA tournament Bill Snyder–boring? Sure, you get a month of elimination basketball, but what about the three months before it? Hypothetically, a team can land a tourney bid with a .500 regular season record—this is “championship” basketball.

Under this “thrilling” basketball model, pairings that would constitute weak non-conference games to start a season now become “exhilarating” first-round fuck fests. Consequently, Northwesteastern Southern University would get a shot at Miami in an opening-round game that the ’Canes shouldn’t be made to play and that NSU doesn’t deserve a ticket to, much less an entire sideline.

And how to determine such a playoff bracket in the first place? Ultimately, a committee of inferior “humans” will have to choose teams, bringing us right back to the subjectivity argument dogging the existing system. For Christ’s sake, there’s actually brainpower spent each March on who should participate in a play-in game to determine the No. 64 team in the tournament. You don’t see a national debate rage over subjectivity here, because nobody gives a corn-bedazzled shit.

A playoff would merely prove a bite-size version of the existing four-month playoff we call “college football’s regular season,” which is essentially the one-loss elimination tournament college basketball fans go so apeshit for. In the BCS, there are no meaningless games. However, under a playoff system that gives every team a second or even third chance, individual games would lose nearly all their significance, the understanding being there’s always next week. For example, this weekend’s Michigan–Ohio State game is worthwhile on its historical merits alone, but is made more so because it will determine at least one Championship Game participant. Were this the NFL, Maurice Clarett wouldn’t even suit up; the Buckeyes would already have locked up a first-round bye and home field throughout the playoffs.

A familiar refrain is that the college football season should be decided on the field of play, rather than on some tubby sportswriter’s jelly-stained ballot or computer dork’s sticky flat screen. But if the field of play were infallible, the Patriots wouldn’t have made it to the AFC Championship Game last season, let alone the Super Bowl. Under the BCS, the pollsters would likely have made amends for what was a shitty rule (not a shitty call) in last year’s Raiders-Patriots divisional playoff, and penalized New England accordingly.

Finally, consider the champions in each of the BCS’s four years of existence. Argue against Tennessee in ’98, Florida State in ’99, Oklahoma in 2000, or Miami last year. Meanwhile, the Patriots won every game required of them under the NFL’s system, and still they’re referred to as champions with a George Bush–like smirk.

Who cares if your buttoned-down, oxford cloth country club friends like college football any damn way? Anyone unmoved by the inherent excitement of college football as it’s now played should not only be castrated by way of garlic press, but should have no business influencing any changes made to the sport. The fewer of those gimlet-swilling, mud-tongued ass tacks there are putrefying college football, the less we have to worry about them ruining it.

JoBu's Third Annual Defense of the BCS

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