about that time...

for my annual BCS rant.
Ok, I know everyone already hates the bcs, and i'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but there are some interesting aspects of this debate that rarely get mentioned, that I’d like to elicit here.
i'd say your typical auburn 2006/7? Oregon 2002/3, and all the other schools' fans that have been hard done by the bcs might have a conversation that goes something like the following..
fan1: "hey so how bout that bcs? bullshit right?"
fan2: "hawwwww, (incoherent rant) (dey took our trophyyyy." (end of rant).
but it usually doesn't go any further. People just run around like chickens with their heads cut off screaming for a playoff, but can they actually defend the concept? Do they even know what their argument is? Is their argument even a sound one? These aren’t easy questions. And neither was deciding what to do with kramer’s girl’s bike, but Newman found the answer.
Somewhere along the line, we decided that the human opinion after all the traditional bowl games wasn't enough to crown a rightful champion, and often times we were left with co-champions, (which nobody likes, but ironically wasn't fixed by the BCS). In theory the BCS was put in practice to determine the best two teams from division 1 to play in the championship. Whether or not it does this adequatley or not, is beside the point, (for now).
So initially, the BCS was looking good, 2 teams to play for it all. But come on, how little foresight can you have? How hard was it to figure out that eventually there was going to be 3 undefeated or comparable teams, whose differences might be able to be deciphered by the slightest of margins through computers, but not by any disinterested college football spectator.
So, here we are, if you are a proponent of a playoff, as Mr. Obama apparently is, where then do we draw the cutoff for who gets to play? The logical number is 4, or 8, if you want to be safer, but either way, aren’t we just enlarging the same dilemma? (assuming we keep the rankings to determine these teams). I won’t get into the merits of the actual system of rankings, because although they are surely flawed, the formula is likely not going to be tinkered with, and that I can accept. BUT, there’s always going to be a legitimate gripe from that number 5 or 9 team, that they were robbed of a rightful place in the playoffs and who are we to tell them otherwise?
I myself have never been a big proponent of an end of season winner take all tournament to decide who is a “league” champion. For example, in NCAA basketball, if you play in a bottom feeder conference that is only going to get one bid no matter what, your regular season is essentially worthless. (if all you care about is trying to win a nat’l championship, which in theory is what all D-1 teams are playing for). Is it not fair to say that the best team will always have the best record in the league if everyone plays an equal number of times? Thus, I believe that this regular season champ should have the honor of representing the conference in the big dance.
I’m not exactly sure how this tradition started, and I’m too lazy to research it, but this is clearly become the benchmark for how titles are decided in American sports. Nowhere is this more evident than in the MLS which inexplicably does not crown their regular season table topper the champion, as is the case in every other soccer league in the world that I know of, but prefer to “let them play it out,” in a somewhat comical MLS cup, where the quarterfinals are 2 legged and the semis are not! What?! Even the grueling 162 game baseball season in belittled to a play-off, and no one blinks.
How is this relevant to the BCS you ask? Well, in some ways it isn’t. And there is no easy solution to the college football problem. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that perhaps we need to re-examine the way we evaluate our awarding of championships based on the entire course of a season, and not just on one game.