football

This week's BCS standings are out, and I think it's a joke

1. Alabama
2. Texas Tech
3. Penn State
4. Texas
5. Florida
6. Oklahoma
7. USC
8. Utah
9. Oklahoma State
10. Boise State

I have no problem with the top three. They are undefeated. I take issue with the teams ahead of USC, though. They all lost more recently than USC did. People go on about how the Pac 10 is a terrible conference, but the fact of the matter is that USC's schedule is the 29th toughest in the country...and it's tougher than Texas Tech's, Alabama's and Penn State's, who all find themselves ahead of USC. Again, I can stomach this because these teams are undefeated, but if one of them falls, they need to fall way beyond USC.

USC has shut out three teams in four weeks. I haven't seen any other team do that. Yeah, they were lousy teams (Arizona State 0-27 USC, USC 69-0Washington St., Washington 0-56 USC) --but no other team has done that in conference this year. If a team is that great, they'll shut out teams the way USC is doing. It just hasn't been done.


However, here are the problems:

USC has a tougher strength of schedule than Oklahoma. As you can see, Oklahoma finds itself ahead of USC in the BCS standings.

The Big 10 is terrible. Terrible. I'm not going to talk about how Ohio State gifted the win to Penn State, but really, it all comes down to being a beauty contest. The Big 10 is regarded as better than the Pac 10 this year because of its history. The Pac 10 is absolutely lousy too--but so is the Pac 10. Last year, Hawaii went undefeated and got railed on for not playing anybody. The difference is that a team can go destroy teams in a mediocre big time conference (the Big 10 this year), go undefeated, and go to the National Championship Game. What a joke. If we're going to say undefeated teams are inherently better than no loss teams (which is basically what the BCS poll says), then undefeated teams in mid-major conferences are just as important as undefeated teams in major conferences (down year or not).

It's not like the National Championship Game pits the two best teams against each other anyway. Ohio State the last two years? Are you kidding me? They got dismantled twice. Not to be a homer, but we all know that USC would have played LSU a lot better last year. And, beyond USC, even Georgia was more deserving to play in the NCG than Ohio State.

I mean, the BCS is so broken that I don't even care if two teams from the same conference play each other for the NC, because it simply does not have the best teams play each other.



There's obviously a much easier way to do it--have teams play conference games+2 out of conference games. Most conferences are broken up into divisions anyway. You keep them as they are, and each of the major divisions send their representative to the national playoff tree. Power conferences don't need to disband, because they get the winners of mid-major leagues in the first round (we keep the BCS around for seeding teams in the playoff system)

The BCS bowls become the quarterfinal games, and we rotate them for the semifinal and championship games every year.

This system keeps conferences intact, keeps classic rivalry games (USC v Notre Dame, etc) and gives us a playoff system. Every conference has an equal conference to win, but to the delight of the power conferences, they are just a bit more equal than the mid-majors.


The obvious problem is only eight guaranteed games--only four home games. However, it gets rid of meaningless games (USC v Washington State) and makes every game that much more important.


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Alright, I'm done. We have our pre-election blowout tomorrow.