If only this were a commercial, then it would have its own tagline custom fit like a wide receiver's glove: "Bashing the BCS, so easy Notre Dame's football team could do it."
And we get it. It's easy to rip on the BCS. It's mocked so often that "NCAA Football brought to you by the BCS sucks" should just be stitched on every game ball, plastered outside the stadiums and weaved it in to Lee Corso's hair. From here forward, all Jarrett Lee passes should just be named BCSes.
It's like making fun of France or the Detroit Lions, it doesn't take much thought and everybody is going to agree with you. The BCS is just a faceless villain, probably with a monocle, a finely curled mustache, and headquarters somewhere deep inside a volcano, easy to fault for anything and everything. As of last count, the BCS has been blamed for all the evils in the world from that Saved by Zero commercial to the MLS.
But there is no way in the name of hanging chads you can blame the Big 12 South controversy on the BCS. No way, no how. That's just pure Bevo-grade cow plop.
After all, the job of the BCS is to pit the nation's No. 1 ranked team vs. the nation's No. 2 ranked team against each other at the end of the season, after 15 weeks have been played and 11 conference champions crowned. What it's not designed to do is determine who should play in a conference title game. If you're going to use the BCS for picking division champions, you might as well award Oscars based on the first act, call elections with half the precincts in or expect to the sunrise at midnight.
So who should you blame?
<Br><Br>Blame the Big 12 and their flow chart to a division champion, of which BCS standing is the fifth tiebreaker, if you don't like the decision. All six BCS conferences use BCS standings in some shape, but only the Big 12 and the Big East send the highest-ranked BCS team in the event of a three-way tie (and while we actually like the idea of a season being more than a head-to-head matchup, anytime you're copying off the Big East when it comes to football, you're not exactly cheating off the Harvard kids). Most, like the SEC, use the BCS standing to eliminate one of three tied teams then reverts to head-to-head. (The Big Ten is an even more ridiculous method - after smartly excluding teams with more games against FCS schools, it then eliminates the most recent BCS participant, before resuming with head-to-head. Consider that a five-iron to the teeth as a reward for continued success.)
So if you consider head-to-head matchups the be-all, end-all and think 45-35 is the most important number in sports since the Babe wore No. 3, blame the league and whatever majority of the schools approved the tiebreaker procedure.
Or blame Texas for losing to Texas Tech. Believe it or not, it was two Longhorns, not the BCS, who couldn't tackle Michael Crabtree with one second left in Lubbock. It wasn't the BCS that couldn't catch an easy, fluttering, can-of-corn of an interception in the final minute against the Red Raiders. It wasn't the BCS that started out slower than John Wooden in a 100 meter dash, or gave up 476 passing yards while totaling just 374 yards of offense against Texas Tech.
Blame the Longhorns for scheduling meekly out of conference, playing Florida Atlantic, UTEP and Rice while Oklahoma played Cincinnati and TCU, two teams in the top 13 in the latest BCS standings, even if there's a little luck involved. Blame a team who didn't develop a consistent running game, whose leading tailback is averaging 31 yards per game for not inspiring confidence in the voters or even less in the computers which don't consider the possible damage of letting your quarterback take more hits than Matt Millen's reputation. Blame a pass defense that imploded extravagantly on national television and finished 108th in the nation.
But don't blame the BCS because it's easy and because it won't fight back. Its work isn't done yet. A year ago, Missouri and West Virginia were Nos. 1 and 2 in the standings and they lost. LSU, who trailed Virginia Tech, Kansas and Georgia in addition to Missouri and Kansas, leapfrogged all the way into the national title game because the voters, who comprise 67 percent of the BCS formula, recognized that the Tigers were a superior team to Kansas, which had one fewer loss and the Hokies, whom LSU had clobbered earlier in the season.
After all the angst and hand-wringing, and the continued expectation of failure from the BCS, the best team earned its way into the BCS title game and hoisted the crystal football. And, should Florida beat Alabama yet remain behind Oklahoma and Texas in the standings, the Longhorns could still find their way into the national title game for a Red River Rivalry fought in Miami. And if not, as much as Texas fans might not like it and may singlehandedly yank the nation out of recession with the production of 45-35 signs, a Big 12 championship will be the clear line in the sand that separates two evenly matched rivals.
And if we somehow can't agree on that, can we just be quiet long enough to enjoy the last great weekend of the greatest regular season in sports before the stadiums go dark for another nine months? In the offseason, we'll write letters to switch to a playoff format, print t-shirts with "Why Can't Playoffs?", put a pro-playoff message on the Goodyear blimp and engrave it in Charlie Weis' lunch.
But right now, don't put the Big 12 South's tiebreaker on the BCS. It never asked to decide a Big 12 champion or to dole out that likely 12th win that will divide two teams so closely matched that they're a mere eight points apart in the AP poll and one point apart in the coaches'. And it's not like the league asked the BCS to add two plus to two only to get orange. Four of the six computer polls favor Oklahoma, so do the coaches. And if we can all accept that it's unlikely Stanford is better than Oregon State, or Iowa than Penn State, is it so far out of left field for 175 voters and six computer polls to come to the conclusion that Oklahoma might be a more worthy team?
But even if you can't, don't blame this tiebreak on the BCS. Not this time. And if you have to blame someone, well, blame France. Everyone will agree.
Don't Pin This One on the BCS originally appeared on NCAA Football FanHouse on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:32:00 EST . Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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