This evening, I took my son to movie night at his elementary school, so I arrived home around halftime of the Friday night game . . . just in time to hear Rece Davis say the following as part of his "Extra Point":
- While a seeded playoff would be better than the BCS, the BCS is better than the pre-BCS bowl system.
- The problem with the BCS is that it makes the national championship the whole focus of the sport, to the detriment of conference play.
- Conference play matters more because you can control it and it isn't dependent upon voting.
- A good example of the previous point is the fact that the Texas Longhorns thought they deserved a shot at the national championship last year.
What . . . the . . . bloody . . . flaming . . . ?!?!
Even if you favor a playoff (and I know many of you do), you have to acknowledge that any playoff that admitted more than six teams (as any realistic playoff scenario would) would diminish the importance of winning a conference championship by admitting at-large teams into the mix. No serious person can claim that the addition of wild card teams has not diminished the importance of winning your division in major league baseball or in the NFL. Maybe that's not a big deal to you, but no one can simultaneously praise a playoff and decry the diminution of conference crowns.
If making the national championship the sole focus of college football is detrimental to the sport (as I believe it is), how is the BCS an improvement upon the previous bowl tie-ins? When winning the Big Ten or the Pac-10 guaranteed a Rose Bowl bid, winning the SEC guaranteed a Sugar Bowl bid, winning the SWC guaranteed a Cotton Bowl bid, and winning the Big Eight guaranteed an Orange Bowl bid, the goal of teams in those conferences was to attend those bowls. If everything broke right, you might be able to turn a major bowl victory into a national championship, but the focus on finishing No. 1 was significantly reduced under the old system, which Davis denounced.
Finally, the very same set of rankings that determined which teams would play in the national championship game determined which teams would play in the Big 12 championship game. Rece couldn't have picked a worse example if he had tried.
I like Rece Davis, but this was blithering gibberish, so much so that I couldn't resist taking the time to declare it an exercise in idiocy.
All right, now I'm going to get started on Too Much Information. Bear with me. . . .
Go 'Dawgs!