Jan. 1, 2008
RELATED LINK – Notebook Archive
Is it just me or has there been less carping about college football’s method of anointing its national champion this year?
One would suspect in this topsy-turvy year with no clear-cut dominate powers, that the pundits would have a field day trashing the Bowl Championship Series system.
Could it be that some of the noise has been muted because of what is going on – again – in the National Football League?
Those of you that follow professional football know that aside from the Patriots’ push toward an unbeaten season, the main conversation during the NFL’s final week was how long would teams that have already made the post-season play their starters.
Our hometown favorite Titans got a huge boost when the favored Indianapolis Colts opted to bench most of their first team in the season finale, allowing our good guys to squeeze into the wild card slot.
Let’s switch gears and go back a month. The Commodores needed one more win to become bowl eligible and were facing Wake Forest, a non-conference opponent that already had won seven games.
If college football had the play-off so many of the media whine for, the Deacons would have already qualified and could have chosen to go the route of the Colts. They would have had little or no incentive to beat us.
Fortunately for the integrity of college football, Wake Forest had incentive because a victory would push it into a higher rated bowl. The game, disappointing as it would become for Vanderbilt, was not a sham; it was every bit as important and hard-fought as the first game of the season.
This is the fundamental argument against play-offs (aside from academic considerations) that college football powerbrokers such as former SEC Commissioner Roy Kramer have pointed out for years. In college football, every game means something…the season is the play-off.
ESPN analyst and former Notre Dame Coach Bob Davie pointed out this flaw with the NFL’s process, rhetorically asking “do we want this for college football?”
Commentators Al Michaels and John Madden, in turn, lauded the play-off bound New York Giants for giving it the old college try against New England, trying to spoil its perfect year. Madden admitted he was so impressed that he called the Giants head coach to congratulate him.
Really? When it becomes notable that both teams played to win there is a fundamental problem. Would you have wanted to be a Colts fan and watch Peyton Manning sit on the bench most of the night? Or worse, a Cleveland Brown partisan needing a Colt victory for your team to qualify?
I’m not here to solve those issues; just pointing out that the next time you hear a rant about the BCS, remember there are trade-offs.
The college boys have ample incentive to try their best, be it the first game or the last game of the year. You don’t have to be an old school thinker to see that.