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Only You Can Fix The BCS
Authored by Jeff Risdon - 2nd December, 2007 - 10:00 pm
With John Herrera standing to his right dressed in black and appearing not unlike an undertaker, Lane Kiffin sat down at the podium for Sunday's postgame news conference.
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Now that the bowl opponents are scheduled, and the final regular-season BCS standings are on the books, here comes the avalanche of complaining and mean-spirited debate over all things college football. I’m here to tell you, disgruntled fans, that you have the power to fix this mess. But I know and, more importantly, the NCAA and Bowl operators know that you will almost certainly give that power away without a fight.
Say you’re a Missouri fan, a status that renders the term “long-suffering” an understatement. No doubt you are ticked off about being left out of the BCS dance and settling for playing Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. Never mind that for the 50 years preceding the BCS you would have sold your best hog and your middle child for a trip to Dallas, or any New Years' Day bowl. I can certainly empathize with being left outside while a team you walloped just 8 days ago, Kansas, got in despite their best win of the season coming over a Central Michigan team that lost to Clemson by 8 touchdowns. I know you’re upset, but you have the power to force change.
Or perhaps you’re a USC fan, filled with the inflated opinions of pretty much every college football analyst telling you that your team is playing better right now than any team in the country. Sure, you lost to 41-point underdog Stanford, not to mention the trip to Oregon and the Ducks, who lost their last three games to plummet from the rankings. You still wound up winning the Pac-10 and smoked your two most troublesome rivals, and you demand to be rewarded. I know you’re not accustomed to being bypassed by the glamour bowls (or recruits), and driving across the city to watch your team play Illinois (Illinois?!?) isn’t exactly how you want to spend your Jan. 1st. I’m here to tell you, Trojan Man, that you have the power to make sure you’re never on the outside looking in again.
Maybe you’re a Hawaii fan, all fired up that the only undefeated team in the land isn’t playing for a national title. Heck, you’re not even playing a team that won its own division in its conference. Oh, the nerve and disrespect! Never mind that you barely escaped your last trip to Louisiana, beating lowly LA Tech by 1 point in your only trip past the Mountain Time Zone, or that you played one of the easiest schedules ever drafted. You believe your run and shoot attack can beat anyone, anywhere, and you desperately want the chance to prove it. Lighten up, because you have the ability to make sure a travesty like this will never happen again.
“How does a lowly fan like me bring down the mighty BCS?” you ask. It’s really quite simple, in theory anyway. Acting on it will require you to go against what every fiber in your body wants you to do. And, it might require a little patience and persistence, because it’s not able to happen overnight.
The solution is this: stop watching. Find a Bond movie marathon on New Years' Day, or let your wife watch the dog show. Take down your Christmas lights or clean up the mess after the party from the night before. If you truly want to force a playoff and doom the BCS to a dark eternal night, you have to do it by making the BCS system not profitable. Don’t attend the Bowl games or festivities, don’t buy the commemorative t-shirts, don’t invest in the horribly overpriced school-sponsored travel packages. Do your part and kill the TV ratings. If you have to watch the games, head to a local sports bar where they don’t know Neilsen ratings from Charles Nelson Reilly.
You have the power, my friends, the power to end all this BCS madness and force a 16-team playoff like every other NCAA Division has. If the TV ratings are weak, the next TV contract won’t be as lucrative. If the bowl games have lots of empty seats and unfulfilled sponsors, they’ll quickly go away. Remember, the NCAA is all about making as much money as possible in complete disregard to common sense or concerns of the “student” athletes. If they believe they can make even $5 extra dollars from a playoff system instead of the BCS, trust me, they will dump the bowls faster than Britney Spears can demean herself once again (alternate political allegory, for my friend Dave: faster than Rudy Giuliani can say “9/11”).
It’s not going to be easy, and I completely understand. My family has an entire eating and viewing routine worked out for every Jan 1st, from kicking off the Cotton Bowl with a platter of cheese and beef log to going to bed at halftime of the Sugar Bowl after downing a box of fudge and a case of Coors. It will be even harder when for those of us whose teams are playing in the Fiesta, Orange, and BCS Title games. But we can, no, we must do it if we ever want an end to the BCS madness!
