I give up.
The #2 team in the BCS has been eliminated from it’s conference championship game. As has the #4 team in the BCS. The #3 team doesn’t even have to play in a conference title game. Meanwhile, the #1 team in the land has to play in their conference title game and win just to hold on to their ranking.
How is this not a broken system? The conferences have title games, but getting to those games has no bearing whatsoever upon rankings, apparently. Alabama, who lost at home to LSU, could leapfrog the Tigers if LSU somehow loses to Georgia in the SEC title game. Even without that gift, the Tide has a good shot at playing in the national title game, despite being beaten at home and eliminated from their own conference title game.
The fuck?
LSU is handicapped due to their excellence. They’re putting in jeopardy their #1 ranking for something that has no bearing whatsoever upon the BCS race. Stanford is ranked ahead of the team that eliminated them from contention for their conference title, Oregon.
None of this makes any sense. Nor is it fair.
On the flipside, the Big East’s automatic qualifier for a BCS bowl may well be 7-5 Louisville. Meanwhile, 10-1 Boise State has to hope for an at-large bid.
This system is broken. It needs to be fixed. People across the college football landscape have been screaming this for years, but it’s even more true this year and it’s only going to get worse.
With the 2011 season all over but the shouting (and there will be plenty of shouting), we have just a scant few games left for things to shake themselves out. But from my point of view, it’s been a disappointing, rough season marred by scandal, investigations, sub-par play, lack of parity, and likely a unsatisfying outcome. LSU/Bama rematch? Yeah, I’ll watch it, but I’m not going to enjoy it.
Never the less, here are some things I learned this weekend.
- Friday’s games are all a haze of leftover stuffing and pie. I’m not too convinced that I actually missed anything.
- Saturday’s rivalry games were almost all blowouts. What a way to end the season…
- Michigan/Ohio State was actually worth watching. Who knew?
- Notre Dame finally looks like they’ve made the switch to Andrew Hendrix at QB over Tommy Rees. Too bad they didn’t make that decision before they found themselves down 21-0…
- The most intriguing game of the weekend happened while most of you were in a turkey-induced coma, with Texas A&M sticking to the script and collapsing in the second half. Well done, guys.
- We still have no idea who the Heisman frontrunner should be, but it looks like Andrew Luck, Trent Richardson and Robert Griffin III are locks to be invited to NYC in a few weeks. Montee Ball disapproves, but then again, he’s probably still scoring a TD somewhere…
- I will be spending the next few weeks watching FCS playoffs, because I enjoy seeing moderately competent football, especially when the teams are actually playing for a real title instead of an imaginary one. Watch with me, won’t you?
