B(c)S Monkey Business

The BCS has recently drummed up new propaganda for itself by hiring a former White House press agent. Wow. Are times really that tough? On its new website, www.playoffproblem.com, the BCS states,

"College football is more successful and more popular, more thrilling and more enjoyable than ever. Attendance, TV viewership, fan interest and revenues are at record highs. Any playoff scheme would jeopardize this great success, while threatening the wonderful and unique nature of the bowls. If you think the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is controversial, wait until you realize how much more contentious a playoff would be.

"A bracket-style playoff wouldn't end the debate, it would only fuel it. Advocates of a hypothetical playoff can't agree on how to resolve key playoff questions: who, what, where and when."

Methinks there is fowl play about.

Let's go through this point by point, like the ignorant fans the BCS thinks we are, and get this straightened out.

My first question: if the BCS system is generating so much "fan interest" in the game, if college football is "more successful and more popular, more thrilling and more enjoyable than ever," then why the need to hire a former White House press agent to drum up support for itself? Why does the BCS feel the need to defend itself? If it's not guilty of anything, if it's working successfully and its end product is so goddamn enjoyable and successful, why the sudden marketing campaign?

The BCS is not successful. It's not enjoyable. Whose definitions of "successful," "thrilling," and "enjoyable" are we using here? By the BCS' own standards, I'm sure it is successful and enjoyable; if my system of income was generating this much money, while excluding competition with those who could potentially lower my income, I'd claim it to be successful and enjoyable as well. What wealthy, corporate executives do you know, who make millions of dollars a year by summarily removing their competition, who don't consider their endeavors successful, thrilling and enjoyable? Of course the BCS thinks it's successful - its members are filthy goddamn rich, and they have no competition because they won't let anyone else join their 6-Conference country club.

And this is coming from a Notre Dame alumnus, remember; I know these types, inside and out. I spent five years surrounded by them, getting a fantastic education, and having it pounded into my head that one day I was going to be everyone's boss, if not the company owner. I lived in that country club and shook my head at the attitudes, and still do: nobody likes a life-sucking corporate asshole.

Speaking of which, on its Playoff Problem website, the BCS asks several questions, claiming in its introductory statement (quoted above) that advocates of a playoff disagree about the playoff's potential components. Well we can start by deducing that at least the playoff proponents agree on one fundamental thing: the BCS sucks monkey weiner and we need a playoff. But, hey, let's review the BCS' questions for shits and giggles anyway.

In a bracket-style playoff system:

1. Who would participate? Hmm. I'm going to go out on a limb here. Most of what I've read from playoff advocates involves the idea that conference winners would participate. There are 11 Division-I (FBS, I know) conferences. And if the point of a playoff system, in replacing the unfair exclusions of the BCS, is to expand competition and fairness to all Division-I schools, then we'd have to simply say that each conference winner is an automatic qualifier in the bracket playoff system. Depending on the nature of the playoff bracket, we could see 12 total teams, one being a wildcard, or 16 teams total, but the point is that 11 conference winners make up the heart of the playoff. The problem with the BCS' determination of which teams currently qualify for bowls lies fundamentally in its basis of those AQ teams in the poll system. I will say this time and time again: eliminate the poll system and replace it with what we in the rest of the sports world call "standings." Standings determine conference winners. Standings determine wildcard teams. If there are ties, incorporate record versus strength of schedule after the season to determine the 1 or 5 wildcard teams, in a 12- or 16-team playoff bracket, respectively. It's simple, folks. The polls have no place whatsoever in sports; standings do. Period.

2. How many automatic qualifiers? This question was answered above. It's simple. It's fair. Eleven conference winners automatically qualifying, promotes and expands competition, not only within the conferences, but between the conferences. If a team wants to make the playoffs, it better damn well win every game on its schedule. The idea of conference winners automatically qualifying for the playoffs gives far more meaning to the regular season because just one little loss could cost a team a chance to automatically qualify. Each game carries more weight. Competition would be at an all-time high in college football. And even with one or two losses in a season, competition would remain, with the notion that there are wildcard spots to fill. This isn't rocket science.

3. What would be the criteria to qualify? Seriously? Win the f*ckin conference, win every game you can, and play your ass off all year long. How is that for "criteria?" Who the hell needs any other motivation? Criteria?! It seems to me that the point of sports is to win as much as possible. The teams that win the most end up in a playoff, wherein they compete against each other, having been the best teams in the sport that season, and the winner of all those best teams ends up the champion. Again, it's such a simple idea, but apparently this is foreign to the BCS, which apparently likes the idea of arbitrary criteria to decide its champion... like polls, and opinions, and coaches, and sports writers... What has happened, in college football, to the idea of having the best record and winning your conference? "Oh, but what would we do about independents Notre Dame and Navy?" (I wish you could hear me giggling). Umm... they'd have to join conferences if they wished to participate? Just a thought.

4. What would be the criteria for seedings? See the answer to question #3. You BCS types are relentless in your bullshit. How much more arbitrary crap can you come up with to ruin this great American sport? You want to incorporate factors for weather conditions, turf, stadium capacity, pull of gravity at certain points, the earth's magnetic field, time of day, sun position in the sky, size of players, atomic composition of particular footballs used? Jesus, people. Win the conference. Win as much as possible. Make the playoffs. Win more. Win the championship game. Christ Almighty...

5. Where would the games be played? Let me answer that by asking you this: where the fuck are they played now?! Every playoff advocate with whom I've spoken is all for keeping the current bowls in place. The playoff system has nothing to do with getting rid of the bowl system. The bowl system has been around almost as long as college football itself; it's rich with tradition, it increases postseason attendance, it's fun for the fans, it boosts TV revenues, corporate sponsors, etc. It helps the game. So from what I gather among us playoff advocates is that we'd simply keep the bowls where they are, remove the shitty BCS system, institute our playoff bracket, and use the current traditional bowls in which to play the playoffs.

6. When would the games be played? Again: when the fuck are they played now?! Goddamn...

7. If you could resolve all that, would everyone be satisfied? Of course not. The point isn't to satisfy everyone. Clearly. The BCS certainly doesn't satisfy everyone. But the BCS doesn't even satisfy the majority of college football fans now. That's the enjoyable part of the playoff system - it allows the fans to experience a more meaningful regular season, to continue to travel to bowl games for the playoffs, and to feel satisfaction in witnessing a fair and competitive system of sports. At this point in the development of the BCS, there are fans of teams in non-AQ conferences that don't even watch their teams anymore because they realize the futility, in that those teams will never, under the current system, win a national championship; there are fans of teams in AQ conferences that stop watching after the third week if their team starts 0-3, knowing that their team would almost certainly not contend for a national title with 3 losses. The point is that right now, with this current wreck of a BCS system, the majority of fans and teams are not satisfied. With a playoff system, competition is open. It's extended to all 11 conferences in Division-I football. It gives every school a more levelled playing field on which to compete, recruit, and enter into a playoff postseason. And I think the sport owes it to the fans, to those who line the pockets of university presidents and administrations and corporate sponsors, to produce a fair, competitive, enjoyable, thrilling, successful product on the field, throughout the regular season, throughout the postseason, in the minds of the fans instead of only in the minds of the university presidents and corporate dickheads who currently suck the system dry of all its money.

Let me make one thing extremely clear at this point: the BCS was created of itself, by itself, for itself. It doesn't give one rat's ass about Joe College Football Fan like you and me. It doesn't care how unhappy or dissatisfied you are that your non-AQ team is 11-1 and doesn't have a chance to play that AQ 10-2 team in the title game. It doesn't care this year that Boise State or TCU or even Cincinnati won't play for a national title because the bottom line is that those schools won't bring them as much money as schools like Florida, Alabama, Texas, Ohio State, USC (even when they suck), Notre Dame (even when they've sucked for 15 years) and Oklahoma. The bottom line for the BCS is money; it always has been and it always will be. It's not fairness, it's not competition, it's not a true national champion resulting from a playoff system, it's not mirroring every other sport on earth and their systems, and it's certainly not about the sport of college football itself. College football, to the BCS, is a business. Nothing else.

The BCS' original statement from its Playoff Problem introduction - "Any playoff scheme (scheme?!) would jeopardize this success..." - is spot-on. Of course it would jeopardize their success. It would remove money from their pockets and would level the playing field with every other current-non-AQ conference in Division-I football. And that's the last thing they want. They exist, like any other corporate entity, (calling it pretty things like "coalition" doesn't remove its true identity) to make money.

And, on its website, asking fans to propose playoff scenarios so it can use seemingly disagreeing opinions of playoff advocates to bolster its own self-image is a cheap way to go about marketing itself. It also presupposes that those fans it's polling are ignorant and blind. Well, Mr Exclusive Corporate BCS Moneymaker, here's a nice literary middle finger from small-town, college-football-fan America, and from all of us silly playoff advocates out here who would enjoy a fair, competitive, true system of sports in college football: fuck you.

The House That Mandel Built

So Stewart Mandel wants a plus-one college football "playoff," as he calls it. Go ahead, click on the link and read his latest article. It's entertaining... like watching a 3 year old trying to do calculus. It amazes me that people with such little common sense and awareness somehow find the national spotlight. Kind of like the BCS itself.

Mandel claims that the BCS has caused the regular season to become more meaningful, in that fans across the country are forced to care about what's going on in the rest of college football, rather than simply focusing on their own teams. He also claims that before the BCS, fans in, say Oregon, wouldn't have cared about what happened in, say Iowa. He further makes the point that the same would result from an eight or sixteen team playoff system, without the BCS.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Supposedly, the BCS has made the regular season in college football more meaningful. I'm lost right off the bat. Perhaps my brain is too slow to pick up on what's going through Mr Mandel's head. Because I have a completely opposing observation about the BCS in this regard: it undermines the regular season for any team, or fan of a team, which doesn't belong to a major conference (especially the Big Six Conferences) or which doesn't win a conference championship. To my pea-brain understanding, a 12-0 Big Ten champion, for example, would receive an automatic bid into a major BCS bowl because it's a member of one of the six major BCS conferences. But if, say, Akron wins the MAC at 12-0, the BCS chuckles, brushes the Akron Zips cooties off its arm, and continues on its way to Columbus. What incentive does the University of Akron have to win its conference and go undefeated? There's no major bowl guarantee. There's not even a mediocre bowl guarantee or a national ranking guarantee. The same is true for a runner-up team in one of the six major conferences; even if a team like that posts a 10-2 record, finishing second in its conference, the BCS - despite the team's pretty damn good 10-2 record - has no major bowl for that team to play in. The BCS is set up to cater specifically to the six major conferences in the country and nothing else; its bowl system with automatic qualifiers completely undermines the regular season for any school and any conference outside the Big Six.

If anything, the BCS has turned the regular season into a joke for college football; we know from the outset that if the top several teams in the human preseason polls (which, of course are based solely on what a team did the previous season, and on hollow opinions of a select group of individuals who have yet to see what a team can actually do - or has done - on a [baby talk voice] real live football field) go undefeated, their selections in the major BCS bowls, including the national title game, are guaranteed. The human polls guarantee several teams in the six major conferences a top preseason spot in the rankings (be honest, when was the last time you saw TCU ranked at all, let alone as a preseason #1?), and as long as they don't lose, the BCS finishes the job by guaranteeing those predetermined top teams a bowl slot at the end of the year, two of which play in a "title" game... so the BCS says.

Mr Mandel, your logic is wearing thin.

Stewart claims next that fans from one team or conference couldn't care less about teams from another conference prior to the BCS system. So you're telling me that in 1993 when Notre Dame was ranked #2 in the country, I wasn't glued to my tv, as a Notre Dame fan, watching every last move of #1 Florida State? Are you out of your mind, sir? You're telling me that without a BCS system guaranteeing top bowl spots and title game spots to six major conferences, Oregon wouldn't care what Iowa was doing? It seems to me - and bear with me while I sort this out - that in the AP & Coaches polls that determined the fate of teams prior to the BCS, if teams were ranked at all, they and their fans cared about what every other ranked team in the country was doing, based on the simple fact that the more a team wins, the higher it's ranked. Seems pretty simple to me. What ever did we do without the Holy & Sacred BCS telling us to care about what other ranked teams were doing?

And now somehow Mr Mandel claims that the same national disinterest in the regular season would occur in a true playoff system format. Whew. I have to crack my knuckles and sit down for this one. Is the NFL regular season meaningless? How about the NBA? NHL? MLB? What about the NCAA basketball season? Or NCAA hockey season? Can I stop now? Do these teams have nothing to play for? Do their fans have nothing to care about? Do corporate sponsors lose money because of a playoff system? Stewart, claiming that the regular season doesn't matter is like looking an astrophysicist square in the eye and telling him that the universe is jealous and hungry: it makes absolutely no sense.

All this talk about a plus-one "playoff" system is driving me insane. It's like saying "Let's just add another bowl game to the BCS. Nevermind the preseason rankings and how those teams rarely fall out of the top ten. Nevermind that in a plus-one scheme, the BCS still exists with its six major conferences and automatic qualifiers. Nevermind the human opinions still counting for 2/3 of the BCS' so-called formula." Are you people nuts? Adding a plus-one format to the already corrupt BCS system is like putting a band-aid on a f*ckin heart attack: the problem isn't going away folks!

If anything at all, a true playoff system would increase interest in the regular season. If every team from every Division I-A conference had a potential shot at a playoff spot, which in turn gives them a shot at a national title, it seems to this humble Notre Dame grad and college football fan that every team and every fan of every team would have an immediate vested interest in the regular season. And - I know I may have gone temporarily insane here - if we got rid of the human-opinion-based national preseason rankings, er, I mean the poll system, and simply calculated a team's final regular season record against its strength of schedule (based on their opponents' records, and their opponents' opponents' records), seeded the top 8 or 12 or 16 at the end of the regular season, placed them into a playoff bracket, and let them duke it out like every other goddamn sport in the world, we could finally sit back in our armchairs in January, sip a little hot cocoa, and have a rousing discussion about the actual national champion... instead of wasting our time writing articles that promote the existing system with an addendum, that lines the pockets of the six major conferences, that built the self-serving BCS, that lives in the house that Mandel built.

The existing corporate-and-major-conference-sponsored BCS system simply doesn't work to produce true competition, an interested fan base, or a true national champion. It does, however, produce a nice, sparkling BCS System "winner," crowned with all the corporate logo sponsorship feces it can bestow. And all that horseshit makes me ill.

The BCS Proft Share

Steve Campbell of the Houston Chronicle: Contrary to popular belief, the BCS isn’t an actual entity. The BCS is a five-bowl arrangement (Fiesta, Orange, Rose, Sugar and National Championship Game) managed by the 11 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) conferences and Notre Dame. Six conferences — Big 12, Big Ten, Southeastern, Pac-10, Big East and Atlantic Coast — plus Notre Dame (if it meets certain criteria) have automatic qualification (AQ) into the BCS bowls.

The top two teams in the Bowl Championship Standings — a compendium of two human polls and six computer ranking systems — meet in the title game. The automatic qualifiers, along with a pool of at-large teams, fill out the other spots in the lucrative BCS bowls. A team from outside the AQ conferences can earn an at-large bid by finishing in the top 12 in the BCS standings. The BCS bowls are not contractually obligated to take more than one team from outside the AQ conferences...

So here we have it: the BCS is a group of people who got together to ensure that they, and their respective institutions, are guaranteed money. Let's not beat around the proverbial bush. It's as clear as any truth can be. Someone sat down and said, "Psst! Hey guys, listen up. Great idea here. What if we all got together and created a system that guaranteed all of us obscene annual revenues? What if we presided over this system so that we could decide who's in and who's out? What if we pretended that we were doing it under the guise of 'fairness?' "

I've studied a lot of American history and government in the past 20 years. It fascinates me, all the secrecy and goings on behind the scenes. The Federal Reserve Bank, a privately owned corporation, controls the United States government, and thereby its people, through the regulation of money, inflation, and interest rates, constantly holding the government and country in a perpetual state of debt through the interest the government owes the Fed for the manufacture and, in essence, sale of money to the government. The Fed runs the show, and you're fooling yourself if you don't see that. It institutes organizations, it influences and "suggests" legislation, and in essence passes its own laws into existence through the United States government. It gives itself power. It's never been audited, and recently, it's had trouble explaining the "disappearance" of several trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve Bank Corporation is not only above the law; it is the law. It is accountable to no one. This is simple, historical, proven, obvious fact.

The BCS is no different. I'm no conspiracy theorist; I like the truth. And with this particular topic, I can't ignore the obvious, and I don't think any respectable college football fan can ignore it either. This is, plain and simple, a system of itself, by itself, and for itself, that decides its own members, and guarantees itself huge profits at the expense of those on the outside. As Mr Campbell wrote, The BCS bowls are not contractually obligated to take more than one team from outside the AQ conferences. Does it get any more blatantly exclusive than this?! BCS Members have simply formed their organization, created memberships, and guaranteed themselves insane amounts of money through their "bowl championship" system, giving themselves the exclusive right to decided who gets into that bowl system! If they don't want you and your school, you don't get in. Too bad, so sad.

How is this in any way fair and ethically correct?

The BCS, under the premise of "fairness" and "crowning a true national champion," has usurped the sport of college football, taken away the level playing field, and forced a large number of schools into sporting oblivion. Each year another "champion" is heralded as the best team in the land, without going through an elimination-style playoff system. Each year that "champion" is from the Big 12, Big 10, SEC, Pac 10, etc - one of the six major conferences in the BCS. Do you think that one of those "at-large" teams will ever win a national title under the BCS? Do you think those corporate bloodsuckers who run the BCS would ever allow that to happen, as it would take money out of their hands and place it into the hands of some supposedly insignificant little school in the middle of nowhere?

The BCS is about one thing: guaranteeing sickeningly large amounts of revenue to the six major college football conferences, exclusively, at the expense of any other team it deems an "outsider," and at the expense of hardworking, tax-paying fans, while operating under its own rules and regulations, that have thus far been untouchable.

Why else do you think teams like Florida, Texas, USC, LSU, Oklahoma, and Ohio State keep winning national titles even with one loss going into the title game, and teams from "insignificant" conferences with undefeated records are kept from even playing in the title game in the first fucking place?! Folks, it's no coincidence that every single BCS National Champion has been from one of the six major conferences that comprise its membership.

How much more obvious do we need this to be before we decide that it's nothing but an exclusive, biased, revenue-generating, sports-based profit sharing scheme?

Do you believe in the Federal Reserve Bank? Do you want to sell Amway? In that case, the BCS is for you. And I have a bridge in New York to sell you. Give me a call.

Ya Can't Cure Pathetic

First thing this morning I checked in with the staff writers at my hometown newspaper online, the Akron Beacon Journal (so lovingly called the "Leaking Urinal" by most locals). I wanted to know what the guys could've possibly written, or how they could've positively spun, the Browns' ridiculous and humiliating 28-point defeat at home to the Green Bay Packers yesterday. I found, to my approval and agreement, an article by Patrick McManamon, who covers the Browns quite well for the Journal, which comes right out and says exactly what every Browns fan has been thinking since week four: it's time to get rid of Mangini. So instead of writing my own rant about this, I am reposting Patrick's article here, as it states very eloquently the same sentiments I have. It's the god's honest truth, folks, and it needed to be made public.

"CLEVELAND: The Browns have reached the time for a difficult decision regarding the future of Eric Mangini: There shouldn't be one.

Sunday was another humiliating loss, this one to the Green Bay Packers, at home. The 31-3 final does not do it justice.

The Browns were abysmal.

Yes, a bunch of guys had the flu during the week, and the flu stinks.

But so do the Browns — now 1-6 and playing worse.

The Packers were playing without two starters on the offensive line. They found a way to play well, to compete, to win.

Which is what mentally tough teams do.

The Browns find ways to lose, to botch games, to turn a loyal-to-a-fault fan following dispassionate and blase.

Coach Eric Mangini did not deserve the personal shots taken at him in Rolling Stone last week, but professionally, he has done nothing with this team except make it worse.

The Browns ended last season
playing their third- and fourth-string quarterbacks. This season's team has its roster, minus the normal number of injuries. It's not overly beaten up, and it's not an expansion team.

Yet it's the worst Browns team since the jubilant return in 1999.

This is Mangini's team. It's his approach, coaching staff and roster — with 23 new players on opening day (and 10 former New York Jets now on the team).

The Browns have been humiliated on the road in Baltimore and Denver, embarrassed at home by the Minnesota Vikings and the Packers. They lost by three to the Cincinnati Bengals then won by three in Buffalo.

Imagine — the highlight of the season is a three-point win over the Bills, when the starting quarterback completed two passes.

The two quarterbacks have regressed to the point that they don't resemble the guys who played the previous two seasons. All the Browns have done with Derek Anderson and Brady Quinn is destroy their trade value.

Quinn was yanked after 10 quarters. The past 12 quarters, Anderson has gone 23-for-70, yet during a blowout loss Sunday, Quinn never looked for his helmet.

Is there any clearer indication that he has absolutely no future with the Browns?

Go down the roster, especially to the places Mangini made changes. The right side of the line? No better. Neither are the other spots where Mangini brought in ''his'' guys — at receiver, tight end, safety, inside linebacker or defensive end. Not to mention offensive coordinator.

Too, consider the teams that former coaches Butch Davis and Romeo Crennel took over. None had a Shaun Rogers at nose tackle, a Josh Cribbs, a Joe Thomas, an Eric Steinbach.

Mangini did not take over a 12-win team, but he also did not take over one that should lose by 28 at home.

After the loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers eight days ago, their offensive coordinator, Bruce Arians, said the Steelers noticed the Browns like to blitz the safeties on first and second down. If you protect, Arians said, you can make big plays by running guys through the vacated area.

Guess what the Packers did in the first quarter? It saw safety Abram Elam blitz, then sent Donald Driver to Elam's area for a 71-yard touchdown that featured yet more missed tackles.

The players can say they're playing hard for their coach.

The evidence isn't there.

The Browns can keep hoping that things will get better and the ''foundation'' is being built.

If they do, they're fooling themselves.

It's difficult and painful to admit a mistake, but coaches have been replaced sooner.

The Browns and owner Randy Lerner need to start considering this possibility. Seriously.

Is it fair to Mangini? Probably not. He's trying, he's working. He doesn't want to lose. But it's not working. The Browns could win next Sunday, yes, but what does that make them? Two-and-six.

And is it any less fair than it was to Quinn to have 10 quarters to prove himself? Mangini wanted this system where he decides personnel. It's his show, and his record.

Most important, though, is perpetuating this situation fair to the fans who have to watch this nonsense week after week after week? To give them this kind of effort and play after they've spent so much of their hard-earned money?

If the Browns think they have problems now, wait until December, when it's cold, and 25,000 are in the stands and games are blacked out locally. And wait until they start selling tickets for 2010.

The only thing worse than making a mistake is not admitting it.

Continuing a mistake ''just because'' only compounds the mistake.

The Browns' defense has been terrible all season, but coordinator Rob Ryan might be able to reach the players in a way Mangini hasn't. He's done nothing to earn the job, except be the best option on the staff to be an interim.

Heck, it can't be worse.

It's a tough decision for Lerner, because he personally hired Mangini. But this team has gotten worse — in every way — and there's no evidence short of a 6-3 win in Buffalo that the team believes in what it's being told.

Nor is there a shred of evidence that it will get better.

The time has come to recognize a mistake, make a tough decision and start over again next season. It's another restart and that's one more too many, but maybe it will produce better results and some long-lost continuity.

What's taking place is simply not working."

Actions & Motives - The B(c)S

I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about how much the BCS sucks. I've spoken, myself, about it since its inception so many years ago, and I couldn't agree more with the negative opinions out there concerning this crap about crowning a "true national champion." The BCS knows it doesn't work, and so does the rest of the country. Especially Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah). Some (ok, almost all) of my previous blogs mention something one way or another about the BCS' flaws, but we can highlight a couple here to set the stage. The most obvious to me deals with the BCS' refusal to drop the AP and Harris human polls from its ranking "calculation," which of course causes the BCS to remain a largely human influenced poll; when the AP and Harris polls count for 2/3 of a team's ranking in the BCS, it cannot by any means claim to be mathematical or objective, let alone unbiased. The fact of the matter is that maintaining any sort of human opinion-based influence in the calculation of a team's ranking lends itself to a biased, opinionated, and thus necessarily flawed ranking.

Another glaring problem arises when we consider that the BCS is solely focused on conference schools in Division IA and Notre Dame. Calling this fair is like telling the Catholic Church to support abortion: it just isn't going to happen, folks. The fact is that the automatic BCS bowl berths are centrally and exclusively focused on the big name conferences and Notre Dame. Now, being a Notre Dame alumnus, it's always nice to know that even when my team sucked donkey doogan, we could (and would, simply and unfairly because of the revenue generation) get invited to a bowl game, however useless it may be (i.e., Hawaii last year). But all team loyalties aside, not even I can sit back in my Lazy Boy recliner on a January Saturday and think this is a fair situation. And the same goes for the other major conferences in college football. If the BCS was actually an objective system, it would either abolish the automatic conference berths, or include all Division IA conference winners in those automatic bowl berths. Neither occurs, and the system is flawed.

There are plenty of other injustices in the BCS system that we could discuss this morning, but the two points I just made lead to something that I think needs to be addressed. Too many of you out there are crying about how schools from certain Division IA conferences aren't getting a fair shake with the BCS. I agree. Your solutions to the problem primarily involve a three week, eight team playoff system following the season. I agree with that as well. My fellow blogger John Feinstein makes several fantastic points about this and the truth of the BCS in his recent post, "The BCS - There Is No Defending The Indefensible." But John falls into the same habit that most writers have lately: he's defending the idea that any undefeated team, regardless of schedule strength, regardless of any cookie cutter teams a school plays, should have a chance to play for a National Title.

I couldn't disagree more with this lunacy.

We've seen consistently, and I'm talking about for decades now, that high profile schools will schedule "warm-up" games at the beginning of the football season, and easily dismantle an extremely lesser talented team, thereby cushioning its "W" column with a couple cupcake victories. That automatically becomes an unfair advantage and instantly corrupts the system, which rewards the high profile team for its "win" and ignores the fact that there was never a chance for any real competition in the game to begin with. The problem has gotten worse in recent years when teams have simply played complete cupcake schedules. Why waste time with a couple easy games, when you can simply play all 12 easy games? This is an even bigger, more obvious corruption of the system; certain high profile schools are taking advantage of weaker football teams that - let's be fair and observant - stand little to no chance of ever winning those football games.

Where so many playoff system advocates have suddenly lost their senses of logic is when they ignore the factor of schedule strength in their bracketing methods, failing to recognize that indeed, certain schools play tougher schedules. Period. This is not an arguable point; it's a goddamn fact of the matter. And this is not a call to give privileges to certain conferences, or certain schools, or even to Notre Dame, as the BCS currently does. We've already seen the bias in that system. Rather, it's a call to recognize that, at the end of the year, we have the opportunity to review the records of a team's opponents, and make a logical calculation about how good or bad the 12-0 record of the team in question may be. And yes, there is such a thing as a weak 12-0 record (see Boise State, as if you didn't know that was coming). This is a call for an objective playoff system that incorporates the unarguable fact that certain teams are more deserving of a playoff berth based on their wins compared to their schedule strength. For example, this year clearly, Alabama plays a much tougher schedule than, say, TCU - and this observed fact has nothing to do with current rankings. It has everything to do with simply examining the records of Alabama's opponents, as compared with the records of TCU's opponents. It's pretty damn simple, folks.

What it comes down to fundamentally is a question of which type of football team is more deserving of the opportunity to play for a National Title: the competitive, hard working, victorious team that has proven itself to be good by consistenly competing against and beating other solid football teams; or the lazy, easy-way-out, unproven team that has truthfully accomplished nothing in purposefully, consistently competing against and beating overmatched teams. Are you willing to work for your trophy, or do you want someone to just hand it to you after you sat on your ass all season? Are you a nose-to-the-grindstone, blue-collar guy, or a wipe-my-ass-and-put-on-cartoons, trust fund baby?

Including strength of schedule into a bracketed playoff system would not only yield unbiased seeding -- we'd see for certain which teams are actually stronger -- but would also encourage schools to think twice before scheduling Western Michigan (way to go Notre Dame with the 2010 schedule), Delaware State (seriously Michigan?), or Chattanooga Southwestern Arts & Crafts School For The Underprivileged Little Sisters Of Northerneastern South America At El Paso (you've never heard of that traditionally steeped and storied CSACSULSNSAEP football program either?). The point is that factoring in strength of schedule is imperative to determining a team's actual playoff seeding in a system in which teams cannot play every other team in the system. It's not like the NFL, NHL, NBA, or MLB when a team has the opportunity to play every other team in the league. Because of this natural deficiency in college football, which is something that's impossible to remedy given the length of a season, schedule strength must be included as a seeding factor to eliminate teams from posting a top tier ranking with a 12-0 record as a result of a cupcake schedule. We simply must keep the system unbiased and objective and recognize which teams are winning competitive football games, and which teams are winning Easy Bake Oven Pajama Party Tickle Fights.

At the end of the season, the playoff system would make schedule strength quite clear, whether it's factored in or not. Teams like Boise State, for example, or TCU, would find themselves on the tummy ache side of the slaughterings they'd been handing out all season to the cupcake schools they "compete" against to compile their foundationless undefeated records. But if schedule strength were factored into the playoff equation, and we honestly and objectively recognized the merit in playing a competitive schedule during the season, teams like 12-0 Boise State or TCU would be seeded extremely low, if at all, thus generating a pure playoff system of truly proven teams.

I have nothing personal against Boise State or TCU, but they're two of the most obvious examples this season of high ranked teams that don't deserve to be there, based on their schedules. You can review my other blogs to find out why, if you're really too stupid to figure it out already for yourself.

I'll say it again and again until something manifests and the system is objective and unbiased. Play a uniformly consistent 12 game schedule. At the end of the season, compare every team's record with their strength of schedule (therein examining their opponents' records and their opponents' opponents' records). Calculate their playoff seeding as a result of their overall win-loss record versus their strength of schedule. Seed the top eight teams into four bowl games: the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls for example, in a 1 vs 8, etc system. The remaining teams can all go duke it out in the remaining bowls sponsored by god knows what kind of corporate feces. A week later, we do it again in round two, with four teams left, the same highest seeding vs lowest seeding, etc, in two more bowls. The third week will then see the remaining two teams playing each other in the remaining bowl game, at a predetermined site, for the National Title.

I'm not sure why this is such a difficult idea for anyone to grasp.

It maintains the same length of the college football season. It increases the number of bowls played, and therefore also the revenue generated from them. It increases the opportunity for corporate sponsorship. It increases the revenue for schools and conferences; the more a team wins, the further it advances, the bigger the corporate sponsor payout. It increases fan support and participation in the sport as it is accepted as an objective and true system. And -- imagine this -- a true, bonafide, undisputed, actual winner emerges at the end of the season.

Silly me. My alarm clock just went off. Time to wake up and get out of bed.

Ruby BCS Slippers

Last Sunday the first BCS standings were released. Boise State had crushed another insignificant opponent (albeit by only 7 points after struggling the entire game). Cincinnati had pulled away from an overrated South Florida in the final quarter. A 2-3 Arkansas gave Florida all it could handle, and Florida escaped narrowly with a 3-point victory (after a questionable call late in the game against Arkansas, for which the SEC officiating crew has been suspended). Alabama took care of business against a low-ranked South Carolina. It took Texas all it had to defeat a miserably pathetic Oklahoma team. Georgia Tech spanked then-(4) Virginia Tech. USC survived (thanks to Duval Kumara's last second slip in the end zone) a furious Notre Dame comeback in the 4th quarter. Purdue kicked the living sh*t out of Ohio State for most of the day and eventually won the game. And ranked teams like Nebraska and Kansas lost to unranked teams by significant margins.

Whew. Week 7, however surprising this continues to be to some people, ended up giving us the same conclusions that each previous week has: the polls are a joke, the pollsters are clueless, no one pays attention to record versus schedule strength when ranking a team, decent teams are only decent because they're demolishing horribly weak teams, and teams that were supposed to be decent (according to the pollsters) are losing to unranked, weak teams that are not supposed to be decent. Haven't we learned yet, coaches and sports writers? Hmm?

What is it going to take to wake you morons up?

(1) Florida barely won by a field goal (with the help of a horrible call) against unranked Arkansas
(2) Alabama defeated (22) South Carolina (save your applause until the final paragraph please)
(3) Texas snuck past (20) OU by 3 points with OU's backup quarterback playing most of the day
(4) Virginia Tech was absolutely slaughtered by (19) Georgia Tech
(5) Boise State beat unranked Tulsa by only 7 points (shhh, applaud later I said)
(6) USC needed an Irish wide receiver to fall down to escape (25) Notre Dame's comeback
(7) Ohio State was summarily dismantled by possibly the worst team in college football, Purdue
(8) Miami (FL) showed us their muscles by ripping up good ol' Central Florida

Do I really need to keep going? Ok, fine.

(12) TCU demolished another unranked, pathetic opponent, Colorado State
(15) Nebraska was manhandled by unranked Texas Tech by 21 points
(17) Kansas lost to an unranked Colorado team

Is the point made yet? Do you all see the absolute absurdity in this bullshit poll system? Am I alone in the Land of Logic here folks?

I'm sure my points seem repetitive, week after week. But what else is there to talk about when the glaringly obvious is staring us all in the face? College football's ranking system has become like that wonderfully wrapped Christmas present beneath the dimly lit tree on Christmas morning: you want it to be a brand new stereo or bike or Play Station Whatever, but when it's unwrapped, its horrific truth is revealed: it's just an ugly argyle sweater, for god's sake, from a great aunt with a hairy mole on her upper lip that you haven't seen in 12 years. Who the f*ck wants an argyle sweater?!

I won't even go into detail about the BCS rankings that were just released. Suffice it to say that, of course I find them full of lunacy and illusory justice, and I think that those of you who subscribe to their supposed "cure-all" to produce a "true national champion" are just as blind as the coaches and pollsters who are ranking these teams in the first place. The fact is, though the BCS uses certain computer rankings in its magic formula (where are we, in f*ckin The Land of Oz now?!), it still uses the human polls (AP and Harris) to "calculate" 2/3 of a team's final ranking. How in the living cockf*ck is that mathematically producing a true national champion?

Maybe we'll all get lucky someday and a goddamn house will fall on those ugly, sparkling, f*cking BCS rudy slippers. I'm not a fan of politics at all, but Jesus, I hope Orin Hatch from Utah makes a point and Congress outlaws this Land of Make-Believe waste of my time. Even Stevie F*ckin Wonder can see this nonsense.

Irish, Trojans & Bearcats (Oh My)

Well folks, let's just do it. Let's get the damn cat out of the bag once and for all. I've been holding this back because in most of my articles I want to be neutral. But of course, I have a particular team in my heart, as most of us do, and I cannot sit silently anymore and watch this happen.

Last night (8) Cincinnati beat (21) South Florida 34-17. It was billed as a Big East showdown of two unbeatens, ranked nationally in the top-25. The commentators discussed whether or not the winner of the Big East, provided they're undefeated at the end of the season, should play for the national title. One of those guys said they should. Another topic that emerged toward the end of the game was the idea that Cincinnati had proven itself as a worthy top-10 team because it had demolished - so they called it - a ranked opponent, South Florida, in South Florida's stadium.

Holy baby Moses in the basket floating down the river in Egypt. Are you f*cking kidding me?!

Yesterday I briefly mentioned Cincinnati's breathtaking schedule in my article about Boise State. The comparison between the two teams is inevitable: both are pretenders. And now it's Cincinnati's turn to face the music. I don't give a rat's behind if they end up undefeated and winning the Big East. Once again, we must ask ourselves who they've played and who they've beaten when we look at their record.

Cincinnati's record is currently 6-0. They're nationally ranked at no. 8. Their wins have come against Rutgers, Southeast Missouri State, Oregon State, Fresno State, Miami (OH), and (21) South Florida. Rutgers is 4-1, having beaten such formidable teams as Howard, Florida International, Maryland, and Texas Southern, with their only loss coming to Cincinnati; their record is obviously weak. Southeast Missouri State is a pathetic 1-5, their only win coming against Quincy (who in the holy living hell is that?), and their other losses coming from Eastern Illinois, Tennessee Martin, Tennessee State, and Austin Peay. Wow. Way to go Bearcats for that one. Next up is Oregon State, who is 4-2 with wins against Portland State, UNLV, Arizona State and Stanford, and losses to of course Cincinnati and Arizona. Oregon State's record is unstable at best. Fresno State is 2-3, having beaten UC Davis and Hawaii, and having its other losses to Wisconsin and Boise State (don't get me started). Miami (OH) at 0-6, has lost its other games to Kentucky, Boise State, Western Michigan, Kent State, and Northwestern. And now we have South Florida, at 5-1. The Bulls have beaten Wofford (um...), Western Kentucky, Charleston Southern, then-(18) Florida State (now unranked at 2-4... don't get too excited), and Syracuse, before losing to that Mighty Casey of a team, Cincinnati.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is your Number 8 team in the country: the Almighty Cincinnati Bearcats. (1950s corny male superhero voiceover): Undefeated, sitting alone atop the mighty Big East conference, they stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way...

Enter the University of Notre Dame. I'm not your typical whining, blame-it-on-the-refs, run of the mill Irish fan. I'm an alumnus. I take pride in that fact, and I take pride in the traditions of Notre Dame football. But I also face the reality of the situation: Notre Dame has not had a significant football team in my opinion since it was briefly ranked no. 1 in 1993 after ousting Florida State. I won't even bitch about the "Bush Push" of 2005. All that being said, let's examine Notre Dame's schedule this year, against its 4-1 record and no. 25 national ranking.

The Irish have beaten Nevada (2-3), Michigan State (3-3), Purdue (1-5), and Washington (3-3), and lost in the final seconds at Michigan (4-2). Their opponents are far less than impressive, having currently a combined record of 13-16, with only one opponent sporting a winning record thus far. I'm going to come right out and say this: if we're rewarding, in the polls, teams like USC (4-1), Ohio State (5-1), Cincinnati (6-0), Boise State (5-0), TCU (5-0), South Florida (5-1), BYU (5-1), Houston (4-1), and Utah (4-1) for beating very weak opponents and compiling either undefeated or one-loss records, then I see no reason to not reward Notre Dame for doing the same thing. But if we're going to punish Notre Dame in the polls (or any other team) with a no. 25 ranking for beating weak opponents, in spite of an undefeated or one-loss record, then we should be doing the same punishing to the other aforementioned teams with similarly weak schedules and similar records. Again, we must examine who these teams are beating, who they're losing to, and measure that schedule strength against their overall records to determine an accurate ranking.

Enter Oklahoma. OU sits at 3-2, ranked no. 20 in the country. They've lost to then-(20) BYU and then-(17) Miami, their only two ranked opponents thus far. They've beaten Idaho State (0-6), Tulsa (a very weak 4-2), and Baylor (3-2). With a 3-2 record, wins over unranked, weak teams, and two losses, each to a ranked opponent, Oklahoma is still nationally ranked only because of its preseason no. 3 ranking. Compare, quickly, the other 3-2 teams in the country who've beaten similarly weak opponents: Baylor, Texas A&M, Uconn, Central Florida, Temple, Arkansas, Mississippi, and several teams in the Sun Belt and Pac-10 Conferences, including Cal. Why aren't those teams ranked at 3-2? This brings up an interesting point: Cal beat some weak teams, lost to (13) Oregon and then-(7) USC, and dropped out of the rankings with their 3-2 record. Cal lost to better teams than Oklahoma lost to, beat similarly weak teams as did Oklahoma, yet Oklahoma remains ranked in the top-20. Cal was preseason ranked no. 12. OU was preseason ranked no. 3. You tell me what's going on here.

So what we gather from the polls after all this examination, is that a 3-2 OU is supposed to be better than a 3-2 Cal, despite Cal losing to better opponents than OU lost to; that a 4-1 USC, 4-1 Houston, and 4-1 Utah are better teams than a 4-1 Notre Dame, after they've all beaten similarly weak, inferior opponents; and that we're rewarding undefeated and one-loss teams (except Notre Dame) for beating the poop out of weak opponents with (usually) losing records. You ready for the mind f*ck? I'll just lay it out there to stir the pot a little bit, to see who's really paying attention to the complete lack of logic inherent in this ridiculous ranking system: USC (4-1) lost to Washington (3-3), while Notre Dame (4-1) beat Washington (and lost to a 4-2 Michigan team), and USC is ranked not only higher than Notre Dame, but 19 spots higher than Notre Dame. Not only did Notre Dame beat the team that beat (6) USC, but its loss came to a better team (4-2 Michigan) than USC's loss (3-3 Washington).

I'm not at all saying that Notre Dame has a better football team than USC, or even that Notre Dame will beat USC this Saturday. But I am saying that this is a perfect example to illustrate the utter absurdity, the completely random and senseless nature, of the ranking system.

A 6-0 Cincinnati, who beat the shit out of nobody teams, is ranked no. 8.
A 4-1 USC team who lost to a 3-3 Washington is ranked no. 6.
A 4-1 Notre Dame team, who lost to a 4-2 Michigan team, is ranked no. 25.
A 4-1 Notre Dame team who beat that 3-3 Washington team, who in turn beat no. 6 USC, is ranked no. 25.
A 3-f*ckin-2 Oklahoma team who can't beat a ranked opponent is still nationally ranked at no. 20.
A 3-2 Cal team who lost to better ranked opponents than no. 20 OU is not ranked at all.
And we haven't even discussed the likes of Houston, Utah, TCU, and BYU yet this season.

I'm irritated, folks. I'm lost in the senseless lack of logic here. Someone remind me again why we don't play a full season, examine record versus schedule strength at the end of the year, place conference champions and the remaining certain number of teams with the best records versus schedule strengths into a ranked bracket system, and play a playoff to crown a true national champion. Anyone? Bueller? Buuuuueller? Buuuuuuuuueller?