NCAA Football

BCS Still Not Interested in Real Solution, Still Delusional

The chair of the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee said that they have no interest in an eight-team playoff, as mentioned by President-elect Barack Obama in an election-eve interview with ESPN.

Oregon president David Frohnmayer said:

“We deeply respect the president-elect and we are glad that he is a fan of college football. We have the most compelling regular season in all of sports, and I’m sure that contributes to Senator Obama’s enjoyment of our great game.”

First of all, this line about the “most exciting regular season in sports” is complete bullshit. It’s a line they’ve been trying to force on us since the creation of the BCS and it just isn’t true. Year in and year out, teams end up in BCS games, even the title game with a loss. It’s not a year-long playoff when you don’t know which loss matters and which one doesn’t.

We know that the Texas-Oklahoma game and the Texas-Texas Tech game had no impact on any of those teams shot to play in the title game. The losing team of each of those games likely will still have a chance to play for the national championship.

Florida’s unforgivable loss to Mississippi has left them in no less of a position to reach the title game than the last time they went with one loss. They need some help, just like they did then.

Is that the kind of “playoff” that the NCAA thinks it has? One where all people watch for in the last month is to see who loses? That’s not what athletics is about. It should be about one team winning over another team, not teams like Oregon State and Mississippi pulling upsets, and USC and Florida with unforgivable losses playing for a title because they lost early enough.

The current NCAA system is a mess. The NCAA doesn’t want to admit it because they don’t want to rock the boat, and for some reason, they are happy with their system. They seem to get off on controversy. What they don’t understand is the millions and millions of viewers that would happily watch every playoff game don’t really give a shit about most of the bowl games. Their average ratings for bowl season for games played in half-empty stadiums is a waste of everyone’s time and money.

A proper playoff, in conjunction with existing bowl games, is the only way to save college football.

I’ve written about why we need a playoff before, and I’ve even showed you how to do it. Now, it’s up to the university presidents and the networks to come together to make it happen. As long as the money is still there, the system won’t change.

Now, ESPN is looking to pay $500 million to get the rights to all of the BCS games for four years, to put all of the BCS games on cable, and none on network television. As long as the television networks are willing to pay for a sub-par product, nothing will change.

The networks need to take a stand an demand a playoff. They will still get paid, and the NCAA can continue to use unpaid workers, or players, to feed their billion dollar industry.

And hey, the fans will love it. But the NCAA really doesn’t care about the fans anyway, so I guess that’s not much of a selling point to them.

Frohnmayer continued to say:

“My colleagues and I on the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee have discussed the future of postseason football on many occasions and we do not believe a playoff would be in the best interest of the sport, the student-athletes or our many other constituencies.”

That is a man who just doesn’t understand the sport he is representing. The only interest that the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee has is financial, and they haven’t come across a model yet that can keep them getting paid like the BCS can. That is the absolute only thing they are interested in.

It’s a shame that all of our sports are going to hell for financial reasons, but until there are people in positions to do something about it that actually give a shit, nothing will change.

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