SI: Cards Super Bowl Bid is Defense of BCS

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SI: Cards Super Bowl Bid is Defense of BCS

Filed on January 23rd, 2009 in NCAA Football ⋅ ⋅

The Arizona Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl, and if that isn’t proof enough that college football doesn’t need a playoff, then what is?

This is paraphrasing the most illogical argument I’ve heard since Intelligent Design, so it should come as no surprise that the base of the argument revolves around the BCS/playoff debate.

The argument comes from Stewart Mandel, college football writer for Sports Illustrated, via The Big Lead. His argument is this: Since the Cardinals were “mediocre” during the regular season, them winning the Super Bowl would prove the BCS wacko’s theories that a playoff diminishes the importance of the regular season.

In his defense, Mandel doesn’t outright agree with the argument, just shows that it could be made by BCS supporters. But in doing so, he is indirectly making the argument that a playoff makes a regular season worthless.

Among the “points” that he makes in defense of the BCS system is his final paragraph, which reads:

That, my friends, is exactly what college football’s powers-that-be fear most. Theirs is the only sport where every single game truly matters, where you can’t afford to take your foot off the peddle for even one week. (Just ask USC.) Were there a playoff, the Gators — which, like the Cardinals, clinched their division early (Nov. — could have tanked their last three regular-season games without jeopardizing their title hopes in the slightest.

He actually falls for the propaganda line that college football is the only sport where every single game truly matters. Yeah, I’ll just ask USC. Or should I ask Florida? How much did their loss at home to unranked Mississippi mean? Oh, that’s right, it meant nothing. They’re in the SEC. Or on the other side of that coin, how much did the Texas Tech – Texas game mean to the BCS title game? Nothing.

The “every game counts” argument in college football is, for the lack of a better term, bullshit. Not every game counts. When Utah has a zero percent chance of playing in the title game, no matter what they accomplish during the regular season, you are saying in essence that the entire schedules of approximately 80 schools are meaningless. Every game that Utah played last year in the regular season had zero impact on the national championship. The team that eventually won the BCS title game lost a game, yet still played in the title game, making at least the game with Mississippi meaningless.

Not to mention the 114 of the 119 teams in Division-I that were pretty much eliminated from the title race with three weeks left in the season, making every game for each of them, for three weeks, meaningless.

The Arizona Cardinals only had “meaningless” games because they earned them. The NFL is trying to crown a champion, not systematically determine the “best team.” That is the crucial difference between college football and every other sport in the world. College football’s only intention is to try to determine the best team without them having to earn it or prove it. Every other sport crowns a champion.

Look at the NCAA basketball tournament. It’s all-inclusive attitude creates more meaningful regular season games because teams are willing to face stiff non-conference competition. That’s what happens when you aren’t afraid that one loss will ruin your season. And it takes nothing away from the tournament. In fact, people root for underdogs to do well, because they’d be earning a championship, not being handed one.

You only have to look at the 2008 College World Series to see the drastic difference between college football and everything else. Fresno State and their 33-27 record won their conference tournament to get into the postseason, then pulled upset after upset to get through all of their regionals and into the World Series. The upsets kept coming and a team with 27 losses in the regular season became champions. That’s what sports are all about.

With the BCS, college football will never have their Fresno State, their Villanova, George Mason, the New York Giants, their Tampa Bay Rays, or their 1980 Olympic hockey team. There will never be the great Cinderella story, and without them, sports is just boring.

If anyone is truly stupid enough to agree with this premise, then they deserve the BCS. As for the rest of us, we deserve a playoff.

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