NCAA division I college football has no national champion.
Oh it used to, back when all the writers and coaches were free to vote for the team they felt was the best. And it will someday soon, when the power brokers come to their senses and scrap the seven-figure ceremonies in favor of an actual playoff system.
But right now, there is no true champion. Merely a collection of pre-selected post-season games called the Bowl Championship Series--college football's answer to the arranged marriage--whose "champion" is only called the "national champion" because this collective body of greed mongers secured the rights to associate the term with their endeavor. In case the irony escapes you, let me put it this way. A sport as balls-out brutal and violent as major college football not only determines its national champ by way of popularity contest, but is unusually proud to do so. Miss Freaking America runs a more legitimate competition, for God's sake.
Look at this year's BCS farce. Assuming Texas does to the Ohio State University what Florida and LSU have done in previous years, it's entirely possible that the nation's top two teams won't even be playing in the BCS championshhip game. And the one team who has done all that was asked of them? As it turns out, they never had a chance to make it into the BCS championship game to begin with.
The Utah Utes are the only major college team with a perfect record. They rolled over--and I mean ROLLED over--the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl. 'Bama, to refresh everyone's memory, was the nation's #1 team for the majority of the season, losing their shot at the BCS championship in their final game when the Gators rallied to beat them for the SEC title.
So on January 8, you had Florida--who hung on to defeat the school Utah just blew out of the building last week--playing Oklahoma, on whom Texas hung 45 points in their double-digit win.
The fact that this is pure injustice doesn't seem to be the point. What needs an enthusiastic response is this: when will anyone care? How many more years of "the system works, it just needs fixing" can the college football fans take? How many schools need to get impregnated behind the middle school before someone stands up and demands a true champion?
Just look at the mess at the end of each season this millenium, and you can see that in almost every instance, the best team in the nation may not have even played for the BCS Championship:
2001--Oregon finished with the #2 ranking and wasn't invited to the party.
2002--Nebraska, ever the darlings of doey-eyed pollsters, won the BCS swimsuit competition and was chosen to play Miami in the Rose Bowl--ooooh what an attractive matchup THAT would be huh?--despite losing at the end of the regular season to Colorado 62-28 and not even making it to their conference championship game.
2003--USC finished the regular season unanimous #1 yet they weren't even invited to PLAY in the BCS championship game. For some reason the computers picked Oklahoma over them, even though the Sooners were blown clean out of their conference championship game by Kansas State, 35-9. They even snowed the Heisman voters into giving quarterback Jason White the trophy, a player so powerful, so dominant, he wasn't even drafted by the NFL. He played part of one season on the practice squad of the Tennessee Titans, and currently owns an OU memorabilia store and an Athlete's Foot.
2004--this was the year of the Auburn Tiger. Their magical unbeaten season is the main reason why their defensive coordinator was just hired to replace Tommy Tubberville. So why didn't they play for the national cham... sorry, BCS championship? The almighty computers felt they weren't as strong as--surprise!--Oklahoma, who managed to get pansed, swirlied AND taped to their lockers by the Trojans by a 55-19 count. Critics cite this as the point when pageant officials determined that henceforth, no SEC team with an argument will ever be denied a chance to play for the BCS title.
2006--Ohio State and Michigan finished #1 and #2. They played each other in an epic battle of national powers (much less bitter rivals) which the Buckeyes won by three points. Michigan so impressed the pollsters that they remained the unanimous #2 team in the nation afterward. Yet the public outcry--and by "public" I mean the crying of one Urban Meyer specifically--forced voters to manipulate subsequent polls in such a way as to allow Florida to leapfrog the idle Wolverines into the second BCS spot.
Then there was last year. When Ohio State finished its regular season they were ranked seventh. They not only ended up in the BCS championship game, but they landed there as the nation's #1 team. What's worse is the fact that they played a two-loss LSU team--a team who happened to leapfrog a one-loss Kansas team because--surprise!--they didn't play in their conference championship game.
The only season that seemed to be in the clear was 2005, when unbeatens Texas and USC faced each other in Pasadena. Despite the fact that ANY system short of "prettiest helmets" would have placed them at 1 and 2, the BCS braintrust (as oxymorinic a term as "convenience fee") fell over patting themselves on the back and saying, "The system works!"
This year, it appeared to me that the best two teams were Texas, whose only loss came by a point inside a Texas Tech stadium that frequently approached the threshold of pain, and Utah, the nation's only perfect team and one who proved their worthiness by thumping the Crimson Tide and ending the season ranked #2. Why couldn't we have seen one if not both of them? What made freaking Oklahoma a better candidate, for the love of annual humiliations?
I'm absolutely mystified at the almost mystical powers held by Ohio State and Oklahoma. They get embarrassed, flat-out throttled every year, yet they continually jump more deserving teams for a chance at the farcical national title. Even this year, the also-rans of the supposedly weak Big Ten--who are 0-9 all-time in bowl games against the SEC don'tcha know--earned a BCS berth with a 10-2 record, while 11-1 Texas Tech, from what was supposedly the nation's toughest conference, gets shut out.
And all the while the BCS keeps carrying around this illusion that they're legitimate. Amazing. Almost makes you pine for the days when coaches would use their retirement as a plea for number one votes, huh?
But I have faith. I'm a big believer in change, as you could tell by my Barack Obama blog (the link is on the right side of theis page). In fact, here's what our new president-elect said about the farcical gridiron ceremony known as the BCS, during a 2008 interview with 60 minutes:
"I think any sensible person would say that if you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear decisive winner; that we should be creating a playoff system. Eight teams. That would be three rounds, to determine a national champion. It would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m gonna throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do."
If Mr. Obama wants to throw his weight around in this arena, he's more than earned the berth.
