BCS blogging
December 20, 2007
The Poinsettia Bowl kicks off tonight, starting a pre-New Year’s gauntlet of lesser bowl games with ridiculous names (*), and also initiating the annual ritual of bellyaching from ESPN about how the BCS sucks (true), about how we need a playoff (not true), and about how the Big Ten and the Pac 10 are to blame for blocking one (mostly true).
And every time some commentator brings this up (Every. Single. Time.), he’ll argue that people who prefer bowls to playoffs are stupid fuddy-duddies because, after all, do you really care about the preservation of the Papajohns.com Bowl?
The answer is obviously no, but this seems like something of a straw man. Speaking for myself, I don’t care about the preservation of the bowl system. I care about the preservation of the Rose Bowl, and more specifically, a Rose Bowl that matches the Big Ten champion with the Pac 10 champion.
To the extent that the BCS sometimes prevents this from happening, the BCS is suboptimal. (**) The two conferences, and the Rose Bowl, have all given up an awful lot in the interests of creating a 1-vs-2 championship game, which almost never works to their advantage. (***)
I know the SEC thinks they have a really good football conference and would like a playoff, and it’s too bad for them that they don’t have any traditions as cool as the Rose Bowl. But that’s not the Big Ten’s problem.
(*) The Poinsettia Bowl is actually one of the better bowls, since even with preposterous commercial sponsorship, it still bears a seasonally- or regionally-appropriate name.
(**) Obviously, it has worked out to the benefit of Illini fans this year, but that’s not usually the case, and Big Ten teams have lost Rose Bowl opportunities under the BCS more often than they have received them.
(***) It’s only beneficial if the Big Ten champion is ranked #2, and the #1 team was not in the Pac 10, or vice versa, which has happened only once, in 2003, when #2 Ohio State played #1 Miami instead of #4 USC. The BCS has never worked to the benefit of the Pac 10.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Don’t forget, even the Poinsettia Bowl has a slightly ridiculous name… it is officially the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl with a rich history dating all the way back to 2005.
Just because we’ve talked about playoffs and no playoffs A LOT, what if the playoffs incorporated the Rose Bowl? Would that keep you happy? First round game for the PAC-10 & Big 10 is the Rose Bowl. Winner keeps playing for the National Championship.
December 21st, 2007 at 12:09 am
Well, no. If there’s going to be a playoff, I’d rather just get rid of the bowls altogether, and play a 16-team tournament in which the higher ranked teams play at home. That would be fun, but not as fun as the Rose Bowl.
December 22nd, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Quite true. BCS? Might as well throw darts, for all the accuracy it seems to have in picking the best teams. Playoff? Ugh. Do we REALLY need that drawn out through the whole near-org@sm of the “holiday shopping season”? I think not. But give me a Rose Bowl shot each year, and that’ll do well.
Then again, what on earth did Nokia have to do with Sugar that one year anyway? I mean, unless Cell Phones are the new Sugar, and Sugar is the new Oil… lol
December 26th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Why would a playoff system be bad? Not only would I not have to listen to ESPN complain about the BCS anymore, but I think it would probably cause teams to cut those silly early-season games where they play community colleges. Since they would no longer need to pad their record to get into the post-season, they might opt to play better teams in the regular season in an effort to prepare for the playoffs. Wouldn’t it be cool if the Badgers just played every team in the Big10 (so ten tough games instead of 8 tough games and four cupcakes) and then went right into the playoffs? At least, that’s my high school always looked at the regular season events.
I don’t really care about “preserving the bowls.” The whole thing is shot, the Rose Bowl no longer means anything, so lets just re-create March madness for football fans.
December 27th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Speaking for myself, I don’t think a playoff would be bad. I just think it wouldn’t be as much fun as the Rose Bowl.
The thing with a playoff system is that, most likely, only the conference champion and probably the Big Ten #2 would participate — 11 champions and 5 at large teams being the most likely option. So what a playoff would do for Big Ten football is to replace the Rose Bowl with a pretty good seed in a playoff, replace the Citrus Bowl with a bad seed in a playoff, and prevent the next 3-5 teams from playing a bowl game. At best, that’s a wash for the champion, a step up for #2, and not so good for the rest.
And if anything, it will make cupcake scheduling (*) all the more important. It’s not like March Madness, where there are enough at-large spots, and teams play enough games, that you can value tough losses more than pointless wins. You’d be required to either win your conference, or win all your non-conference games, to make the postseason.
I would certainly prefer to see a full round robin Big Ten schedule, with room left for a nice non-conference rivalry, and a cupcake.
(*) I can’t remember the last time Wisconsin played an interesting non-conference game (the game where the lights went out isn’t what I mean…) — they schedule more cupcakes than any team in the country — but it’s worked, to the extent that every Big Ten school that doesn’t play in the Michigan-Ohio State game has announced at one time or another in the last decade that they are “looking for our Barry Alvarez”.