bitcruncher
pepperoni roll psycho...
Posts: 61,859
Joined: Jan 2006
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I Root For: West Virginia
Location: Knoxville, TN
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Why do we even watch?
Here's a treat from one of my favorite blogs... wemustignitethiscouch.com Wrote:Why do we even watch? (Brian Kelly and the BCS)
By Jude
2009/12/11
Anyone still shouting in the wilderness that the BCS system is the ideal mechanism by which a national championship should be decided in college football just got a warm "Eff you" from (now) former Cincinnati head coach Brian Kelly Thursday night.
As many sources have reported, including this espn.com article, Kelly has not only accepted the head coaching position at Notre Dame, he also won't coach his Cincinnati Bearcat team in the Sugar Bowl against Florida.
"What does this have to do with the BCS championship," asks the cynical and partially confused reader.
One of the most coveted coaches in college football just went undefeated, finished 3rd in the country, has a date with #5 Florida in the most interesting BCS bowl match-up outside of the championship, and decided that he'd rather start recruiting for his new job than compete for that BCS bowl win.
Obviously, as Mountaineer fans, we've seen the same decision made in the past, when He Who Shall Not Be Named decided to bounce on a Fiesta Bowl-bound Mountaineer team so that he could stand on the sidelines during Michigan's Capital One Bowl, watching Lloyd Carr coach his last game for the Wolverines.
So the logical question is this:
If it's so crucial to college football to keep the current bowl structure in place, and if the BCS bowl games are so important, why are coaches not even sticking around to coach their teams in BCS bowl games?
How are we supposed to take anyone seriously when they suggest that non-championship bowl games are valuable when coaches would rather start a new job than to win one?
"See, if I leave now, I don't get to coach you in the Sugar Bowl, but I DO get to ride around in the new Escalade Notre Dame bought me to talk to high school kids."
So coaches are treating BCS bowl berths with utter disregard. Like something that might look decent on a resume, but they've already got the next big gig anyway.
But if Texas misses the last-second field goal against Nebraska in the Big 12 title game, Brian Kelly assuredly sticks around to coach the Bearcats in the BCS Championship game against Alabama. (Same for HWSNBN and the Mountaineers if they hadn't choked against Pitt in 2007.) Sure, there were rumors to the contrary, but realistically there's no way either coach is missing the chance at a championship. Obviously, the BCS championship game still has great value to a coach leaving, while a different, lesser bowl- even the Fiesta or Sugar Bowl- does not.
Lesson learned.
So what's left to feel in Cincinnati, Boise, and Fort Worth? (Note- TCU is located in Fort Worth. Thank you, Google.)
As the BCS bowl matchups streamed across the screen Sunday night on the "BCS Selection Show" and three separate, undefeated D-I teams found themselves playing in non-championship bowl games, one question kept floating through my mind (and the voice of that question got even louder when Kelly left before the Sugar Bowl for Notre Dame)...
Why do we even watch college football?
The end-game of NCAA D-I football is so phenomenally screwed-up that I don't even begin to understand how a fan of Cincinnati wakes up today and feels like watching a college football game ever again.
Or Boise State, who put a whipping on eventual-Pac-10-champion Oregon for the second year in a row en route to an undefeated season.
Or TCU, who got a win at the eventual ACC runner-up's house before staging their own perfect season.
As they wake up in Cincinnati, TCU, or Boise pajamas, why would they ever care again?
First and foremost, I should say that this isn't an article that posits the theory that any of the above teams deserve to be in the title game above Texas or Alabama. Obviously, those teams are also undefeated and worthy of a chance to play for a title.
But if you aren't a member of the Chosen Two, if you're a member of one of the undefeated teams left on the outside looking in, what more were you supposed to do?
The ultimate goal of any team sport is to be declared to be the best. A champion. To stand on a stage while all acknowledge that for one season, you were the best at what you did. That's what competition is about. Danial-san crane-kicking Johnny Lawrence into the third row as he gets a huge ass trophy while banging Elizabeth Shue.
If you take that away, if you can be perfect in record and never taste defeat, but STILL don't get a chance to prove you're the best, what's the point of competition? It's like the youth soccer leagues running rampant in America today where no one keeps score and everyone's a winner. (Even though every heterosexual male in attendance knows exactly what the score is.)
And that's exactly what the system has become. Presidents and AD's love the BCS and bowl games as they are now, because there are 34 bowl games with 68 teams (out of a possible 120), and everyone who is even remotely average gets to feel special at the end of the year when they get their moment in the sun in the Ex-Lax Roto Rooter Toilet Bowl.
Nothing says "tradition" like the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.
I know many of us enjoy the bowl system as it is. But maybe the following statement will encourage more outrage from Mountaineer fans over the snubbing of Cincy, TCU, and BSU:
WVU had absolutely no shot at a national championship this year.
I've highlighted that statement because maybe then more people will understand how meaningless the current system renders many seasons. WVU couldn't have won a championship this year.
No matter what.
Texas was #2 in the preseason polls. Alabama was #5. WVU (and Cincinnati for that matter) was unranked to start the season. And the voters demonstrated that an undefeated Big East team, even with an impressive out of conference win like Cincy's over Oregon State in Oregon, wasn't going to jump undefeated champions in the Big 12 and the SEC.
So the best thing that could've happened for the Mountaineers was to play in a BCS bowl game like Cincinnati. A bowl game their coach didn't even think was important enough to stick around to coach.
We as Mountaineer fans all dream of the day that WVU wins a national championship in football or basketball. Doesn't it make you feel somewhat foolish to think that you spent all this time this season rooting for a team that couldn't have won a championship no matter how it played?
What's the point? As long as opinion decides championships (or at least 2/3 of the equation), what people think isn't as important as how good you may actually be.
Subjective OPINION should not be a deciding factor in any organized sport, period. Especially when the voters have demonstrated time and again just how remarkably wrong that opinion can be.
Take, for instance, WVU's victory over Big 12 Champion Oklahoma in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. Obviously, if voters had a chance to pick one of those two teams to play in a championship game, they would've picked Oklahoma. (Some did vote for Oklahoma to play in the championship.) After all, they were ranked higher, had a higher BCS ranking, were the champions of the mighty Big 12, and were bursting at the seems with NFL-ready talent. Meanwhile the Mountaineers were coming off of a humiliating loss to Pitt with their season on the line. But Oklahoma was totally outclassed by a Mountaineer team that every single objective sportswriter THOUGHT was inferior to Oklahoma.
How many "upsets" happen in bowls every year? Every "upset" means that the subjective thinking was wrong. Yet despite so much evidence that what we believe about a certain team is often wrong, we still use those beliefs to select the only two teams who get to play for a championship.
That's not only unfair, it's delusional.
Here’s a list of the sports that use subjective voting to determine championship contenders: gymnastics, diving, figure skating, synchronized swimming, X games, Division I NCAA football. Which doesn’t fit?
At long last, the BCS committee reveals the secret component in deciding championship game participants.
So when folks ask me if I'm hyped about that weekend's non-WVU games, my answer is usually "not really". (Unless Michigan's losing somewhere.)
And Brian Kelly's decision reflects that mentality perfectly.
"Don't you want to stick around to try to win a BCS Bowl?"
"Not really."
Sure, there's school pride, exciting pageantry, passionate fans and players. But when you can win every game and still have someone else raise the trophy, what's the point of playing in the first place?
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