(12-01-2018 10:31 AM)rosewater Wrote:  Watching gameday has reinforced this feeling. The gameday crew has noticeably left UCF out of the conversation. The idea that UCF has not played a tough enough schedule for consideration does not pass the smell test. UCf has shown enough offense to stack up with Oklahoma and Ohio state. All The Ohio State talk makes me want to vomit. This is a team that barely got by a horrible Nebraska team, a bad Maryland team and an average Penn State. Maryland, is the same team that got beat by our second place third best team, Temple. Not to mention, Ohio State was destroyed by an average Purdue. In contrast, UCf has not lost for two years including the bowl game against a team that beat both the champion and runner up.


College football has devolved into a popularity contest to determine the champion or maybe it has always been. I hate to beat the UCF drum because the resulting annoyance from several of their posters is unbearable. However, the current system is the equivalent of a fascist no bid contract system. Do not let the little guy compete because the bigger entity has more resources. This is un American and screams "We need a playoff." Let the kids compete.

It'd be better to forget the whole championship thing, which was created primarily to generate more money for the mounting number of broadcast and cable networks. What a championship series doesn't do is actually determine a national champion that's so deserving and obvious that it quiets all debate, as any follower of UCF football would attest. To do that, a football championship series would have to be modeled after the NCAA basketball tournament, which involves all conference champs plus other teams deemed most worthy (though not by consensus, since there are always arguments about the bubble teams). The problem with such a scenario for football is that it would involve a lot more games to winnow the field and thus result in far more risk of injury and time away from studies for so-called student athletes.

I much preferred the good old days when various conference champs and a handful of other obviously deserving teams (none with mediocre 6-6 records) played in a few select bowl games. That system worked for decades, and the resulting ambiguities in the games' aftermath were fodder for endless "what-if" debates, all in good fun. There are so many bowls now and so many "bubble" teams playing in them that they're almost handed out like participation trophies.

I can remember when the annual Rose Bowl game on New Year's was a really big deal. Now the attendant parade probably draws more viewer interest.