I try to keep my cool but before I even finished this article I was so mad that I couldn't even see stratight. Its just pure anti-'non-bcs' inflammatory garbage, but someone should give this guy a verbal beat-down, if not a physical beat-down.
I'll post a copy of the article here and give a link in case someone should want to reach out and touch this idiot, and I hope you do.
Here is the link:<a href='http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/eat/2004/jun/24/517071432.html' target='_blank'>Ron Kantowski of the Las Vegas Sun</a>
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Columnist Ron Kantowski: 'Little guys' need league of their own
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.
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If college sports were a sandlot baseball game, the Mountain West Conference would be the little, runny-nosed kid who jumps up and down and says "Pick me, pick me."
The Big Ten, on the other hand, would be the big bully who threatens to take its ball and go home.
Actually, what the Big Ten is threatening when it comes to college baseball is taking its balls and bats and forming a league (almost) of its own. One of the biggest stories making the rounds at the College World Series this week -- besides what is there to do in Omaha after they roll up the sidewalks? -- is that the Big Ten and some of its Rust Belt colleagues will hold their own championship if the NCAA doesn't do something to level the playing diamond.
Tired of watching the Sun Belt teams and even more humbling, little commuter schools such as Cal State Fullerton run around the bases while its members are committing recruiting violations, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and his constituents are calling for the NCAA to push the start of baseball practice back to Feb. 1, the start of the season back to March 1 and the start of the CWS back by at least two weeks. That, in theory, would allow the Big Ten teams to pad their records by playing more home games.
The northern schools would also like to see the NCAA regional host sites be determined by geography instead of power ratings. You know, like they were in 1966. That was the last time a school from the Great Lakes region won the NCAA championship, with Ohio State doing the honors in its baggy wool uniforms.
"We do not believe we can't compete," Delany told the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune. "We do believe we can't compete in this environment. If no change occurs our people will have some decisions to make."
One of those, which the Big Ten coaches are said to be unanimously in favor of, is creating a separate championship.
"The NCAA has in its bylaws that every student-athlete should have a chance to compete for an NCAA championship," Minnesota athletic director John Anderson said. "That's not happening in baseball."
Hey, John, I've got news for you. It's not happening in football, either.
As you are reading this, the Mountain West, MAC, whatever remains of Conference USA, WAC and Sun Belt are groveling on their hands and knees at some board room in a ritzy hotel, begging for a piece of BCS pie.
Gentlemen, have some pride. The Division I-A Lite schools should just do as the Big Ten says it will and form their own football championship. With, get this, a full-blown playoff.
The infrastructure, of course, is already in place. Holding an 8-team playoff would require just seven additional games, so what you would do is use the bowls that have existing ties with the also-ran conferences -- New Orleans, Silicon Valley, GMAC, Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Hawaii, Motor City and Liberty -- to host the quarter- and semifinals, then create a new game for the championship. Call it the Anti-BCS or Way It Should Be Bowl and sell the broadcast rights to ESPN or better yet, Spike TV.
The neat thing is that there really is no risk involved. The little guys would still get their little bowl game checks, just as they do now, with maybe a little something thrown in for the effort, provided TV would purchase the rights to such a tournament. And the non-BCS teams wouldn't even have to exclude themselves from BCS competition, should one of them go 11-0 and upset Notre Dame while Jupiter aligns with Mars. In that case, somebody like a Bowling Green or a BYU would simply skip the Division I-A Lite playoff and take the BCS bucks.
I don't know about you, but if I were Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson, I would have been shocked and outraged upon learning the BCS schools took home bowl game revenues of $163,486,628 under this year's setup while the non-BCS schools received a paltry, at least by comparison, $17,558,518.
And that, my friends, explains why Colorado State will be a two-touchdown underdog against Southern Cal this fall. And why John Robinson should get a medal for beating Wisconsin.
It also explains why the BCS wannabes should follow the Big Ten's lead. They should get rid of their monkeys and tin cups and form a league of their own.
