Okay, so I only got a couple of my NFL previews out before the season started. You are entitled to your money back.
Yay, football is back, even if it hasn't yet returned to Kansas City after their drumming at the hands of the Buffalo Bills.
What I would like to talk to you tonight, dear reader, is the landscape of college football. I am no fan of the BSC system. It is amusing, to be sure. It was supposedly designed to calm the debate over who is the "true" national champion. In that, it might be a little bit better than the popularity contest that it replaced. However, it is in the process of now destroying conferences in the NCAA.
This past summer we watched a whole lot of teams changing conferences. Oklahoma and Texas eyed joining the Pac 10 (now the Pac 12), even though both schools are thousands of miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Colorado did join the Pac 12, as did Utah. BYU told the WAC to piss off and went independant. Boise State also left the WAC for the Mountain West to try to get into a better conference in order to play Texas Christian, so that they wouldn't really be at the Kiddie Table Bowl. TCU subsequently announced that they are leaving the Mountain West to join the Big East to get an automatic bowl bid and consideration for a national championship. Now, Texas A & M is trying to leave the 10 team Big 12 for the South Eastern Conference, but is being threatened with lawsuit by Baylor to make sure that Oklahoma does stay in the Big 12. Got all that? No? Good, cause there's more. Nebraska left the 10 member Big 12 for the 12 member Big 10.
K, put away the maps and the markers, because that's all for the geography lesson. The problems with these moves is that they are motivated in trying to get to a stronger conference instead of making a current conference stronger. Everyone wants to go to the SEC because in terms of strength of schedule, the SEC is Goliath among Davids. The last five National Champions, Auburn, Alabama, LSU (twice) and Florida are SEC teams. It is a tough conference in which to win, but if you can, then you can beat anyone.
The problem with this is that teams from conferences that already have automatic bowl bids (Big 10, Big 12) are jumping ship to get harder schedules to be considered for the national championship. Successful conferences are getting stripped down. Baylor is trying to keep Oklahoma in the conference because if Oklahoma goes, and Texas is pretty much already going, and Texas A&M goes, then the conference will basically be the Kansas teams, Baylor, Texas Tech, Iowa State, Missouri, and Oklahoma State. OSU and Missouri are perennially ranked in the top 25, as is K State. However, none of these teams stays in the top 10 very long. This is an automatic bid conference! Whoever takes it, plays in a fairly major bowl. That means money for the school who plays in the bowl. However, if it becomes a minor conference, or is thought of as somehow lesser, then less people tune in and they don't get as much money! Follow the bouncing dollar in college football.
Boise State is kind of screwed. They just made a lateral move from one non-BCS conference to another one. One question-why-is easily answered. Boise State wanted to move out of the WAC where Hawaii and recently Nevada (chortle, how's them field goals comin along, Broncos?) were the only competition on the regular season schedule. Hawaii and Nevada are never ranked very high in the top 25 if they are ranked at all. So BSU jumps over to the Mountain West to try to start a rivalry with Texas Christian, the team they've been facing a lot in the post season because neither has an automatic bid from a BCS conference, but both are usually undefeated. Welcome to the aforementioned Kiddie Table Bowl. TCU is jumping to the Big East. Once again Boise State will be a big time program in an itty bitty little conference. Why didn't Boise State jump to an automatic bid conference like TCU will do in 2012? The answer has little to do with football. TCU has a higher academic standard than BSU. You don't exactly have to burn through the ACTs to get into BSU. TCU (and just about any major university in the big conferences) has a little more stringent guidelines and acceptance rules. BSU can't get into any of the major conferences. Until they make it more difficult to get into BSU (which isn't really likely to happen anytime soon, since Idaho and Idaho State already are pickier on who gets to be an incoming freshman), they will always be a piranha in a fishbowl, chewing up the kibble that floats down.
I know that people have been pushing for a playoff. Just think of that for a minute. A playoff system in college football. March Madness in December/January. Brackets for Christmas. The minor bowls that are already played early in the post season can just be first round games. We already have late bowl game meaning more anyway. Why not go to a playoff? We could even keep all the bowls! Including the Still Looking for a Corporate Sponsor to Pony Up the Money Bowl! Some people are calling for an 8 team playoff. That would be 4 bowls, then 2 bowls, then 1 bowl. 7 Bowls. That would suck and not allow us to keep all the bowls. A 16 team playoff would be 8 bowls, 4, 2, 1, for 15 bowls. Better, closer to the number we have now. I propose we go the full shitangi! We take March Madness and go whole hog. 64 teams (not this half-assed expansion of this year). That is 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 bowls...let's see...carry the...2...OH HELL YES! 63 bowls!!! Each with a corporate sponsor dumping millions. Each with television coverage and commercial deals. Each with free advertising for the playing schools! WHY HAVE WE NOT DONE THIS YET??? Is it because of the issue of the end of the semester/finals/beginning of the next semester? Football players don't go to class or take finals....ask Miami.
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