Who’s your national champion in college football? The easy answer is Florida right? They did enough to have the BCS computers spit their name out a month ago, and now they’ve beaten Oklahoma (they were the other team name the computers spit out). If you go back to my blog titled “College Football” you’ll read that I decided never to call the BCS Champion our “National Champion”. And now more than ever I’ll stand by that statement. The Florida Gators are NOT college football’s division 1 champion. The reason being again: some D-1 teams have no chance of reaching the BCS title game. The proof: Utah.
Utah beat every team on their schedule this year. That was good enough to get them a spot in a BCS bowl game but not the “National Championship” game. (Florida and Oklahoma each had 1 loss.) Now the argument is that a team like Utah doesn’t play anybody and would get handled by a top tier team. I have two arguments against that:
1. 31-17. That was the final score of the Sugar Bowl in which Utah waxed Alabama. The Tide were the number one team in the nation up until the last game before Bowl season (Florida beat them and jumped in to the BCS title game). The point being… Utah beat one of the nations best teams… nobody can argue that, in fact they destroyed them.
2. I hate the “they don’t play anybody” argument. The only teams that do play tough schedules (according to that argument) are teams from major conferences. The problem is nobody adjust the argument based on the strength of conferences. You would have never heard someone say “Penn State didn’t play anybody this year”. Well in my opinion the Big Ten was NOT a good football conference this year. But Ohio State and Penn State played in BCS games without anyone questioning who they played. The point being… conference strength is assumed, rather than analyzed. I think Utah and the 2007 Fiesta Bowl (Boise State defeated Oklahoma prove that).
Well you can tell by the length of this blog I feel strongly about this. We need a different post-season in college football. Maybe you dis-agree, tell me why? Maybe you have a suggestion on what that post-season should be, lets hear it. Or very simply you could just answer this question: who is your college football national champion?
on Jan 9th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Divisions II and III seem to have no problem structuring out a play-off season so I don’t see how it would be difficult for Division I to do the same thing.
The problem is there is far too much money in the bowl games so it doesn’t matter that I’m yet to meet anyone who follows college football and doesn’t think that the bowl system is ridiculous.
But after all… After watching the Papajohns.com Bowl I went to Papajohns.com and after the Meineke Car Care Bowl, I know who to go to for car care.
We’ll get our playoffs when we stop watching bowls.
on Jan 15th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
It’s NOT just about the Bowl Money, But the guaranteed Bid’s.
USC is GOD in Pac 10, do you think they would change the bowl system, they could have a horrid year and still win the pac 10 by mistake and go to the rose bowl. Its the same way for alot of Schools.
Here’s an example.
Now: Congratulations Purdue you won the Big 10 with a record of 9-4 Your school is gonna make GIANT $$$$ Playing in the rose bowl!
Playoff: Congratulations Iowa you won the big 10 with a record of 10-2 BUT since we decided to have a 4 team playoff with the top 4 teams in the country the Rose Bowl, Fiesta, And orange will be played with 11-1 USC 12-0 Texas 11-1 Oklahoma and 12-0 Florida In a playoff style format BUT DON’T BE MAD we have a fabulous bowl for you to intend, you arent gonna make any money but its the Diet Splenda Flavored Cactus Bowl in Arizona!
The playoff system basically says if your not ranked In the top 4-6 depending on the setup you arent going to make any money at all regardless of your conference’s strength and your non conference schedule.