Well, that was an ass-kicking
I was only watching the play-by-play update for the BCS title game last night (well, this morning), and it was still a drubbing. I'm kinda glad -- the BCS one-off is starting to wear on me, for reasons exemplified by this season. (Plus it means that USC is still the only school to win a Heisman trophy and a BCS title in the same year.)
What do you do when the #1 and #2 teams already played each other? It was a possibility no less than three ways this year (Texas was damn close), and I'm sure a lot of OSU apologists will bemoan their 51 days off and claim that everyone knows the real national championship game was back in November. But then both sides of that "real" national championship game got exposed in the bowls.
And what do you do when you've got multiple contenders like when an undefeated Auburn got to watch Oklahoma lie down and die against USC two years ago? Or, even worse, exactly what happened this year -- one dominant team and a bunch of "Well, maaaybe" teams, and then one of those "Well, maaaybe" teams kicks the crap out of that dominant team?
If we'd had a four-team playoff this year, we'd've seen just two conferences represented, and the potential for two rematches. An eight-team playoff would have included yet another Big Ten team, for cry-yi-yi (and tell me Auburn wouldn't have been whining about some punk-ass non-major-conference team beating them out).
I think they need to scrap the whole poll-based ranking system and just have a conference-based playoff: Eleven conferences means three games to get into the Elite Eight. Those games are played by the conference champions who didn't have to play an actual championship game (by sheer coincidence, there are six). Handle the seedings just like they do in basketball -- with great ceremony and much gnashing of teeth, but if you win your conference, then you're in. Period.
I've always disliked the poll-based rankings, because they're too inertial. This takes away the human element entirely.
What do you do when the #1 and #2 teams already played each other? It was a possibility no less than three ways this year (Texas was damn close), and I'm sure a lot of OSU apologists will bemoan their 51 days off and claim that everyone knows the real national championship game was back in November. But then both sides of that "real" national championship game got exposed in the bowls.
And what do you do when you've got multiple contenders like when an undefeated Auburn got to watch Oklahoma lie down and die against USC two years ago? Or, even worse, exactly what happened this year -- one dominant team and a bunch of "Well, maaaybe" teams, and then one of those "Well, maaaybe" teams kicks the crap out of that dominant team?
If we'd had a four-team playoff this year, we'd've seen just two conferences represented, and the potential for two rematches. An eight-team playoff would have included yet another Big Ten team, for cry-yi-yi (and tell me Auburn wouldn't have been whining about some punk-ass non-major-conference team beating them out).
I think they need to scrap the whole poll-based ranking system and just have a conference-based playoff: Eleven conferences means three games to get into the Elite Eight. Those games are played by the conference champions who didn't have to play an actual championship game (by sheer coincidence, there are six). Handle the seedings just like they do in basketball -- with great ceremony and much gnashing of teeth, but if you win your conference, then you're in. Period.
I've always disliked the poll-based rankings, because they're too inertial. This takes away the human element entirely.