The Gators won a replica of the crystal egg from Risky Business.This is how I felt last year. Empty. Unsatisfied. A little angry. Florida beat Oklahoma 24-14 on Thursday, in a not-very-exciting contest called the BCS Championship. Afterwards, they were given a trophy, then a Gatorade-soaked Urban Meyer smiled and told everyone how special his group of guys were. The scene was eerily similarly to last Jan. 7, when a two-loss LSU team dispatched of overachieving Ohio St. and danced a similar tune. The Gators and the Tigers won something. That much is clear. Just what they won is a little more murky.
To me, college football has no champion. Anarchy reigns. There is nothing I saw in Thursday's BCS game or, for that matter, in Monday's Fiesta Bowl that convinced me that Utah couldn't beat any of those teams. With no way to find out and no truly objective criteria with which to work, I have to stick with my original position. Utah is as close to national champion as we're going to have this year. An uncrowned champion, to be sure. But a champion nevertheless.
Officially, though, the Utes become one of four teams this decade to go undefeated without winning getting their due. One of the the other three teams was the 2004 version of the Utes.
Here's how the final polls shook out.
First off, congrats to Mizzou for jumping six spots and finishing in the Top 20 for the second straight season in the AP. Second ... wow. I would not have guessed that Utah would jump Texas, Oklahoma and USC, but that's exactly what happened. No fewer than 16 voters agreed with me that the Utes are the nation's top team. That's nearly a quarter of all ballots cast, which tells us that no matter what the BCS calls Florida, they are far from a consensus No. 1.
Using the final AP poll as a proxy for how the teams are perceived, let's compare resumes. Utah beat No. 6 Alabama, No. 7 TCU, No. 18 Oregon St. and No. 25 BYU. Florida also beat Alabama (though not as convincingly), as well as No. 5 Oklahoma, No. 13 Georgia, No. 21 Florida St. and lost to No. 14 Mississippi. So Utah went 4-0 against the top 25 with two wins over top 10 teams. Florida went 3-1 and beat two top 10 teams.
As for the coaches, this is a case of BCS coaches sticking together. The lone No. 1 vote for Utah came from their own coach. At least the coaches showed a semblance of reason by jumping Mizzou up to No. 16.
There will be another round of calls for a playoff the next few days. There will be still others that defend the current system. Then basketball will move to the forefront, along with the NFL playoffs and, eventually, baseball. The current clamor will fade. Next fall, we'll do it all over again.
The movement towards a playoff advances at a glacial pace. We'll get there someday. I just hope I'm alive to see it. One thing that already disturbs me about the various proposals is that the most prevalent suggestion is for an eight-team playoff. This format generally would include the six BCS champs plus two at-large teams. No. That's not good enough.
The NCAA cannot continue to allow nearly half of the programs that meet the requirements for FBS classification to be treated differently than the so-called power conferences, with their condescending fat cats like ACC commissioner John Swofford suggesting that little programs like Utah should be happy with the scraps that they are given. A typical attitude of the rich in our trickle-down system of economics.
This is an argument for a much later day, but as long as teams are classified such as they are now, any playoff system must include the champions of every FBS conference. That's 11 teams right now, though with a small bit of tweaking, the Sun Belt could be reclassified out of existence. So let's say 10 teams. I'm for just having those 10 advance to the playoffs. Doing so keeps the emphasis on winning your conference and, thus, the focus on the regular season will be greater than ever. Otherwise, matchups such as this year's SEC championship would be largely meaningless -- both Alabama and Florida would be likely at-large teams if they were to lose.
What college football needs is someone like Eugene V. Debs, one of the great labor leaders of the 20th century. Perhaps Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff could be that guy. He is investigating a system that spreads the riches of the BCS in a grossly disproportionate manner. Take the last two seasons. Let's assume that a conference gets about $17 million per BCS entrant. So for this year and last year, the Mountain West has brought in $17 million. By contrast, the Big 12, SEC and Big 10 have all brought in about $68 million in BCS money. There is virtually zero chance that any non-BCS conference could ever get two teams into the major bowls, so when you look at, say, 10 years worth of BCS earnings, the disparity between the power and non-power conferences is alarming.
We playoff proponents are looking for a hero. Where is Bonnie Tyler when you need her?
I think that the system doesn't work and will not until there is some type of playoff system in college football. Look at Texas and how many teams were ranked when they played them. They did lose to one of the ranked teams and beat at least 3 in the top 10 when they played them and at least 2 in the top 5. I still don't understand how Oklahoma was put a head of them. I think that Texas would have played Florida better then Oklahoma did. I think that Bob Stoops is a great football coach but why does he blow the big games anymore. That is 5 bowl games in a row and the people at Oklahoma have to be getting tired of that. I like USC but I don't see them as the number 2 or a number 3 team either. Everyone knows that this system works once in a while and not very often anymore. About every 3 or 4 years it seems that everything falls into place. This is not one of those years and every team that won will wonder why they didn't move up father then they did and why others might have moved father a head then them. Until a play off system happens in college football we will all wonder what might have happen if only thing would have been looked at a different way. Please Big 12 fix the system where you don't have this problem again on who goes a head of who with only one loss. I don't see this happening for a long time but it didn't seem right this year.
Life Long Chiefs Fan