To give all of you readers a brief introduction into "Space Monkey's Corner", it is essentially a comment thread I established on the EB30 message boards for myself and others to rant about, well, whatever it is that one would want to rant about, and no topic is off limits (PG-13 material of course). With this is mind, I have something that I would like to rant about that is very fitting for this time of the year. Without further adieu, let's get down and dirty. So enjoy, and let me know what you think on the EB30 message boards sometime!
I'm a pretty hardcore sports fan, and as a sports fan, my true passion is football in all forms. Of all the levels of football, from high school prep to semi-pro and pro, college football will always be something special to me. I'm an alumnus of The Ohio State University, and bleed scarlet and grey. Football is never off of my mind. There is one thing, however, that I absolutely cannot stand about college football. You probably already know where I am going with this, and you guessed right: it's the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) ranking system. I mean, why is this system still around? The goal of the current five game structure of the BCS is to match up the top two teams in a national championship game, and to have "exciting" matchups with eight other teams in four separate, high profile bowl games. The rankings are determined by polls and a mathematical formula, or a computer ranking component.
Did I miss something, and sleep right through when humans were taken out of the loop when determining what teams were good football teams? Did Skynet take over and launch their murderous assault on mankind via the BCS? Did we create A.I. only to have it turn on us and allow the machines to turn us all into battery pods and run our lives for us through a computer generated reality? Of course not, well...at least I hope not! BCS proponents will argue over and over and over again that the system is "solid". Well guys in suits, tell that to the teams and their fan bases that are left playing in meaningless, non-championship bowl games with no opportunity for advancement, and if given the chance in a playoff structure would probably end up winning it all. College football division I-A is the only area of sports that allows politics and computers to determine who is worthy of a championship game, and not the results on the field of hard working student athletes. All of the other college football divisions down to division III have a playoff system in place, so why is it so hard to have one for division I-A? You have playoffs in college baseball, hockey, basketball, etc. All prep levels of sports and pro levels have playoffs to determine a champion as well.
So what's the big deal and what is preventing this in division I-A college football? To me, it's only fair and practical to have playoffs, and it also prevents all of us from having to endure those "exciting" matchups in prime time TV slots that end up being lop-sided, blowout losses. My grandmother could probably put together more interesting matchups in most cases to be frank, and yes Buckeye nation (please forgive me) I would rather test the worth of the Buckeye football team in a playoff system and get beat in a market specific televised game, rather than in the national spotlight when we shouldn't have been there in the first place. A first or second round playoff loss would also hurt less that next morning and might prevent those tears of pain and embarrassment from falling into your cup of coffee and smearing the ink on the sports page of your morning paper. Plus on a side note, we'd have to listen to less of the so called "expert" bantering for hours on end on TV and radio on which teams are the best and most deserving to play in a national title game. It's a win-win situation here people!
Either way the next few years go, I hope that we can rid ourselves of this ridiculous BCS system, and install a playoff system. President elect Barack Obama has even said if he could change one thing in sports, that it would be to have playoffs in all of college football. It must be that big of an issue if the freaking president to be thinks it's a problem. Well Mr. Obama, and this is coming from a conservative voter, if you can do this, you'll have my vote in 2012 when you're up for re-election.
