“Is he out of his mind?”
That was our first reaction when we heard a U.S. congressman had proposed that President-elect Barack Obama instruct his Department of Justice to investigate the Bowl Championship Series as soon as he took office.
Surely this was the work of some publicity-hungry nut job from a state without any BCS schools, or a bitter representative from Texas who was out to take down the system that vaulted his Red River rival into the Big 12 Championship.
But we were wrong on both counts. The congressman who is spearheading the anti-BCS campaign on Capitol Hill is neither from Texas nor crazy. He is Keith Abercrombie, a representative from the *** district of Hawaii, and he has a point. (See page 7 for details.)
The BCS, as it is currently structured, selects the teams that will compete in BCS bowls based largely on which conference they’re from, not whether they’re some of the best teams in the nation.
The teams that get the nod are heaped with benefits for their BCS bowl status — playing time on a national stage, adoring press coverage and trips to warm cities in January. Oh, and millions of dollars.
Those millions are reinvested into those schools and their athletic programs. That attention makes it easier for those BCS teams to recruit the best players. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that keeps just a handful of teams atop the college football world year after year.
OU has benefited from that cycle.
The Sooners have played in six BCS bowl games in eight years. They have won two.
Now, Bob Stoops is a great recruiter, but face it, it’s not all about Sooner Magic. The multimillion-dollar athletic facilities and the repeated trips to BCS bowls don’t hurt.
While it’s hard to argue that the BCS hasn’t been good for OU, it’s impossible to argue that the BCS is fair to every team. What about the Boise States and Ball States of the world? Both of those undefeated teams are likely to be denied a BCS berth this year, all for the crime of not being from a BCS conference.
Rep. Abercrombie is right that the nation needs a different means of determining its national champion. He’s wrong that improving the system means destroying the system.
The best solution will keep the BCS rankings, which incorporate both objective and subjective criteria for determining the nation’s top teams.
But the bowl-bound teams won’t be determined by automatic bids for the champions of certain conferences.
The top eight teams in the rankings would advance to a three-round playoff series. Talk about settling things on the field — this system would have the nations’ best teams going head-to-head three weeks in a row over winter break.
We realize OU has been a BCS beneficiary for years. But we think the Sooners could hold their own on the field as part of a system that would crown a virtually uncontested national champion.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
JWade 3 years, 5 months ago
Should the headline have been: Buck the FCS?