May We Have Some Playoffs NOW, M'Lords?

by Espen Jockovitch

In short: This year, the search for One True Champion in Major College Football is more fucked than Jenna Jameson at a three-day lock-in at San Quentin's Cell Block D.

The 2007 Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is so royally hosed that even the people who invented it in their own self interests don't want to use it. The jumblefuck of human polls and computer rankings that has the gall to call itself a "system" was set up by the five major conferences in 1998 to decide which of their teams was to be christened as undisputed champions of Major College Football. The teams which ended up Numbers 1 and 2 through their "system's" sinister calculus were to face each other in a championship game, and the winner is the king.

Sound simple? Well, it wasn't. The mathematical formula has been mildly tweaked every year and radically overhauled four times in its decade-long existence due to complaints over equity, questions of value regarding losses versus strength-of-schedule, and the conferences flat not liking who goes to the game. Although 2007's formula is essentially the same as 2006's, with which nobody had much of a problem, complaints abound as to whether or not the BCS will be able to determine a true champion this season.

Why is that, you may ask? Read on, Homefries.

Coming into this week, this was your BCS Top Five:
1. Missouri
2. West Virginia
3. Ohio State
4. Georgia
5. Kansas

There's a list which, outside of the Buckeyes, has about as much history of excellence in college football as the Northwestern Alberta Agricultural Technical Institute and Bait Shop Mighty Irritable Caribou. To make this fuck even more clustered, the following is the result of this week's action:

1. Missouri - Lost to Oklahoma in the Big 12 Conference championship game
2. West Virginia - Lost to 5-7 Pitt in their season finale bone-deep rivalry game
3. Ohio State - Didn't play
4. Georgia - Didn't play.
5. Kansas - Didn't play.

Now, the logical person then deduces that if #1 and 2 go down, then #3 and 4 take their place, right? Well, that would be logical - THOUGH NOT AS LOGICAL, SIMPLE, AND FRICKIN' ABSOLUTE AS A PLAYOFF SYSTEM - and if there is anything that mathematical formulas and comptuer programs despise, it's logic.

Since nobody can say who deserves to play in the title game, the human pollsters are looking to rig the system from within in order to put their personal favorites in it. Among the favorites:

#3 - Ohio State (11-1) Big Ten Champ
They're a pretty solid bet, having their only loss to a team currently ranked in the Top 15. The complaint is that the Buckeyes played a soft schedule organized by Head Coach Jim Tressel in what he knew would be a rebuilding year. Facts are, if all the other teams the pollsters thought were going to be good didn't suck goat turds this year, The Buckeyes aren't even mentioned and they happily accept a bid for the 2007-8 Rose Bowl.

#4 - Georgia (10-2)
They finished 10-2 with their losses to SEC East division winner Tennessee and a tenacious-if-underachieving South Carolina Gamecocks. The knock on Georgia is that they didn't even play in their conference championship, so they shouldn't be eligible for the National (see Nebraska's 37-14 drubbing by Miami in 2001-2 for historical perspective). That, and I can't get out of here without a cheap "can't even beat their 'Cocks" comment...

#5 - Kansas (11-1)
See Georgia RE: Conference championship conundrum. Although the Jayhawks posted the same 11-1 record as #3 OSU, Kansas's pathetic strength of schedule makes the Buckeyes look like they took on the twelve labors of Hercules.

#6 - Virginia Tech (11-2) ACC Champ
The Hokies won the ACC Championship and posted an 11-2 record. Their losses are the problem here: one was to Boston College, who they defeated yesterday in their rematch for the ACC title game, and #7 LSU, who kicked their dicks in by a rather definitive 48-7 count.

#7 - LSU (11-2) SEC Champ
The Bayou Bengals were the odds-on favorite to win it all this year, but they sufferred two triple-overtime losses to teams that finished well out of the Top 25. That and their coach is a whiny little vagina of a man regarding said losses. The name says it all, Les.

#8 - USC (10-2) PAC 10 Co-Champ
Frankly, I don't even know why the Trojans are even in this conversation, except for the fact that pasty 50-year-old sports writers thoroughly enjoy watching USC's stunning cheerleaders bounce around. USC's losses were to a 4-8 Stanford and an at-the-time highly-ranked Oregon who has since fallen off the face of the earth due to their quarterback's season-ending injury. Computers don't care about injuries, so those losses will keep USC in the Rose Bowl.

#9 - Oklahoma (11-2) Big 12 Champ
To their credit, the Sooners are the only team to beat former #1 Missouri, and they did it twice. Against them are their losses to unranked Colorado and Texas Tech. That, and if they're so damned worthy, why are they #9 right now? I can't conceive of a good reason to jump Oklahoma over three other teams previously ranked ahead of them who also won this week. I'm sure some writers - and every Big 12 Conference commissioner - will come up with a few, though.

Ironically, the only team truly worthy of a National Championship shot, the twelfth-ranked undefeated WAC Champion Hawaii Rainbow Warriors, are barely getting any breath at all in this conversation. Granted, their schedule was as mild as a Nebraskan Taco Bell enchilada, but they are the ONLY team to beat everybody they faced. If that's not the definition of a champion, my dictionary lies. Truth be told, the Warriors biggest obstacle to the BCS Championship Game is the fact that they aren't in one of the five conferences that built the BCS "system" to preserve their self-determined birthright to national titles.

However this wacky-assed BCS thing shakes out, nobody will be happy. This miserable miasma of mediocrity cries out for a winner-take-all playoff Capital-S System louder than ever. If we don't get one after this deplorable diarrheic debacle, the only bowl college football fans will fill freely is the crapper.