Sun rises in east. Dog bites man. Mike Tyson gets arrested. Bowl Championship Series fucked again.
Any other stunning, never-saw-that-coming headlines I need to include here?
Once again the BS BCS, the NCAA’s laughable insult to the very concepts of competition and moral decency, has failed, and this time they’ve simply outdone themselves.
They finally managed to get LSU, a more than worthy contender, into the “championship” game, but the flagrant back-room conspiracy required to do so was ridiculous. Let’s examine some of the nuances of this year’s college football travesty.
- If not for an obscene choke job in Morgantown Saturday night the best team from the best conference – LSU and the SEC, respectively – would not have been allowed to compete for the national title. That the BCS somehow got that part right only proves that sometimes things work out despite the system, not because of it.
- The best team in the second best conference – Southen Cal, probably the best team in the nation at this moment – will not be allowed to compete for the national title.
- The best team in the third best conference – Big 12 champ Oklahoma – thanks for showing up. Buh-bye.
- Here’s another important artifact of the NCAA’s work of genius. You can go undefeated and not be allowed to even compete for a shot at the title.
- Just for fun, let’s remind everybody that in their next-to-last games of the season, the two teams playing for the “national championship” each lost on their home fields to unranked opponents.
- Last week Missouri knocked off Kansas to win the Big 12 North. So who is the second Big 12 rep to a BCS bowl game? Kansas, going to Miami for the Orange.
- There’s more. Georgia, which finished second in the SEC East, is going to a BCS Bowl – the Sugar – instead of the team they finished behind, Tennessee.
It gets even better. There was a scenario whereby LSU wouldn’t get to the title game, but Georgia – which didn’t even make it to the SEC title game – would. Arguably, this is what should have happened – last night #1 Missouri and #2 West Virginia lost, so #3 Ohio State and #4 Georgia move up, right? This is how the polls work 99 times out of 100.
Uhh, no, because here’s where that last-minute engineering thing kicked in. Voters clearly realized that the system was hutzed to the gills (it’s unclear whether they realize that they’re a big part of why that’s the case) and that it would be, well, wrong to rank Georgia ahead of LSU. (Pretend, if you can, that the system didn’t leapfrog Kansas over Missouri for the Orange Bowl and that Georgia will be appearing in the Sugar instead of their division’s champion, Tennessee, by the way, as you contemplate the mysteries of these events.) Never mind that they had Georgia ranked ahead of LSU last week and that UGa didn’t lose – which is the main criterion for deciding movement in the polls. Today’s transparent flip-flop by the voters is an acknowledgment of their own stupidity. They appreciate you not noticing.
But wait, you say – UGa didn’t lose, but LSU did play and win a very big game against SEC East champ Tennessee. So that ought to count for something, right?
Well, that would be a compelling argument in the absence of one inconvenient bit of fact. Georgia didn’t play and got passed over. But Ohio State didn’t play for the last two weeks and they moved up. If ever you needed proof that the polls and all those associated with them are a pack of monkey-greased asspipes, that ought to do it. One team backs in by not playing, while another team (and I’d love to see Georgia on the field against OSU – I’d take the Dawgs and lay two touchdowns right now) gets punished for it.
By the way, LSU also leapfrogged Virginia Tech, which was ranked a spot ahead of the Tigers in last week’s poll and which yesterday won its conference championship game. Now wait a sec, you say – LSU and the Hokies played head to head this season and LSU stomped their balls off, so LSU ought to be ahead of them.
Right. So why was VT ranked ahead of them last week, then?
In sum, here’s what you need to know about the Bowl “Championship” Series:
- The voters are tools.
- The coaches are corrupt. (The current system allows about half of the coaches in D1 – excuse me, the Bowl Championship Division – to tell the boosters that “hey, we went to a bowl game! And half of those get to say “we won a bowl game! God bless accountability.)
- The athletic directors are corrupt.
- The university presidents are corrupt.
- The championship will never be decided on the field as long as you’re alive because it would cost a group of men with bad haircuts and even worse sportcoats a lot of money.
- Anybody who refers to the winner of this year’s big game in the Superdome as the “national champion” should be flogged, flayed, de-narded, slathered in pork gravy and chased naked through a pit of half-starved Jack Russell Terriers.
In case you haven’t been counting, I’ve now written around 900 words without once using “playoff.” So pass the Tostitos, fuck ’em all, and enjoy your meaningless exhibition season.
I’ll see everybody in March.
Categories: Crime/Corruption, Sports
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
Come on Sam tell us how you REALLY feel. 🙂
Famous quotations from Futurama (from the upcoming best seller book “All I need to know I learned from Futurama”)
Fry: Man, I thought Ultimate Robot Fighting was real, like pro wrestling, but it turns out it’s fixed, like boxing.
Classic. Start with some facts. Bend them to your disposition, and end up with a six point inductive leap that would have made your college logic instructor pitch your ass out your basement refuge in a rage, if she coulda forced your misshapen head through its sniper ports. LOL.
Sam,
I only have one thing to say:
GO BUCKEYES!!!!
Lara Amber
Which bowl game do you
pimpwork for, Gepetto? Or are you an AD at a BCS conference school? Towel boy at NCAA headquarters? Head of the “entertainment committee” for on-campus recruiting at LSU? Give us a clue. Or an intelligent response – whichever you think you’re capable of.Lara: It takes a special kind of woman to care so much about so little.
I guess Dr. Slammy you weren’t paying much attention when she was teaching argumentum ad hominem, the refuge of the scoundrel without an argument.
I don’t see any evidence that you ever attended any lectures on argumentation at all. I made a case – a case that draws heavily on clear facts. Point to where I’m wrong about any of the BCS facts I note. Any of them. Just one will suffice. You accuse me of twisting facts – point to one.
You walk in here and bitch that you don’t like my case. If you have a REBUTTAL let’s hear it. Otherwise all I’m seeing is attitude, which isn’t really very compelling.
Let’s see, Gepetto says Slammy has a misshapen head and lives in a bunker with sniper ports, then whines about Slammy’s retaliation. Ad hominem for ad hominem.
Let me add my own. I suspect Gepetto is from one of the shining examples of higher ed that manages not to graduate football players from their recreation and apparel classes.
I’m still trying to figure out what “six point inductive leap” means.
How does a basement have sniper ports? What are we defending against, burrowing prairie dogs?
At my house the basement sniper ports face straight down. Draw your own conclusions.
Seriously, how can you disagree with anything said in this article. Even fans of schools that have a chance to play for the title know that the system is a farce, they’re just too dishonest to admit it. Remember a couple of years ago when Auburn, USC, Oklahoma, and Utah all went undefeated and they took Oklahoma over Auburn in the title game. Auburn played in the Del Taco Conselation Bowl and won big, Utah plastered a 6-4 Pitt team, and USC used Oklahoma as toilet paper to wipe their title stained asses. Great system.
The Auburn example is maybe the best ever. Anytime a team gets out of the SEC, easily the best conference in the nation, UNDEFEATED and they don’t get to play for the title, you have a disgrace BY DEFINITION.
To contend that the system is flawed is one thing. Hardly polemical enough for carpet-bombing-Dresden appetites such as yours. You lose all credibility when you jump from an analysis of facts, even a spun one such as yours, to a 6 point metaphysical theory of the college sports universe that scorches the earth and all its inhabitants. You may find yourself amusing and entertaining, and so may some of your audience, but the mind and the pen are not enemies, and some of us still have enough wit about us to recognize when they are at serious war.
If you believe your summation represents a fair appraisal of the facts, then there’s no reasonable or rational rebuttal that I have to offer that could possibly influence you. Bye bye and happy sanctimonious bombing.
Again with the content-free bob-and-weave.
You lose all credibility when you jump from an analysis of facts,
That I lose cred is an empty assertion of opinion on your part. Like everything else you say, completely unsupported by evidence or analysis. But do go on.
to a 6 point metaphysical theory
You use this term in a way that makes me think you don’t know what it means.
of the college sports universe that scorches the earth and all its inhabitants.
Ummm, no. I scorch the guilty parties and do so in a fairly specific way. Try reading more closely and stop distorting what I actually said. Because, you know, it’s right up the page in black and white.
You may find yourself amusing and entertaining, and so may some of your audience, but the mind and the pen are not enemies, and some of us still have enough wit about us to recognize when they are at serious war.
A nicely turned phrase. Now would you demonstrate that the mind and the keyboard and some actual facts and analysis met at a party once?
If you believe your summation represents a fair appraisal of the facts, then there’s no reasonable or rational rebuttal that I have to offer that could possibly influence you.
It’s hard to say whether a reasonable or rational rebuttal would sway my opinion because you’ve not yet offered one. In fact, you’ve not yet offered a single fact, a single refutation of any of my carefully presented facts, a single data point. Nothing. You’re like the half-assed liquor store thief with his hand in his pocket pointing his finger at the clerk so he’ll think you have a gun.
Okay, bluff called. If you have an argument let’s hear it. Otherwise sit down and be quiet.
If there was a playoff system I’d watch a hell of a lot more college football. What shocks me is that these same people who are afraid of losing money could profit even more with a playoff system. Here’s a link to a pretty good playoff model.
http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news?slug=dw-playoff112707&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
SNL did a great skit about Notre Dame Football, I can’t find it, but it was classic.
Right. When the bought-up whores say “but how would it work,” smack them upside their heads and say “just like it does in every other sport and division you operate.” And if they say anything about the length of the season or the “integrity” of the academic process, smack them again and ask about Ohio State’s 50+ day layoff this year…..
I want to get a shirt that say’s ” Bucked by the BCS ….again ” and change the B on bucked to a big “F” Boise State screwed twice in the past 4 years I think that is about how many times the decision makers get laid.