The LSU fan with his cardboard sign said it all on ABC's Broadcast of the SEC Championship game last Saturday night.
The sign said: "We came to mess things up."
A little late, I'm afraid. The whole system got messed up long before LSU made Tennessee the 5th consecutive Rose Bowl front runner to fumble its destiny.
The mess was made by the grumpy old men like Roy Kramer a long time ago. After the game, the SEC commish insisted that his precious system of decimal points, and geek-cooked statistical stew was not "in chaos." Nothing like sitting at home, waiting for the last calculator to go silent so you can celebrate getting into the national championship game. What do you do if you are a Nebraska player. Go out to the nearest 7-11, make a run on 32 ounce bottles of Gatorade, and immerse yourself right there in the checkout line?
What an idea, let the nerds decide!
So here we are. The mythical national championship will be played by an 11-0 Miami team from a weak sister conference where they had two blood draining near death scares at Boston College and Virginia Tech. Their opponent is Nebraska, which had no near death scares in 10 of it's 11 games, but got stomped for 62 points by Colorado. A loss which by all rights should have counted as two in the record books.
Nebraska is not ranked #2 by any of the pollsters, and they did not win their own conference, or even their own Division in their conference! But they could win the "National Championship." (Note: Every time you read the words "National Championship" feel free to drape the words in heavy sarcasm and insert the mocking "air quotes" with your fingers).
Colorado has a right to feel jilted. Especially since it pole-axed the Huskers and had the decency to win its conference championship game. Oregon is properly outraged, since it too had just one loss, by a mere 7 points, in a very good conference chock full of BCS ranked teams.
We digress for a moment to thoroughly blast BYU. Maybe the NCAA should sue them! Poetic justice was served in that 72-45 ass whooping they got from Hawaii. That's what you get for talking about lawsuits before you actually play an opponent that can beat you on their own field! The over under in that game was a blood vessel popping 75! Here's one sentence I can honestly say I've never uttered: "Yeah, give me the OVER 75 for $100!"
Oregon Head Coach Mike Bellotti likened the BCS to a form of cancer, which will no doubt put him in PC Police jail until he apologizes to actual cancer victims. Its not even a good analogy though, because cancer is hard to cure, and this mess is easy. Have a playoff.
Four teams, eight teams, pick your number. Keep the current Bowls as part of the bracket, or tack the playoffs onto January. It doesn't matter. This is not a column on "How We Should Organize a College Football Playoff." I have read so many solutions and so many variations my eyes bleed at the sight of yet another.
This column is about making it happen, and I'll be honest, it won't be easy. First of all, the networks and the NCAA are hooked up until 2006. Secondly, you need a guy more dynamic than some good ol'-boy-network, back-slapping, palm-greasing, SEC plaid-coat like Roy Kramer to lead the charge toward a playoff. Third, the current participants in this exhibition football scam known as the "Bowl System" need to feel some pain.
The pain, that's where I come in. We must take it into our own hands to make these bowl games unwatched, illegitimate, money losing failures.
I have never been to a bowl game, and never will. There is a simple reason. I don't get excited about exhibition football. And the NCAA's exhibition games are even more worthless than NFL exhibition games. At least in the NFL, the exhibition season gives coaches a stage to evaluate players before making roster cuts. In college, the exhibition season exists to put a few thousand dollars into the coffers of the Shreveport Jaycees during the Independence Bowl.
Television will never take a stand against the ridiculous system, because it is feeding too many dollars to the NCAA to prop up the scam's faint aura of legitimacy. But other elements of the media certainly can draw a line in the sand. Newspapers should lead the charge. In this age of cutbacks, why waste travel dollars to send writers and photographers to exhibition games that nobody, I mean NOBODY, can remember the outcome of from year to year?
(Quick Quiz: who won last year's Blockbuster Bowl? Ha! Trick. It was called the MicronPC Bowl last year, but since Micron is now out of both the bowl business and its little side deal of making computers, I now note that the game has simply disappeared, Taliban-style, from this year's slate. Oh yeah, the answer was NC State 38-30 over Minnesota.)
I want to see a major paper like the New York Times, Washington Post, or Chicago Tribune simply ignore the entire farce from the "Mainstay Independence Exhibition Bowl," to the "Rose Exhibition sponsored by AT&T in Pasadena." They could simply say: "We don't cover exhibitions." I say post the results of these games in small type, on the back page right next to the IHL standings and women's volleyball results.
I can only do so much, but as a talk show host, this year and all years going forward, I shall totally ignore the NCAA's exhibition season. I won't talk about these games, I won't watch these games, and I certainly won't care about these games. If I must, I will simply refer to them as "the Team 1 vs. Team 2 exhibition in city x."
Oh, I suppose I might lose some listeners who really wanted a Fiesta Bowl breakdown, but anything I can do to de-legitimize the current scheme is worth pissing off a handful of fanatics. I won't spend any more time ranting about how stupid the BCS rankings are, or how Team X got screwed. These arguments are tiresome and annoying. They have all the depth and intelligence of 4th graders at recess. (Example: Colorado to Nebraska: "We're ranked higher than you-hoo!"
Nebraska right back: "Well, maybe you should have remembered NOT to lose to Fresno State: Ha, haa!")
Fools like Kramer will say: "Isn't this great! Everybody is TALKING ABOUT college football!" Yeah, like the nerd in high school who wears patterned polyester flood pants to gym class. The kids are talking about him, alright. That doesn't automatically make it good.
Once upon a time, I too reveled in the saturation of football and slothfulness that is New Year's Day on the couch watching non-stop football. But if you think about it, what is so great about watching a bunch of sloppy, second rate games at half-filled, emotionless neutral site stadiums?
Answer: not a damn thing. Let's wake up people, and realize that much better entertainment is available! I suggest making your own "DVD Bowl" lineup that you will watch on New Year's day while the retina-numbing Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl drones on in front of some other poor sucker's TV set. Go ahead, pick five DVDs, and rack 'em up one after another. About 12 hours, go noon 'til midnight, scarf all the chips and popcorn you like.
According to my own complex mathematical "DVD Bowl" formula (Ranking = Graphic violence x classic quotes + special effects - number of chicks who would actually sit down to watch movie with you) which are the five most kick-ass movies I plan to watch uninterrupted? Right now we're looking at "Saving Private Ryan," "Casino," "Terminator 2," "Caddyshack" and "Pulp Fiction."
These rankings may change by January 1, and next year's "DVD Bowl" lineup will probably include several new additions ("Goodfellas," "Braveheart" and "Bull Durham" will no doubt make a strong claim to DVD Bowl status).
When you go to work the next day, and someone asks you "did you see the (fill in the blank) Bowl, simply reply in the most condescending tone you can muster: "I don't watch exhibition football. But the scene where Joe Pesci cracks a guy's skull with a pay-phone receiver? Fantastic!"
Tell them about the "DVD Bowl" concept, why you are doing it, and encourage them to do the same thing with their friends. Someday, we'll have a college football playoff. But until then, trust me, you won't miss the Outback Bowl.
Steve is a native Washingtonian and has worked in sports talk radio for the last 11 years. He worked at WTEM in 1993 anchoring Team Tickers before he took a full time job with national radio network One-on-One Sports.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, Steve has worked for WFNZ in Charlotte where his afternoon show was named "Best Radio Show." Steve continues to serve as a sports personality for WLZR in Milwaukee and does fill-in hosting for Fox Sports Radio.
