Rooftop like we bringin' '88 back. That's the line originally ringing through our brain while considering the new BCS pimp's comments about bringing back the original bowl system. Fine, if you're going to be a colossal dick right out of the gate and threaten us with straw men, then bring froth the body and make that fucker dance. It's an idle threat, a straw man, and further proof of the odd insecurity felt by the BCS power structure as a whole. The checks are too big, the money too good, and conference already too far down the path of establishing championship games to eventually funnel up champions into something that will eventually be a playoff or playoff-like substance.
Just teach your kids the simple rule of "Authority figure says be afraid=be totally calm/authority figure says be calm=freak out and run to the bunker," and they'll be fine.
Gettin' big money, playboy your time's up: The thoughts over at Sporting Blog sprout a thousand tangents, all of which Matt Hinton carefully calculated, weighed, analyzed, and dismissed as unnecessary. We were IM'ing back and forth yesterday, a frustrating experience for us because he has this way of using "Facts" and "rationale," while we prefer "blind prejudice" and "anger."
One point of contention that remained unresolved: does the current system produce better matchups than the old bowl system? Our sense is no, not necessarily: the choice of matchups and their outcomes between the top ten or fifteen teams is a largely randomized process no matter what happens.
Choosing them based on BCS rankings or on the whims of the bowls generates fairly consistent and random results. Sometimes you get the 2005 Orange Bowl, and sometimes you get the 2009 BCS Title game. Big old predictable bell curve in terms of points spread, we're guessing, and in terms of subjective quality.
Like Pun said/You ain't even en mi clasa: The one nagging feeling, though, re: the current BCS system: the conference tie-ins with bowls. If everyone is bothered by the Utah/Boise State category not getting its fair shake, then one simple wrinkle by elimination would vastly improve the BCS: eliminate conference affiliations with bowls. The only defense for these is tradition. The same could be said of female circumcision or our unfortunate habit of celebrating being in a new city by ordering the rankest porno we can find on the pay-per-view. (Or, in a drunken fit once, ordering "Housewifes And Garbagemen Ass Orgy" seven times. Don't drink, kids.)
If a conference doesn't belong in the top five bowl games, why continue to foist them on system, or worse still, putting two of them together in the same bowl game? (The Orange Bowl has been particularly slammed by this.) If teams aren't in the same class by the feeble objective measures we have to lean on, they don't deserve an automatic bid. Also worthy of elimination: the two team limit on conference. Be it the Pac-10 or the SEC or the Mountain West, if the numbers add up and the general consensus is that the teams deserve a BCS bowl--and the bowls deem their crowd as likely to show up and spend money--then let 'em go.
Balla convention, free admission. There is no substitute for a playoff, but freeing up the requirements for the bowls does allow better matchups to happen. Open it up, and you mitigate situations like the recent string of putrescent Rose Bowls (aka The Pete Carroll Snuff Film Festival) and whatever the Orange Bowl has become. This is all completely imperfect in lieu of a playoff, which would be the ultimate balla convention where your record and quality was admission, and not a web of conference affiliations defensible only by tradition and other hobgoblins of of the past.
It's not an open market by any stretch of the imagination, but it's getting closer to it. And in the cartel situation we're in, it would go a long way toward throwing the Orrin Hatches of the world off the trail of the BCS, if that's what they want.