BCS Mess - Part Deux

If you were bored enough to read my last post then you may remember that we predicted the final BCS rankings due out on Sunday and the BCS bowl games associated with them. Let's start with the obvious problems from each team.

1. West Virginia - The play in the Big LEast. It was a better conference this year, er, well for a while. South Florida, Connecticut and Cincinnati all stepped it up some, but were eventually proven to be lesser teams. On the plus side, no one seems to be able to stop their spread offense running attack. Pat White is incredible.
2. Ohio State - What a boring season. After playing nobody all season long (Kent State in the middle of October?), they lose to a decent Illinois team in the second to last week of the Big-10 season. Oh, and no conference Championship game. Bleah!
3. Georgia - Too bad, so sad. Losses to unranked South Carolina and Tennessee kept them out of the SEC Championship game. But they are good...real good. Six straight wins over quality opponents to finish the season. Well, there was that Troy game.
4. Virginia Tech - That early season blowout loss to LSU really stands out when you look at their season. Wait, how the hell did I rank them ahead of LSU? Oh thats right, I generally don't know what I'm doing. And the ACC blows!
5. LSU - Despite what Les Miles says, those two losses did count. Even though both occurred in overtime. And just why couldn't the vaunted defense of Dorsey and Company stop Kentucky and Arkansas when it really mattered? Fuck you, Les Miles!
6. USC - They lost to Stanford. Hell, even Notre Dame managed to beat Stanford this year. And Notre Dame sucked! On the plus side, they have a quarterback named Booty. Hah!
7. Kansas - an incredibly unimpressive schedule leading up to last week's loss to rival Missouri keeps them out of the National Championship debate. I do, however, like the way that they spanked Nebraska after years of getting spanked. WTG!
8. Oklahoma - Just how they hell did they lose to Colorado and Texas Tech? They seem so much better than that. Probably just mystique, because their schedule wasn't so much more difficult than Kansas. Only two ranked teams all year long before their matchup with #1 Missouri this weekend, and one of those teams was Missouri back in October.

And it goes on and on. OK, so how do we fix it? Let's introduce the B.E. Earl BCS Fix-it Plan. Yeah, I know...not a very impressive name, but I didn't have the funding for hardcore research and polling. Well I did, but the it was spent on real hardcore porn and the pole was something different all together. See what I did there? Ahem, anyway.

B.E. Earl BCS Fix-it Plan

• Institute a Championship game in the PAC-10, Big-10 and Big East. Or get rid of them in the other conferences. Either way you need to make it fair. If Missouri didn't have to play another game this week, like Ohio State, then their #1 ranking would be assured. I like the idea of every conference having to play a game for the Championship rather than having it granted to them because of their regular season record. This can be done. Add a 12th team to the Big-10 (huh?) like Notre Dame (c'mon Irish, it's time) and voila! Would go a long way to validating some teams regular season records.
• Add the Cotton Bowl and the Gator Bowl to the BCS bowl system. These are two bowl games with history and some prestige, so it wouldn't be that big of a deal. A bit more money and cache goes a long way.
• Keep the same BCS ranking method that we currently have.
• Invite the same 10 teams that you would in the current method.
• The Cotton Bowl and the Gator Bowl will feature the bottom four teams per the BCS rankings of the the above mentioned 10 teams. They will play in those games and that is it. No chance for advancement. Hey, they should have played better in the regular season.
  
• The #1 and #2 seeds will get a first round bye.
• Remove all conference affiliation in the BCS bowl games. No longer will the ACC play in the Orange Bowl, the SEC in the Sugar Bowl, etc...
  
• The #3 seed will play the #6 seed in one of the bowl games (Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange) on New Year's Day and the #4 seed will play the #5 seed in another. The winners will move on.
• The next week the number #1 seed will play the lower ranked winner while the #2 seed will play the higher ranked winner in the remaining two BCS bowl games.
• The BCS Title Game will be played by the winners on the Sunday before the Super Bowl.

Here is how this year's mess would have panned out:

Dec. 31st/January 1st
Cotton Bowl #7 Kansas vs. #12 Arizona State - winner doesn't advance
Gator Bowl #8 Oklahoma vs. #11 Hawaii - winner doesn't advance
Rose Bowl #3 Georgia vs. #6 USC - winner advances to next round
Fiesta Bowl #4 Va. Tech vs. #5 LSU - winner advances to next round

January 7th/8th
Sugar Bowl #1 West Virginia vs. remaining lower ranked team
Orange Bowl #2 Ohio State vs. remaining higher ranked team

January 27th
BCS Title Game

There are some obvious flaws with this system too. How do you market the two bowl games in the second round without knowing the teams playing? Oklahoma, after winning the Big-12 title, doesn't get a chance to play for the National Title. Unbeaten Hawaii doesn't either. Lots of issues. But better than the current system, I say.

Phew! Glad I got that outta my system.