No better off with BCS

The problem with the Bowl Championship Series always has been its implied arrogance.

“We’re going to give you a national champion every year,” the BCS boys blustered, even though they knew deep down they could not deliver the goods.

Oh, they got lucky for a few years and enough good teams lost to allow two deserving teams to fall into their laps. One year it was Tennessee and Florida State; the next, Virginia Tech and Florida State; another time, Ohio State and Miami.

But more often than not over these seven years under BCS rule, college football has stumbled and sputtered just as it did before there was a BCS. Back then, a dozen years ago, it was messy and ugly but rather charming in its own way, with traditional bowl matchups on New Year’s Day and several teams having a ball rejoicing that they were No. 1, which isn’t the worst way for a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds to end a collegiate sports season.

Now it’s institutional messiness and ugliness, with the BCS gang standing before us trying to make us believe that it is giving us a bona fide national championship game when it most certainly is not.

Four years ago, the BCS bypassed the team ranked second in the nation, Miami.

Three years ago, it allowed a badly beaten Nebraska team to shamelessly play in the so-called big game.

Last season, in what has to be one of the silliest situations ever in college sports, it played its national championship game without the No. 1 team in the country.

And this year the BCS is telling us it has the two proper teams in Southern California and Oklahoma, even though Auburn and Utah are undefeated, too — but of course are not even matched in the undercard.

Couldn’t a 5-year-old throwing darts at the names of the top football schools in the nation have accomplished what the BCS did over the past seven years? By now can’t we all agree that it’s absolutely impossible to declare an unimpeachable national champion in big-time college football the way the NCAA does in many other sports? Yet the BCS boys still want to sell us that bill of goods, hoping we’re clueless enough not to notice.

For seven seasons this has been going on. For seven seasons the occasional coach or columnist complained, but by and large everyone followed along in lockstep.

“Yes, this is the national championship game,” announcers said in zombie-like tones. “You will believe it, and you will like it.”

But then, just the other day, at the end of the seventh season, a group that has been intimately involved in giving the BCS its legitimacy finally stood up and said that enough was enough. It was the Associated Press, which, in a strident, extremely lawyerly letter to BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg, said the BCS “has harmed AP’s reputation” and “undermines the integrity and validity of the AP poll.”

From now on, the AP said, the BCS better go find some other poll on which to hang its hat because the AP and all those sportswriters who value their reputations are no longer going to be a party to its shenanigans. What’s more, the AP will continue to crown a national champion with its poll, which may or may not agree with the national champion the BCS cooks up each year.

Isn’t it grand? There will be arguing — fresh, honest, non-computer-induced arguing — in college football once again. Let’s hope the AP and BCS disagree next year, just for fun. One can only hope that the controversial coaches’ poll, run by USA Today and ESPN, comes to its senses and bails out as well, although let’s not hold our breath for that.

The AP’s strong decision to dump the BCS is the best thing that could have happened to college football. Perhaps it will force the BCS to re-evaluate the havoc it has wreaked on a game so many of us love.

Look what these people have done: In the interest of pure, unabashed money-grubbing, the BCS has destroyed the tradition of the New Year’s Day bowl games. Texas in the Rose Bowl? USC in the Orange? Doesn’t it make your head spin?

We are hearing that in response to the AP’s action, the BCS might form a committee to pick the two teams that get to play in the mythical national championship game. Oh, great. If it’s anything like the committee that picks the men’s basketball brackets, good luck. Those guys caused so much consternation that a 65th team had to be added in a play-in game. Can you imagine what it would be like when a similar committee must pick only two football teams for one high-profile game?

It’s time for the rest of the sports world to do what the AP did and declare the BCS a reputation-harming, integrity-undermining disaster. Then we can get back to college football the way it should be played.

Who’s No. 1? Who knows? Isn’t it wonderful?