Bull Crap Series

It's time for my annual column against the BCS, or rather, against the NCAA. I can't fault the BCS, because it was a huge improvement over the bowls in the first place. What I CAN fault is the commissioners who stand in the way of a potential playoff system, namely, the Big 10 commish and the PAC 10 commish.

Of course, I'm extra angry after the seasons where the Cougs have won the MWC and I would like to see them with a small chance to win it all, instead of doomed to the next-to-worthless Las Vegas Bowl. Last year the Vegas Bowl was cool because we had a great season and we were finally back in a bowl game. This year, although our team was arguably worse, we are not satisfied to play UCLA, a team we lost to earlier in the season. And if we beat them, so what? We beat the 20th place team in the PAC-10.

I was watching the Missouri/OU game last Saturday, and after West Virginia had lost and it appeared that Mizzou was also going to lose, Brent Moose and Kirk Herby began to talk about the necessity of a playoff. I was enjoying it until Moose said, "Although we would like a playoff, it's NEVER going to happen." And Herby agreed. That set me off! Never? Really, never? Not in a million years? Ridiculous!

Many sports writers have written articles about playoffs this year, and every year the vast majority of people agree. The problem here is that football players/coaches/commissioners are VERY STUBBORN PEOPLE. Of course, I'm going off of a stereotype that I see in all the Hollywood movies where Coach X from Evil Big School Y is playing Coach Z from perennially-crappy-but-having-an-unpredictably-great-year school...um, I've run out of letters...A. Coach X is a big fat jerk and he steals the other team's playbook while Coach Z is a soft-spoken nice guy with a drinking problem that he manages to stave off for the duration of the season.

Coach Z's joeerrbb (job) is on the line this year so he pulls in Token Black From the Streets who happens to be the fastest player ever and he inserts in all these new plays and the team builds around what they have and now they have a great team, although the racial tensions between the old, slow, white running back with a southern accent and the new black running back result in a few altercations on and off the practice field, but when the white guy sees that the black guy lives in the ghetto they become best friends and start winning ballgames, because that's just what they do.

So when School Y plays School A, School Y gets up to an insurmountable lead of 71 to 0. But when School A's linebacker gives a great halftime speech about overcoming all of the odds, the team starts coming back. The song "Eye of the Tiger" plays through a montage of smashing hits and thrown passes while the scoreboard keeps updating the score: 71-7, 71-14, 71-21, and so on until the score is 71-63 with 23 seconds left and School A has the ball on their own 1 yardline. School Y's coach no longer has the smug "I've got you now" look on his face...he's now quite worried. Coach Z pulls out his Secret Playbook of Plays That Nobody Has Ever Laid Eyes On, and it turns out that it's a simple draw play to Token Black who ends up running 99 yards for a touchdown while dodging about 100 opponents. Coach Z decides to kick the extra point, and when the other coaches question him, he just says, "I've got a plan" while looking ominously off into the distance.

School A kicks it off School Y who runs it out to the 25 with 10 seconds left. School A has all of their timeouts and School Y runs it into the line for the first 3 downs, but only 6 seconds go off the clock. 4 seconds left and School Y goes into the punt formation but School A sends all of their players to block it and of course it's blocked! The ball rolls out of the end zone and School A wins, 72-71 with a walk-off safety!

The moral of the preceding story is that Coach Z represents all of the victorious coaches because he was open to change by bringing in the risky black dude and using new plays. This relates to the stubborn commissioners who are represented by Evil Coach X who have all the cards in their hand but are too stubborn to change and therefore end up losing in the long run.

So despite what Moose and Herby think, 30 years from now we will have a nice playoff system where every team in college football has a chance of winning it all, just like we do with basketball. We will laugh at how we used to have the BCS, just like how we laugh now about how we used to just vote on who should win the championship. It will happen eventually, it is an inevitability. Why am I so sure? Because EVERYBODY WANTS IT EXCEPT THE FEW STUBBORN TRADITIONALISTS THAT HAPPEN TO HAVE A LOT OF POWER!

However, it will take a very long time for the commissioners to die, retire, or soften their hearts, and they will be replaced by commissioners who don't care about meaningless traditions like always having a Pac-10 team in the Rose Bowl. In the meantime, I will complain every year with all of the other writers until it is changed.