Joe Barton is a little behind the times but I like his idea anyway. Yesterday Texas Congressman Barton, ranking member of the U.S. House Commerce Committee, filed a bill that will make it illegal for the NCAA or BCS to call its post-season system a “championship.” His is the correct perspective on what is actually a beauty contest.
President-elect Obama, please endorse this bill forthwith and vow to sign it next year. Shoot, rush this bill through a lame duck Congress now; the sitting Prez is enough of a fan to endorse the measure, sending a message to a set of 117 buried heads.
Barton, a graduate of Texas A&M University, rival of the University of Texas (my alma mater), is behind the curve only because the NCAA cleverly anticipated his attack. Last year the imperial management of collegiate athletics renamed Division 1A the Football Bowl Subdivision at the same time renaming Division 1AA, the next tier of lesser teams, the Football Championship Subdivision. By lesser schools, I mean the ones that never make the serious polls, that only get on TV as a cursory and leveraged nod, and that are never mentioned on ESPN unless one beats Michigan or too many show up on the schedule of, say, a Texas Tech.
The NCAA itself recognizes that small colleges play to a championship and the big boys don’t. Sure, the NCAA website links to the Bowl Championship Series site, but officially the BCS is not the NCAA. The BCS is the organization created by university presidents, bowl committee loud-blazer guys, and the television networks to maintain lipstick on the pig (blanket apologies to politicians and pundits). And it’s important to note the name of that organization is the Bowl Championship Series, not the College Football Championship. There is no big time college football championship, just a beauty pageant.
Prove this is a beauty pageant? OK, how about Coach Stoops, up by 40 or so in the fourth quarter versus the comically hapless but incredibly dangerous Missouri Tigers, with Sam Bradford still in the game and desperately throwing 40-yard bombs into the end zone. That’s the definition of a beauty contest. The media has even created spin for the phenomenon—style points.
Determining the best of big-time college football now comes down to style points.
At age 60 I’m a lifelong fan and supporter of the bowls. But it’s time for the college presidents, regents and powerful alums to wake up and recognize that the current system is a monster. You can instruct the six computer ranking services to eliminate style points from their mathematical calculations, but how do you instruct the voters in the Coaches or Harris Polls? How do you instruct the coach on the sideline in November or December, looking for another one-hundredth of a point in the BCS beauty contest?
And how does that make you feel about the kid on the other end, the scholar-athlete who has his guts wrenched and his teeth kicked in by a Stoops piling on style points in the fourth quarter because your brain child forces him to?
Ahhh, sportsmanship. The founding principle of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
“We’d be trading one flawed system for another.” I’ve made that argument myself for years but I’ve also supported a playoff for years. The problem: how do you select the eight teams without recreating the BCS beauty contest? You don’t. If Coach Stoops is sitting at #9 the week before, he’ll still have Sam Bradford throwing deep late.
But this can be defused by a 16-team playoff. Not nullified, defused. Number 17 will still be irritated and maybe incented to run it up, but the further down the pecking order you go the less important and/or obvious. Truth is #17 is more likely to be a second or third place team in a major conference or a Ball State (sorry, Dave!), a marginal candidate. A serious percentage of the poll voters have no idea who is #17. It’s hard for #17 to be heard whining.
The dad of Heisman candidate and stellar Texas Tech QB Graham Harrell made an eloquent argument for the status quo this week, a respectable perspective. But Graham Harrell’s coach, Mike Leach, laid out a superior playoff argument a couple of weeks earlier. Each NCAA division below 1A plays off to a championship, regardless of the negative academic implications or the number of games some teams will play. In Texas, TWELVE levels of high school football, grouped by size of school, play off to championships. At most of those 12 levels, the final two teams will play a 16-game season. Leach also cited the NFL, with a 16-game season plus playoffs for 12 teams. Yes, those are grown men, full-time professionals, but his point was ‘if both younger guys and older guys can play that long, why can’t we?’
So maybe it’s not about academics or wear and tear on young athletes. Maybe it’s about the money. The cognoscenti of college football worry they may screw up the bowl gravy train, a hand—in combo with TV—that has fed them for many years. Hey, the law says we have to fund our Title IX obligations.
Get over it.
A seeded, 16-team playoff offers TV and football fans 15 terrific games over a four- or five-week span. Disney-ABC-ESPN just bid $125 million per year to televise FIVE games! What might they pay for a 15-game playoff that would actually settle something? Do the math, professors. Your final game will preempt the fricking Super Bowl!
Pick seven or even 15 of your favorite bowls and incorporate them into the playoff, rotating the top seven much as you do today with the top four (Jerry Jones’ Dallas palace comes online next fall). Allow teams not in the 16 to match up in the traditional sense via the lesser bowls, then charge each of those bowls a licensing fee. How many we got now? Thirty four? Massive overkill, led by chambers of commerce. It’s those loud blazers, again.
Allow the next tier of bowls to displace a bowl in the playoff rota using cold, hard cash—your current and longtime standard. That will encourage surviving bowls (some need to expire) to skillfully solicit and manage sponsors and local funding. If TV ratings hold up, perhaps the number of bowls will remain constant. If not, great. Most fans sleep through the Weed-eater, anyway.
Do the right thing. Stiff the blazers.
And Congressman Barton, where do I sign up as a co-sponsor?
Vaughn Aldredge, former professional sportswriter, is a rabid and lifelong fan of college football.
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