Extreme Makeover: BCS Edition

Critics said this day would come, and it seems like we’re inching closer and closer to a BCS meltdown. After 11 weeks of college football, there are still 4 undefeated teams with only a few games left to play. In case you don’t know what the BCS is, let me (try to) explain. The BCS, or Bowl Championship Series, is a selection system that places the top 10 college football teams in bowl games against each other, with the top two playing for the championship. It was created to make sure the number one team in the nation actually plays the number two team in the nation for the championship, unlike the prior system where the press voted on a national champion after the season. Sounds like a good idea, right? Maybe on paper, but the execution is very quirky and there have been numerous discrepancies over the years with the system. First off, the ranking system itself is very hard to understand and sometimes just makes you scratch your head. The rankings are determined by a computer algorithm that takes into account the media poll, the coaches poll, strength of schedule, and the computer rankings. This produces odd outputs sometimes like earlier this year then #3 Boise State was overtaken by #4 Texas Christian (who won 31-3) after a  48-0 win, despite beating Boise State beating TCU late last season 17-10.  There have also been numerous cases where legitimate contenders have been left out of the championship even tough they have beaten one of the teams in the championship. There are even situations where teams fail to win their own conference and are still selected to play in the championship. And there have been many times where a team can go undefeated in a season and not play in the National Championship, and it looks like this year #3 TCU and #4 Boise State will suffer the fate, again. (Boise State and TCU have gone undefeated in prior seasons and not reached the championship) My opinion? Switch to a playoff system for the top 8 BCS ranked teams. All other levels of football like high school and the NFL seem to use it fine, and it will eliminate most of the controversies. I might not be an expert, but I can tell you this: teams like Boise State and TCU will never be able to prove they deserve a championship until you let them.

NBA: National Boring Association?

Tonight marked the start of the college basketball season, and I for one have watched two more college games than NBA games already and there have only been two college games so far. During the second half of the Rhode Island-Pittsburgh game, I thought about this and seriously pondered why I liked college so much more than the NBA that has bored me all my life. I tried to figure out why but the reasoning seemed to elude me. Was it that the NBA is much faster paced dish-and-dash game that the paced, play running college game? No, it couldn’t be because there are many college teams that run a fast paced offence like Kentucky and Tennessee. Was it that there are more teams in the college game that never gives a repeated game in a season (besides conference)? Could be… but there are really only 50ish teams that TV stations choose to broadcast, which is relatively close to the NBA’s 30. Then I figured it out. The wording was elusive to me but I could finally spit it out. It is the soul, mentality and the passion put into the game, not only by the players but also the fans. Once you actively look for it, it is hard to not notice. For example, tonight featured a game between 25^th ranked Texas and Navy. This was labeled as a sure blowout by Texas tonight, yet Texas’ arena was still packed with fans and there was an atmosphere of a playoff game. How often is there a sold out crowd in the NBA when a pretty good team like Denver plays a bad team like New Jersey? The answer: not very. The NBA also lacks the hustle and effort put in by the players. Countless times I have seen a player go in transition for a layup with all the defenders waiting in the back court for the next possession. The NBA is also a collection of some of the biggest egos in the world. Players often complain about playing time, and the minute they start to sink in the depth chart, they call their agents to get them out of there. In college you see 3^rd string player come in and give 110% for the entire whopping 5 minutes he gets to play a game. Then came the next question in my mind, why? Why is it that college players go all out and leave it all on the court, but when professionals start losing in the game they think about where they’re going to dinner afterwards? I realized that it’s because there is a tomorrow for professional players. With 80+ games in the season, not every game matters. But in college there are only 30, so every game has implication on their postseason future. Also, most college players don’t go onto the NBA, so once their four seasons are over, its all over for them. They’re going to put in as much possible now because that’s all they get.  NBA players play an average of 10+ seasons so they can afford to call one season a failure and give up. My suggestion to the NBA: If you want to win me back, shorten the schedule, get rid of the whiners, and reward effort. This would tap into a large fan base, because I know there are others who feel exactly the same.