Bowl Championship Series

If I haven't mentioned it, I detest (I first wrote "spit in the general direction of") the Bowl Championship Series. No matter how much they tweak it, it won't be a playoff, so it will be illegitimate.

That said, here are the standings for this week:

1. Southern California, .9807
2. Texas, .9791
3. Penn State, .8900
4. Louisiana State, .8372
5. Virginia Tech, .8294
6. Ohio State, .7841
7. Oregon, .7340
8. Notre Dame, .6908
9. Miami, .6718
10. Auburn, .6333

Now if I could just figure out what that means. I think what it means is that the Ducks will be going to the Holiday Bowl, while the Irish (with their national following) will take the Ducks' rightful spot in the Fiesta Bowl. (That assumes that USC beats UCLA on Dec. 3.)

With Kellen Clemens sidelined well beyond the bowl season, the Ducks will be lucky to beat whomever they meet, but I still wish the National Championship question could be decided in a playoff (like divisions I-AA, II & III), instead of by a series of computer rankings.

This section from the BCS website (near the bottom of the page) makes me grind my teeth:

Why doesn't the BCS employ a national playoff for Division I-A football?
There has been no directive from college presidents and chancellors to ask the BCS commissioners to research or create a playoff structure. BCS leaders haven't spent any time looking at playoff models or adding games to the postseason in a way to make it look like a playoff structure. College football comprises nearly 120 teams. It's not a 32-team, NFL-type structure.

One of the most difficult problems and challenges would be to decide where and when playoff games would occur. Would the regular season be shortened in order to play games leading into final exams, take a break and then come back and finish it afterward? It's a sport where there are 85 scholarship players. The NFL has numerous replacement (free agent) players who can fill out a roster. There are issues relative to the number of games you can play. College presidents in the Big 12, for example, have been consistent in opposing a 15- or 16-game structure. A 12-game regular season with the opportunity for a conference championship game and a single postseason bowl game is where most presidents and chancellors have been at this point. The bowl system rewards 56 of those approximately 120 teams. A playoff structure would erode the base of the bowls. There's a tremendous difference between a playoff structure and a bowl structure.

Where and when? Longer seasons? Smaller (?) rosters? Fewer teams rewarded? None of those things appears to be an issue in any other division of college football! When will these idiots stop making up crappy excuses that have already been solved at the smaller school level?

Oh, that's right. They'll do that when the college presidents aren't raking in the bucks from the current bowl gravy train, er, system.