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The Joke Is On Michigan
December 5, 2006
There should be no BCS championship game on Jan. 8.

You read it right.

There should be a Rose Bowl game between the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions.

There, on the fashionable streets of Pasadena, the Ohio State cheerleaders can pull the Trojan warrior off his trusty Traveler and beat the armored stuffing out of him. There, on New Year's Day, Troy Smith, the real Man of Troy, can ease the No. 1 Buckeyes over USC and on to the finish line of a perfect season.

The writers, pounding away on their Royal typewriters, can proclaim Ohio State national champs.

The coaches, swearing off the forward pass as the devil's invention, can do the same.

And afterward, the nation and its sports-loving president can get back to worrying about the war - the Vietnam War, that is.

We're not really saying the old way of determining a national college football champion is any better than the new way.

Both are corrupt.

Both are imbecilic.

Anything short of a playoff is a charade.

What we continue to say is the powerful cartel that rules the sport should be ashamed. And every year we are reminded it's impossible to shame the shameless.

The hilarious thing about this season is it arguably would be fairer to use the old bowl system, no BCS rankings, no pseudo-title game. If the real integrity is in the week-to-week battle, as the power brokers argue, the Buckeyes have done more than enough to lay claim to No. 1. So just like in the old days, Michigan and Florida should have to win some other bowl and pray USC upsets Ohio State to lay their own claim to the mythical title.

Can't you see?

The BCS is such a powerful joke that it has a sports nation arguing who is a qualified runner-up to face the unquestioned No. 1 team in a pseudo-national title game.

This is the kind of stuff boxing does.

It's called matchmaking. It's hype. It's carnival-barking. It creates interest. It creates controversy. It sells.

Only in America could one of the great ruses in sports history like the BCS be allowed to continue. Don King should be BCS czar.

Last year the system did work with a legitimate showdown with Texas and USC. It also was somewhat of an aberration.

Usually there is one too few unbeaten teams or one too many. Two years ago, unbeaten Auburn got ripped off.

This year, Michigan got ripped off.

This is no slam at Florida, although Urban Meyer's uber-politicking was nauseating. After this campaign, don't be shocked when Karl Rove and James Carville are named assistant coaches somewhere.

Look, Florida playing for the national title is no outrage. The Gators deserve it.

Michigan not getting a chance to play for the national title is the outrage.

The Urban myth here is that there is a foolproof way to determine whether Florida or Michigan is better.

All the information was fed into a computer and the two teams came out even.

Humans decided and the resulting biases and presuppositions were embarrassing.

Michigan somehow became less worthy by not playing a game after its loss to Ohio State Nov. 18. We knew idle hands were the devil's workshop, but who would have guessed idle teams were, too?

When USC was in line for the BCS title game, the voters weren't nearly so in love with the Gators. USC was stunned by UCLA, Florida beat Arkansas by 10 in the SEC title game and - voila - Florida shoots past Michigan in both the Harris and USA Today polls with huge swings.

We understand that with a more complete body of work Florida is better positioned and the once-beaten Gators did have a tougher schedule, but how could Michigan drop so precipitously simply by not playing? And before that, how convenient was it to push USC past Michigan, too? The truth is, the Wolverines may have gotten jobbed twice.

One argument has been that a team should at least win its conference if it is going to win the national title.

In what sports bible is that written? What genius thought that one up? What honest person would employ that rationale if the job was to objectively select the best two teams in the nation?

Good grief, the Wolverines lost to Ohio State by three at Columbus. Any oddsmaker will tell you minus-3 is the cost of home advantage.

Why would a neutral-field showdown in the Arizona desert promise anything less than a thriller?

Which brings us to the most probable root of the problem: Too many folks apparently don't want a rematch.

Give somebody else a shot! That seems to be a common refrain. If the argument is rematches are boring - a concept that's difficult for me as a fan of sports history to fathom - that's called preference. If the agenda is to support some school or conference, that's called bias. Neither falls into objective analysis.

There's also wisdom that the voters went this way to make up for Auburn and the SEC getting jobbed in '04. Good grief, Mike Slive is both SEC commissioner and BCS coordinator.

And what of Ohio State coach Jim Tressel?

He refrained from voting in the last poll, not wanting to affect the outcome. Wait. He voted in every other poll this year. His agreement was to vote as honestly as possible. Did Tressel want to avoid voting for one school No. 2, having to play the other and that opponent using his snub as motivation?

These guys are in so deep it's impossible to be objective.

In the end, the college presidents, the alleged paragons of integrity, are the only ones who can stop the charade and force a legitimate playoff. They are the only ones who can direct their powerful conferences. They are the only ones who can trust-bust the business consortiums that use the bowls as tourist destinations to fuel local economies.

An eight-team playoff would mean the same amount of games for four schools that lose in the quarters, one more game for two schools that lose in the semis and two more games for the finalists. Every sport in every division - except I-A football - has a national championship and this one could be held almost entirely, if not entirely, between semester breaks. This season, Florida and Michigan would probably meet in the semis and the winner would likely face Ohio State. And if not, hey, upsets happen.

But you already know all this. Only the college presidents are oblivious. Or maybe they just hate rematches, too.

Contact Jeff Jacobs at

jjacobs@courant.com.

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Go Blue!!

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Go Blue!!

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