How Having Four At-Large Bids Is Destroying College Football

(Note: I published this a couple of weeks ago, before the bowls were announced. Contrary to popular opinion, the BCS made the Fiesta Bowl watchable (1) by not drawing Iowa to it, and (2) by pitting the BCS busters against themselves)

On Friday, the arguably most overrated team in college football, the Boise State Broncos, took the field amid a misty, overcast November evening and beat another arguably overly hyped team in the Nevada Wolf Pack. It was a night of frivolous beatings, miscues, scuffles and fake hand-offs.

And it was horrible. Utterly and unbelievably horrible.

What was obvious from the farthest bleacher seat back was that one team executed far better than another, and that team was draped in Dodger blue and an air traffic controller orange. The other team, to put it mildly, tried. It was shaded with tints of grey, which is the very color of trying. And in college football, you know what happens when you try – not much.

Nevada went deep into a playbook that wasn’t very deep. They ran scripted runs up the gut, zone reads with a lanky yet unwieldy quarterback, and shot numerous frowns toward a sideline that in turn shot back lost expressions with a hint of desperation. It didn’t matter how bad the Broncos were, the Wolf Pack were worse, and Nevada’s undefeated record in conference play suddenly underscored a larger problem in a college football landscape muddied with computers and MIT’s latest whiz-kids. The problem was this: it’s not that the BCS is unfair. It’s how the BCS is unfair. And it is unfair – to those within its bounds.

As the rankings stand today, three teams stand atop the college football world as the proclaimed indomitables – Florida, Alabama and Texas. This shouldn’t come as a surprise – Florida won the national championship last year, returned most of its players, and has a specimen in Tim Tebow, who is unquestionably a game-breaker. Alabama and Texas, looking to break Florida’s streak of dominance, consistently recruit at a top tier level and their efforts on the field reflect as much against quality competition. But behind these three teams lie three other teams - TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State – who have had an equal amount of success in what most consider lesser leagues. Less talent, less competition, less respect, is the running idea (or prejudice, depending on where you stand).

To most who criticize the BCS, this is their reason. The respect for these next tier teams isn’t as earned as it is for the top three. And many pundits like to point out that a team like TCU plays an infinitely tougher slate than a team like Texas, who more or less, feeds off a down Big 12, where the closest game it has is against a 6-5 Oklahoma squad which has lost out of conference twice. Better schedule, better results, better team, right?

In three words, no one knows.

But what we do know is that teams trend in college football. That is to say, no team is ever the same throughout the season – some get better, some worse, and some (like Florida State) get better and worse. You can argue that the Big 12 may be down a certain year. Oklahoma suddenly lacks willpower, Nebraska can’t move the ball, and the top crop isn’t what it used to be, but Texas having narrow escapes like 16-13 against a suddenly game Sooner squad suggests that games are still being played in the league, regardless of how a conference is trending.

Where trending becomes irrelevant, however, was on display last night in Boise, Idaho, behind a headset, a little lost in translation. His name is Chris Ault, and he’s a damn good coach with hall of fame credentials, but he is also 63 years old and coaches the Nevada Wolf Pack. And he was getting out-coached by a younger, more focused Chris Petersen (who is 45). Ault is part of an “aging” trend in the Western Athletic Conference. Dick Tomey is 71 and coaches the San Jose Spartans; Greg McMackin is 64 and coaches the Hawaii Warriors; Pat Hill is 57 and coaches the Fresno State Bulldogs; and Rob Akey of Idaho and DeWayne Walker of New Mexico State, both much younger, are in their first years of coaching at their respective schools. To put it short, the majority of coaches in the conference have been transitional coaches, either past their primes or recycled from better leagues and distributed to a smaller one. And because of this turnover from job to job, there is undeniably a product on the field that does not help to accredit a BCS conference.

And yet the BCS, for all its foibles in the social scene, allows for trending amongst college teams to become irrelevant, in turn allowing for poorer football and weaker scheduling. It allows for teams, as poor as Boise, to schedule essentially one-game seasons. The BCS has become the rich kid in class who doesn’t turn in his homework and isn’t as popular as he thinks. He’s spoiled, has lost friends, and is about to lose more. Oregon’s not scheduling Boise State anymore. Why would it? It’s not about losing the game – it’s about losing positioning in the BCS for playing a tough game on the road. And why would USC or Oklahoma or Ohio State schedule on the road in tough environments? The thinking behind a typical human voter is simple and yet stupid: you lose, you drop.

Where is the impetus for a good game? Perhaps the computers have it right and not the people? Is it possible?

It can be (and it should be) argued that the impetus is probably lost in those three teams ranked four through six. As the media swoons to re-embrace these saccharinely sweet, Disney-inducing underdogs, it’s forgetting how much these teams are (at the present) enervating college football, engendering more BCS karma, not helping it. It’s shouting at Pete Carroll to stop playing Ohio State, to not give us any more drama at the last possible second. It’s telling Oklahoma that its prospects would best be served walloping on Creighton at home when nobody is watching. It’s rewarding weaker teams for lesser slates and diminishing better teams for tougher ones. In a word, it’s absurd.

And it’s the reason the BCS was brought into existence. To prevent bad games from being scheduled. But the mouse has had a cookie (read, Oklahoma-Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl two years ago), and now it wants a glass of milk. For the sanity of the system, BCS, cut back the at-large bids to two and to put the milk back in the fridge. Draw the line somewhere, or else suffer the consequences of watching Boise State vs. Iowa in what might be the most unwatched Fiesta Bowl in history.

For the love of football, BCS – be more like your old intransigent self. Demand perfection, snub it when you don’t see it, and screw the hapless. You’re a bastard, to be sure, but damn it if the game doesn’t need you now more than ever.

No Such Thing as Elite in Age of Parity

I love countering quality argumentation. It’s why I am continuing to lose popularity amongst those who know me, and will eventually suffer a death by forced exclusion from rationality (once I argue enough). I am a terribly acerbic person. I even hate it (or maybe love it?) when I argue with myself.

But I love it when I hear the following (really, these first four words burn my brain, and I’m left with no alternative but to counter):

Notre Dame is elite. It shouldn’t join a conference.

And to his credit, one Yahoo sports columnist, a Mr. Dan Wetzel, argues his point quite eloquently. “The Fighting Irish may be the nation’s most despised team, but ignoring its institutional advantages and assuming the Irish will never again amount to anything is folly,” Wetzel argues, “The program has tradition, a massive fan base and unequaled media attention. The school’s will to win is considerable, with all the necessary budgets and facilities.”

He’s right. The school is the biggest buck sign in the nation, and has all the amenities and rich traditions that ensure it will prosper.

And yet,

No other school in the nation continually makes itself a mockery than the Irish. And why is that? Probably because of all the reasons he gave. Count them on your fingers. One, it’s a smart school. Very few recruits go to academic schools, given the opportunity. The idea of multiple intelligences, pioneered by the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner in 1983, has permeated so much into our everyday fabric that even something as trivial as football can be considered an intelligence. Look at Brett Favre. He’s the greatest specimen out there flinging pigskin. And he’s not overly bright. Has made two gaffes recently with not knowing when to quit. He wasn’t ready, and he now knows it.

Two, the program has tradition. Does Cincinnati have tradition? Does Boise State have tradition? Does Oregon have tradition? No, they don’t. And yet those are three programs that have consistently been in the top ten over the last three years. Dominance in the age of equity can only be pushed rarely and sporadically. Florida State ruled the ACC for the nineties. And then it got old fast. A couple of seconds ago, Bobby Bowden decided to retire. He should have done it years ago.

Time, it would seem, is both the benefactor and malefactor for the Irish. They want to live in it, but even when they do, it pushes them toward the brink.

Now, this is not to say that Wetzel is wrong – he argues that Notre Dame can regain its brand equity, and that’s shooting fish in a barrel as an argument. Of course it can. Beat up on the service academies, never travel unless it’s to a recruiting hotbed like California, and do whatever to ensure that holding calls on the opposition are always enforced both before and after the game. But to say Notre Dame has advantages is to state the obvious and what’s “obvious” is never as obvious as it seems.

Consider the third point – Notre Dame has a desire to win. Well, so did Connecticut two weekends ago. So does Missouri, so does Georgia Tech. So what? Every school has a desire to win, regardless the basin of money it’s pulling from. The classic example is Boise State. Incredibly poor, and yet fields a quality team year to year beating opponents much richer than it could ever be.

Boise State is the classic explanation why Notre Dame will never be elite. Not now, not for a long, long time. Elite teams are a myth – just ask USC after losing two coaches. Money doesn’t make teams in a global era – quality coaching does. And as teams and conferences shift like tectonic plates, it would be wise for Notre Dame to do the same. Because as they stand right now, is there really any difference between them and the service academies? One could argue there is. One could argue Navy is a better program than Notre Dame and has been for some time.

Point is, this line of reasoning for Notre Dame’s supposed reemergence has been made time and time again. And it’s always old. It was old when Bob Davie got fired. It was old when Ty Willingham got fired. And it’s old now. Wetzel’s arguing semantics at this point and digging up the annals of Notre Dame’s past to substantiate his argument. The better argument lay in the anagnoresis the administration in South Bend will have to go through. If they decide to hire a new coach, they better decide upon a new vision as a school. Do they decrease or maintain the academic standards? Do they focus more on football and less on advertisement? Advertising has only hurt Notre Dame over the course of the last decade. It can help again, but as most marketers know, it's WHEN to advertise that can really impact how others view your product. Until the school stands in the mirror and reevaluates who, what and where it is, tradition will be nothing more than a bad marketing tool.