Except for a cozy little corridor between Baton Rouge and Tuscaloosa, Monday morning finds the college football world hot and bothered as it disdainfully regards a system that matches the nation’s richly-deserving lone unbeaten team against a conference division runnerup and calls it a national championship game.
For all the BCS’s standings, statistics and mumbo-jumbo, the decision to pit LSU in a rematch against Alabama was strictly subjective. The way the mechanism is weighted, all the computer models in the world can’t override the results of the two polls.
The computer said LSU vs. Oklahoma State; the voters said LSU vs. Alabama.
And that’s that.
But a look further on down the BSC lineup is even more revealing, and more damning, if you’re seeking evidence of why bowl money and its wink-and-nod cronyism precludes college football ever adopting the clean-and-simple way of deciding a national title that works perfectly well for deciding a national champion, not just in every other sport, but at every other level of football.
Case in point is Virginia Tech.
The Hokies’ fan base travels well and spends money once it arrives at its bowl destination. And for that reason, and pretty much for that reason alone, Virginia Tech – which limped off the field beaten and shaken after being manhandled by Clemson Saturday night - will be playing 12th-ranked Michigan in the Sugar Bowl.
It’s one thing when the Gator Bowl, back in its days of association with the ACC, repeatedly picked Clemson over other non-champion conference teams with equal or slightly better records, unabashedly declaring that all that orange traveling down I-26 to I-95 carried weight.
Its another when an entire system is devised supposedly to insure that the champions of the five power conferences and the next five most deserving teams will play in the five BCS bowl games, and then have the Sugar Bowl leapfrog not one, but two, top-eight teams in the BCS’ own standings (Boise State and Kansas State) and pick Virginia Tech’s fans to come to New Orleans.
The ACC, of course, is elated about finally getting a second team into the big money mix at the top of the BCS food chain. That’s all well and good, and it’s a positive for Clemson in terms of conference perception and precedent.
But from any other perspective, it’s a sham and a shame.
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The Tigers, meanwhile, got their just reward for a job well-done Sunday night when they formally accepted their bid to play West Virginia in the Orange Bowl.
It was another feel-good moment for the Tigers, who showed their grit – and reaffirmed Dabo Swinney’s plan and execution in elevating Clemson’s program – by walloping Virginia Tech in the ACC Championship Game.
Sunday brought a double-helping of good news when Clemson announced that offensive coordinator Chad Morris has agreed to terms of a contract extension will keep in Clemson rather than having him running off to Ohio State or elsewhere.
It’s probable that Morris won’t be here all that long – another year or so like this one and he’ll be in line for a BCS conference head coaching job. Swinney has what he wants offensively, and it’s likely that the Tigers will be modeling their offense after Morris’ long after he leaves. Another cycle or two in his system will help insure a smooth transition down the line, as well as Clemson’s short term success.
After accepting the ACC championship trophy Saturday night, Swinney described the Tigers as elated to be playing in the Orange Bowl, on their way as a program, but still with work to do – on the field and off.
“I just feel fortunate to be here,” Swinney said. “I got this job three years and two days ago, and this was my dream. This was my vision, to be up here one day holding an orange. It's been a process. It ain't been easy. And let me tell you, anything worth having isn't easy…
“One of the things I told (the players) is there's been a lot of walls built around this program over the last 20 years, whether it be people that don't believe, doubters, whatever it is, and slowly but surely we've been kind of knocking those walls down over the last couple years.
“These guys believed, and the thing I've told them all along is if you're going to change Clemson, you have to change it from inside….Our players have bought into that.”
Clemson falls to North Carolina
Baseball. Tigers lose game, win…
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
Comments » 4
columbiabill writes:
Your comment about the bowls is well taken from a competitive standpoint and who deserves to be in a certain bowl. However, going back many years the bowls were created to have an economic impact on the host cities during the slow period for hotels and restaurants between Christmas and New Years. Unfair as it may seem, this is the priority of the bowls.
ConwayAllDay writes:
The priority of the bowl games is not to put extra dollars in a waitresses apron or to put money into the pockets of the Patel family. The bowl games have and should always be a reward for the best teams in the nation to showcase their talent and make hundreds of millions of fans extremely happy to see the marquee matchups. Cities are going to make money regardless. The bowl games are already watered down with so many of them now. As an individual who previously worked for many years in the service industry the Christmas season does not need football to increase business revenue. If anything while the games are on in many areas it hurts everyone except bars and pizza delivery restaurants.
It is a flat out ludicrous anymore and eventually I feel the collegiate brass is going to do more harm than good. VT fans go travel well but Clemson fans travel just as well if not better. Actually under the circumstances Clemson would definitely travel much better due to the length of time since the Tigers have played in such a high profile bowl game. The real shame is Michigan even having the opportunity to play. Michigan did have a stellar year compared to their recent seasons but a closer look shows 7 of their 10 wins came against FCS teams and FBS teams who have had some of the worst seasons ever.
The new bowl system allows 70 teams to play during bowl season basically 60% of Division 1 football teams and they claim that a playoff system would take too much player's time away from college or whatever that reason is. A 16 team playoff would be perfect.
THE_University_IN_SC writes:
The BCS National Championship should be a match between the best two teams in the nation. This year, for the first time in a long time, it is just that. There were several years when it should have been Alabama vs. UF in a rematch of the SEC championship game (when Tebow was at UF). This was made abundantly clear by the beat-down that Texas and Oklahoma received in their BCS Championship games. SEC is dominant, and it's high time the BCS acknowledged that. Next year, I hope they make some more adjustments so the best teams can play in the best bowls, instead of having these no-count Clempson Tigers with 3 losses play against a no-count WVU team with 3 losses in one of the top 4 bowls. Talk about BCS sham. What a joke! Meanwhile you have 5-6 teams in the SEC who could destroy either one of those teams on any day, and 3 of those teams are being relegated to lesser bowls because the BCS is designed to pity the weaker ACC and Big East conferences. Yes, a sham indeed!
richardcd writes:
How does anyone justify VPI being ranked ahead of Clemson, a team which twice beat them rather soundly?
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