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How is there nearly a full week to play bowl games after the 1st and the title game is still being played on a Monday night? Not that I think the game is going to be worth watching, but who does that when you have a Friday night available? What a waste.

More on Votes (Moron Votes?)

The odd voting by some of the coaches mentioned below was so blatant that even the Wall Street Journal is picking up the story. I really don't think this is getting enough attention. Many of those votes are obviously biased, not even remotely impartial, and often self-serving. So why does the Coaches Poll matter?

Votes that Count

My Dad and I were discussing voting in the various football polls last night and questioning if the coaches, as busy as they are, actually could evaluate teams outside of their own conference fairly, of if they (or their assistants) watch a few ESPN highlights and then fill in the ballots. Well, you can check out how they voted here. There's also a little bit of commentary here and here. It's worse than you think. And now that I see Houston coach Kevin Sumlin ranked the Spartans #21, I'm really glad his team lost that game and a pile of money.

Bowl Thoughts

-The BCS is supposed to pick the two best teams. I'm not crazy about the matchup, but I think there's at least a strong argument for why it was picked. I'm probably not still not going to watch though.

-The other thing the BCS does is dictate automatic qualifiers. That wasn't a big deal as all the potentially controversial schools that could have automatically qualified did something to miss out on that possibility. So obviously the bowls could pick who they wanted to fill the available spots...

-...but that doesn't mean they chose well. Honestly, I think the Sugar Bowl has done more damage to the credibility of the BCS bowls than any championship matchup we've seen. Boise State and Arkansas would have been a good game and both teams deserved a BCS bowl. Michigan and Virginia Tech didn't. I understand the reasons the Sugar Bowl would make such a decision, but it's hard to put up much of a defense of college football when money is being chased so blatantly and shamelessly.

-We mentioned before that it seems wrong that a team gets penalized for playing in a conference championship game and losing and I still agree with that. No answers here, but it sucks.

-The frakking Outback Bowl!?! That's a slap in the face. I'd just as soon have the Spartans stay home.

-January 2nd is a bad day to play a bowl game, and there's way too many scheduled.

-Too many 6-6 teams are in bowl games. I don't mind the number of games, but could we at least restrict it to teams with a winning record?

Dream Season

Here is my dream. That one year Michigan and OSU will enter the final regular season game undefeated (assuming they are the top ranked teams) and the home team wins by 1 point or overtime. Regardless of the result, they are also in the Big Ten Conference Championship game at a neutral site. Now I want the other team to win by 1 point or overtime. Then I want everyone to be screaming their heads off for ANOTHER rematch for the National Championship game.

I hate the argument that Alabama isn't the best team in their conference so they shouldn't be allowed in the Championship game. What if Alabama is the second-best team in the world? Who cares if they didn't win their conference championship game. What if UCLA beats Oregon? Then they get to play in the Rose Bowl and what if they win that? UCLA is terrible. They only got in because of the USC sanctions.

Here is what would be awesome: If LSU loses to Georgia on Saturday...UH-OH! Now what? If Alabama was in the other division, then we'd possibly have a dream-come-true based on the above scenario. Alabama, given a rematch on a neutral site, wouldn't shock anyone if they beat LSU. If that happened, you'd still have to say LSU and Alabama were the two best teams...and DESERVE TO PLAY AGAIN FOR THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP.

Let it be noted that I'm not in favor of four super-conferences with two eight-team divisions in each conference. You'd have eight total division champions, which makes four super-conference championship games. Then you'd have four conference champions for a 4-team playoff format. I don't like that because if Alabama is in the same division as LSU, like they are now, they still wouldn't be in any of the conference championship games, let alone the playoff, yet THEY'D STILL BE THE 2ND BEST TEAM IN THE COUNTRY!

Stop Whining

Wojo is dead-on in his column today. I'll comment more later.

UPDATE: Not as into this as I was this morning, so bullet points:

-Having so many bowls is awesome. That means we get "Bowl Week" on ESPN. People who complain about this need to shut up and go find some NBA game to watch.

-As Wojo says, and as I've said before, a playoff will only push the controversy down a level. You'll never be able to make people happy.

-Government needs to stay out of football. Idiots.

-MSU will be toasted by Texas Tech. I seriously think it will be something like 48-21.

Even More Stupidity

I hate it when Congress gets involved in sports, which I've mentioned before. They've got more important things to do, like try and spend more money than we've spent in the entire history of the United States. But that's neither here or there. The real problem is that representatives like Orrin Hatch and Joe Barton are abusing their power to try and score some points with their constituents. Now, I could go on and on about how any replacement for the BCS will be vulnerable to the same issues at a different level, but I'll just skip to the most interesting quote from the article:

The point is that rankings were never about fairness or producing a clear-cut winner. They were about creating what fans need most: something to argue about. Before he died, the AP sports editor who created its famous poll, Alan Gould, explained it this way: "It was a case of thinking up ideas to develop interest and controversy between football Saturdays. . . . That's all I had in mind, something to keep the pot boiling. Sports then was living off controversy, opinion, whatever. This was just another exercise in hoopla."

So the whole thing is flawed right from the get-go. But it sure does produce controversy.

Big (12) Mess

Ivan Maisel has a good article up about the situation in the Big 12. The heat is going to be on the BCS, but it's really the conference's fault for using the BCS as a tie breaker. I found this website that lists the tie breakers for the BCS conferences. The Big 12 had to go down to the fifth tie breaker to send Oklahoma to the the championship game. But if they used a different set of tie breakers, say the Big Ten's, the results could have been different. The third tie breaker in the Big Ten is least number of Div. I-AA (FCS) schools played. By my count Texas Tech played two, Oklahoma played one, and Texas played... zero. Texas would be going to the Big 12 championship game, and no one would get to complain about the BCS. Doesn't that sound easier?