By Pete Fiutak
"Just because something's cool doesn't mean that something else doesn't suck."
... I'm not apologizing for the BCS. As I continue to drive home, there's no reasonable excuse to not have an eight team playoff with the six BCS conference champions, the top rated non-BCS league champion, and a wild-card (Texas this year, Georgia two years ago, Michigan in 2006). With that said, if the goal is to determine who the best team is, it still gets it right more often than the other sports.New England went unbeaten in the regular season last year, highlighted by a regular-season ending win at New York against a Giants team that came out with a maximum effort. That doesn't count, but that game a few weeks later did, even though the Giants hadn't even won their own division. This year, the NFL proved once again that its regular season is completely and totally irrelevant with the No. 1 seeds getting bounced out in the first round by teams that shouldn't have been in the playoffs, if you count anything that happened in the regular season. Philadelphia backed its way in, didn't win its own division, but now it's suddenly one of the NFC's two best teams? Pittsburgh already beat Baltimore twice, and now it has to do it a third time to prove it's the better team?! Can you imagine if Texas beat Oklahoma twice and still had to win a third meeting to prove that it was the better team? It's more insane than you think, yet the world has bought into the gimmicky playoff ideas hook, line, and sinker. You want it settled on the field? You think the college football system is unsatisfying? Try letting the mediocre get chance after chance to come up with an upset. It's not fair, and it's not right. The regular season has to mean something in the NFL, or else the sport will only be about fantasy and gambling (which it sort of is) for the 17 weeks before the playoffs. No, there shouldn't be a BCS, but the NFL should've made it only a tournament of division winners with Tennessee hosting San Diego and Pittsburgh hosting Miami in the AFC, and New York hosting Arizona and Carolina hosting Minnesota. Otherwise, why bother?
Why bother with the long, drawn out regular season of baseball? It should've been the Cubs vs. the Angels in the World Series after they each proved to have the best teams throughout the year. Of course, they each lost according to the gimmicky playoff system, and the sports world just accepts this as the norm.
Try watching college basketball ... it's hard. I love the sport, but the games simply don't matter. They're all exhibition games until March Madness.College football needs a playoff, if for no other reason than to shut everyone up. But it can't have one at the expense of the regular season, with the uniqueness that makes the sport so special. The BCS might be weird, but no one else has it right, either. College football has proven it can get some things right, like the overtime system and instant replay. Here's the chance to be the leader in how to determine a champion once again. Again, six BCS conference champions, top non-BCS conference champion, one at-large. The NFL should only be so fair.
(Bart now) Pretty sure he stole my ideas from a previous post.
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