There's an animal so cool that you just want it to be real. The jackalope: half-rabbit, half-antelope. Wow, how cool would that be?And how cool would it be to have a real college football championship? I offer my congratulations to the Florida Gators for winning the BCS National Championship. But I hate to report, it's a mythical one.
Why? We still have no idea who could have won the national championship had the top teams had been allowed to play it out. I have no doubt that Florida is a great team, a really great team, but I'm not convinced we know that they definitely belong in the top spot. Perhaps the BCS needs a new trophy; instead of a crystal football, a handsome jackalope atop the prize.
Some argue that it wouldn't work to have a college playoff and the other bowl games. These bowls would be “consolation” prizes to the playoff games, they argue. But don’t we already have that, but worse? Right now we have one championship game and 33 consolation games. Why not allow the top eight teams to play for the title while still allowing other teams have their postseason too.
What if they did this in other sports? What if the NFL simply chose the top two teams—through some mixture of computer programs and polls—to determine which teams would go to the Super Bowl? And then gave the other top teams “consolation bowls” to play in? Sound ridiculous? Of course it does.
If we did it that way, perhaps this year the pollsters/computers/jackalope-hunters could select the Steelers of Pittsburgh and the Eagles of Philadelphia and have the “Pennsylvania Super Bowl” and play it at Beaver Stadium, smack dab in the middle of the Commonwealth. Oh, wait, Governor Rendell has already suggested that a few years back.
So, why is it mythical? Bo Schembechler, former Michigan coach explained:
"You play to win the Big Ten championship, and if you win it and go to the Rose Bowl and win it, then you've had a great season. If they choose to vote you number one, then you're the national champion. But a national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It's mythical."The BCS system was created to avoid the problem of a mythical or split championship, but it doesn’t. It doesn't make the national championship any less mythical because we still have no idea if the best team actually won.
Who has a claim on the title? The University of Utah Utes, of course. It's hard to argue with a perfect record, beating four ranked teams, capped by a trouncing of Alabama, a team that spent much of the season ranked No. 1.
Texas may have a case. They beat Oklahoma too and like Florida they only have one loss. But they barely beat Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. USC's claim, under the current system, is weak simply because they lost to Oregon State. That's only one loss too, except that Utah demolished Oregon State. So, USC is out.
But—and this is a big but—who can argue that USC couldn't beat any of the top teams? If you saw them demolish my other team, the Nittany Lions, you know that they could compete with any team in college football.
Our new Professor-in-Chief agrees: “If I’m Utah, if I’m USC, or if I’m Texas, I may still have some quibbles. And you’ve heard my pitch. That’s why we need a playoff.”
Why is this significant? The creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association was due to the influence of a president and football. President Theodore Roosevelt felt that college football was too violent and needed to be reformed and regulated. He called college representatives to the White House to discuss the problem, which led to other meetings by college leaders, resulting in the formation of the NCAA in 1906. I’m sure President Obama will have other, more pressing concerns, so hosting a “BCS Summit” at the White House is unlikely any time soon. But having spoken out on this issue during the campaign and since, it seems likely that, given the opportunity, he will speak out on it again.
This was the perfect year to vote in a split championship. The AP voters should have followed the advice of John Feinstein and voted Utah No. 1 to help dismantle the absurd BCS system. But they didn't and delivered Utah their only "loss."
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham made the right decision to vote his Utes as No. 1 in the USA Today Coaches Poll, even though it could lead to sanctions from fellow coaches. (They are obligated to vote for whoever wins the BCS championship. So, why have them vote? Why call it the “coaches’ poll”?)
So, in the end, we’re still guessing as to whether Florida is the best team in the land. Florida barely beat Alabama but Utah destroyed 'Bama. Could Florida, Texas, or Utah beat USC? What would a Texas/Florida game look like?
All hypothetical, of course. Which is why we need a playoff in the so-called FBS division of college football. Otherwise, the current champion is just a myth.
