College Football: The Black Sheep of Sports

Any college football fan can give you their take on why the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is nothing short of horrible for the sport. And everyone's solution seems to be some sort of playoff scenario. Forget it folks. It will never happen. The real flaw lies in preseason rankings.

Take Florida for example. They win the national championship last year so they are ranked number one in the preseason polls. Understandable. We can say the same thing for most of the top five teams. But it is unfair to every team to either be ranked high, low, or even unranked. How can one team jump from number 22 to number 3 in one week? How can one team lose and only drop from 3 to 6?

These rankings can kill a season. NCAA basketball has national rankings, but what do they mean? Nothing. They are just a sexy way to hype the sport. A number one team can lose one game, but it is not the end of the world because they have a conference tournament and then the national tournament. All is not lost because of one bad night. They still have a chance to do what the nature of the sport says: overcome and succeed.

That will not be the case when number one and number two collide in the conference championship in Atlanta (seemingly). The loser's fate? One loss and a meaningless game in a bowl. The winner? A chance to play for the title against a team that is inferior and, in no way, the second best team in college football. The spirit of competition is being drowned by corporations who want their logo at mid-field. The bottom line is that athletic programs would rather have a check to play a game rather than win a quarterfinal round to advance and succeed.

My advice to every head coach in the NCAA would be to play for that #2 ranking, but not until the last week of the season. Wait and score your 45 points this week and not that week. Make sure you get your "style points." This is in no way raw competition and it gives me a headache. Is this still amateur level? Yes. Let the boys play it out.