06:19 PM CST on Tuesday, December 8, 2009
On Jan. 7, the University of Texas may be crowned national champions of college football. But the best team in America may have already played days earlier.The Texas vs. Alabama winner will be 13-0, but so will the winner of the Fiesta Bowl matching undefeated TCU and Boise State on Jan. 4. The University of Cincinnati could also finish 13-0 by beating Florida in the Sugar Bowl on New Year's Day.
Despite three undefeated teams, we would be expected to shrug and say the winner of the so-called National Championship Game is precisely that.College football fans have long been forced to accept a phony champion determined by polls rather than a series of actual games. So what rips this issue from the sports pages and puts it on this op-ed page this year?
Because the best team in college football right now may not play in Austin or Tuscaloosa, Ala. It may play in Fort Worth.
After a 12-0 season against admittedly lower-caliber opponents, TCU has nonetheless earned the right to prove itself against an elite opponent in a BCS bowl game.
Since 1998, the fraudulently-titled Bowl Championship Series has given us a mix of human voting and computer rankings and a resulting snootful of appearances by Oklahoma, USC, Florida and LSU, along with other major conference champs like Texas, who won it all in 2005.
But in any of those years, was there an undefeated team from a lesser conference who might have beaten the BCS champion? Before the cobbling together of the BCS, polls of coaches and sportswriters anointed the participants in the national championship game.
This has always been ridiculous. No major sport has ever picked two teams and said, "Here, you guys go settle it all," banishing any other hopefuls deserving of a shot. Even in college football's separate division for smaller schools, there is a 16-team tournament. Four weeks, 15 games, one genuine champion.
Why doesn't this happen in all of college football? Thank the entrenched hodgepodge of unrelated bowl games, which will start next week with obscure matchups in far-flung locales, building through the holidays to games featuring larger schools in more storied venues. Sixty-eight teams will play in a bowl of some sort, all enjoying some nice travel and a nice payday.
Big-time schools in big-time conferences are scared to death of losing to undefeated upstarts like TCU or Boise State, so the system relegates them to the equivalent of the childrens' table at Thanksgiving. This has always been wrong. But this year the outrage comes home. Texas' near defeat against inferior Nebraska last weekend has the nation wondering whether TCU might actually be better.
Who knows? Maybe the Longhorns would beat the Horned Frogs by 40. Maybe not. TCU's Fiesta Bowl appearance will bring unprecedented visibility and money, and that's great. But that's not what Frog Nation wants and deserves.
There should be a showcase right now to settle whether the occasional undefeated team from a conference of smaller schools might actually measure up to national championship caliber. This is not just about TCU. Boise State and Cincinnati fans have the same valid complaint. Surely others will follow.
Texas Rep. Joe Barton seeks a legislative remedy, suggesting that the BCS is a "cartel" improperly hoarding money and prestige to the detriment of smaller schools and their fans. His bill would prevent the BCS from using the term "national championship" until it provides one on the field.
Good luck with that. As long as American baseball's championship is called the World Series, truth in advertising is a hard argument to make in sports.
But the argument that needs to go forward from this year's mess is that the current archaic and unsatisfying college football postseason needs to be scrapped.
I'll be thrilled if Texas beats Alabama and wins the national championship next month. But I will forever wonder if an even better team played its games this year at Amon Carter Stadium.
Mark Davis is heard weekdays from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on WBAP-AM, News/Talk 820. His e-mail address is mdavis@wbap.com.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-markdavis_09edi.State.Edition1.2e9b623.html
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