The BCS sucks. The championship game sucks. The various bowl committee selections of teams for the non championship bowls suck. The weekly release of the BCS standings sucks too. All season long, the BCS sucks. It sucks donkey. It's sucks because it will never provide what fans want, and find most compelling. It will never provide drama on the field.
It will never provide 16th seed Princeton nearly shocking top ranked Georgetown in the opening round of the 1989 Men's Basketball Tournament. It will never give us an 8th seeded Villanova playing miles above ability to shock heavy favorite Georgetown in the 1985 basketball finals. We'll never get teams from the bottom half of the bracket playing into the sweet 16. We'll never get a loaded team underachieving and laying an egg in a tournament. We don't have a tournament. We get months of computer rankings combined with polls, combined with mathematical modifiers for "quality wins." We get bunk.
It'll never give that level of drama because in a meaningful game we are stuck with #1 vs. #2. Fans don't want that. Unless they're chanting "Roll Tide" of "Geaux Tigers," they don't. Fans want #9 Wisconsin, or #13 Michigan, or #16 TCU shocking the football world and advancing in a playoff. We want Nick Saban after a "shocking loss" throwing out all the cliches to ESPN's talking head sideline reporter because #8 Arkansas just upset the 2nd ranked Crimson Tide (I know football and basketball are not the same but #8 taking #1 in national rankings is mathematically similar to a #2 seed knocking off a #1 seed.)
I mean, really, how often in the men's basketball tournament are the final 4 all #1 seeds? It's only happened once. Regularly teams seeded 4th or lower advance to the Final Four. How sucky would the basketball championships be if it was a 4 team tournament? I'll tell you. It would TOTALLY suck. Then, if you were a fan of a team in the top 16, and got to "enjoy" your team's postseason in a 4 team playoff where none of the participants had the chance to advance further, well that would suck too. The Butler Bulldogs were a #8 seed, and made it to the national finals last year. They lost to UConn - a #3 seed ranked nationally between 9 and 12 before the tournament started.
This years' championship game has been determined for a long time now. Where's the drama? Could Oregon have made a run? How about West Virginia, or Stanford, or Michigan, or Wisconsin?It's been Alabama/LSU for what seems forever. We don't watch sports to see the teams the experts tell us are the best. We watch our teams play, and when they're eliminated we pick the compelling story - the Butlers, and Villanovas. Then, when they're eliminated, we feel good about LSU/Alabama, because we got the drama. That's what we wanted the whole time.
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