College Football Craziness Ends

With LSU winning the BCS National Championship tonight, one of the most ridiculousness college football seasons in history comes to a close. Now whether this season was one of the greatest seasons ever or just the craziest ever can be left for the individual to decide.
We probably should have seen the whole mess coming the first week of the season. Appalachian State comes into the Big House and with outstanding speed and kick blocking specialties defeats Michigan. It set the tone for the whole season. USC looked to be a team created by the Divine One himself only to fall victim to numerous injuries. LSU also looked to be an early season favorite before crashing as they attempted to navigate the dangerous SEC. It was pretty a bad year to be the favorite.
Time after time the numbers one and two ranked teams took the field and time and time again down they went. Pretty much everyone in the BCS conferences stood at the top at one time or another only to take a tumble. Oregon looked to be on their way to New Orleans after beating the Trojans only to lose their quarterback and the season. Some teams not used to taking the big bites also found themselves in the big lights with Boston College and South Florida. Both were blinded and fell away. Going into the last week all Missouri and West Virginia had to do was win to play for the title and both lost. Oh so close yet so far away and it might be a long time before that kind of chance comes back around to Columbia and Morgantown. Yet there more teams such as Oklahoma, Kansas and Arizona State who had the path right before them but couldn’t quite walk down it. It was upsets, upsets and upsets for dessert.
The result left us with a very unsexy Bowl Championship Series. A granny-panties game as one commentator put it. The BCS ratings were down an incredible seventeen percent as four out of the five games turned out to be well, not very good games. West Virginia, USC and Georgia all ran riot in their games with Kansas-Virginia Tech being the only contest close to the end.
Then there was the title game. Ohio State reached New Orleans by some of the most brilliant tactical scheduling in all of sports. It was absolute shame that a team like that was allowed into the game because of their weak schedule and their lack of even playing games the last two weeks of the season while the rest of the country was still killing each other. The Big 10’s credibility has gone way downhill with the Buckeyes performance along with Illinois’ showing in the Rose Bowl and Michigan getting bowled over back in September and rightly it should be. At least we got it right with LSU, who despite needing some luck to back in the hunt in the last week of the season, proved they are the nation’s elite team. Maybe.
This columnist has always been a fan of the Bowls and not of a playoff or plus-one system. The regular season is the real playoffs. But right now, more than any other time, I have never been closer to wanting a playoff. The showings from Oklahoma and especially Illinois and Ohio State have nearly made me sick to my stomach. It’s not so much as wanting a playoff to “decide the winner on the field” but the horror of witnessing these bowl games destroy the prestige of one of America’s greatest sports. I do know I like the bowls, it makes college football incredibly unique but I also know it pains me to think off these other great games to we could be seeing. Throw LSU, USC, West Virginia, Georgia and any other deserving team into the ring and let them all go at each other.
Obviously this is no practical format; I don’t think anyone really knows one. But it would hopefully give us something that has been missing: some good post-season college football games.