By Charles Curcio, Sports Editor
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 — I have a headache.
This particular migraine started this morning when reading about the BCS “national championship” game between Oklahoma and Florida.
Actually, it may have started last night when watching THE Ohio State University and Texas playing in the Fiesta Bowl.
It should have been a matchup between two football teams playing for something meaningful, like the chance to win a title.
But thanks to the forces at work in college football, every bowl game just became less meaningful when the BCS National Championship Game was created.
There has always been debate regarding who exactly is the college football national champion.
Prior to the BCS, five conferences had formed the Bowl Coalition, designed to create a national-title game.
However, if you were not a school playing in one of those conferences, or Notre Dame, then you were out of luck.
Nice, isn’t it? It’s like saying that unless you work for companies owned by five specific conglomerates, then you can never compete for the biggest business opportunities in the country.
Let’s not forget that college football is a money sport and that colleges would not be playing FBS (formerly D-1) football if it did not make enough money to sustain the line share of a school’s budget.
I only recently noticed that other media outlets are now revealing the payout amount to the winner of each bowl game.
Some games only get you a measly $750,000, while a BCS bowl win is worth $17 million. That should pay for a few shot puts and softball bats, right?
Football is the only college sport that does not have a championship system that includes a playoff.
You don’t have to tell any basketball fan in the Carolinas about how exciting college playoffs can be.
The BCS is no substitute for March Madness.
There are those that say the BCS has advantages over a playoff system, including greater meaning to the regular season, no conflicts with final exams.
If it meant more money in the athletic budgets, school presidents would do whatever is necessary and would stop making excuses in order to keep the status quo..
Would it be so hard to take the conference champions of the Pac-10, Big East, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC and two at-large bids and have three great weeks of football?
Someone will get left out, which always happens with March Madness, but then the players on the field, not the sportswriters or coaches, will decided who is the best.
I’m glad that we still have the NFL playoffs and that Miami made the postseason.
Take that, New England!
Contact Charles Curcio at (704) 982-2121 ext. 12 or email at charles@stanlynewspress .com.
