Welcome to CrashUtah – Where BYU fans Talk Sports

The following is an ad that is scheduled to be run before the national championship college football game in the TCU, Boise St. and Utah markets talking about the need for a playoff instead of the current BCS system. Check it out:

Check out more info on the Playoff Pac that’s behind the ad.

I just read an interesting idea pitting the winners of the MWC and WAC in a kind of championship game with the winner getting an automatic BCS berth. I think the idea is interesting. My biggest problem with the idea is that this type of set up basically suggests that the MWC and WAC are comparable conferences that should share a BCS berth. Not to knock the WAC too hard, but they just aren’t as good as the MWC. That’s why the teams in the MWC left. In fact, if Boise State were to move to the MWC, then you might as well call it the MWC automatic BCS berth, no? Which other team in the WAC will be able to beat the MWC champion?

Sure, at the end of the day, the possibility of an automatic is probably better than not getting to a BCS game. However, something about the idea just doesn’t feel quite right. Even if a game between TCU and Boise State before a BCS game would be a lot of fun to watch this year.

I was reading another article that had a similar theme and was extremely well written. I started to write a comment, but then it started to get so long that I decided to just write my own article.

In essence his article mentioned the Utah Attorney General’s anti-trust lawsuit against the BCS that should take place sometime this summer. To fully make sense of what I am saying you will need to read Jeremy’s article as well as the comments. Hopefully it will make some sense either way.

Do I think the BCS is unfair, absolutely.
Do I think this lawsuit will result in a playoff, or even a better system, no.

But, this is the best laid argument I have seen. Every other attempt to take down the BCS has been nothing more than a cryfest about how our team got left out and we should have gotten in, blah blah blah. The huge factor that continues to grow is that the Major BCS schools, meaning the ones that consistently have a title shot like USC, are saying we need a playoff.

What that says to me is that this is no longer simply a question of who should play in a BCS bowl, but that it has sincerely become a question of crowning a TRUE national champion. That is the argument that has needed to be raised to create change.

Let’s face it, the big conferences and networks are going to get their money one way or another. What I have really started to take issue with is declaring a national champion when there is a legitimate case for multiple other teams. If any major sport were to simply pick two teams based on polls and they played one game to determine the Super Bowl Champion, or the winner of the Stanley Cup, then there would be outrage. Why is college football the only exception to the rule in the world?

Of all the sporting events in the world, from pee wee sports, to the high school, to professional sports, and even to the Olympics, there is a playoff in place. Sure there is debate over what teams should make it, but now that I think about it, when was the last time you heard a country cry about not making it into the World Cup, or even the playoffs in major US sports? There is a system in place that makes sense and ultimately crowns a true champion.

While there will always be people making excuses about why their team didn’t win or why their rival did. However, there is no legitimate argument to take away their title.

Now the idea of sending the 11 conference champions plus 5 at-large bids to a playoff is completely stupid to me. There is no even remotely decent argument that the conference champion of C-USA, WAC, Ivy League, MAC, or even in some years the MWC champions have any place playing for a national champion. Last year evidenced that even the BCS conferences don’t always warrant a BCS bid. There is no reason to make it even that complicated.

I have written this before, but it could be very simple. You take the top 8, or 16 though I prefer 8, and put them against each other with their ranks as seeds. Add the Cotton and Holiday bowls, or others if you prefer, to the original 4 BCS bowls. They rotate yearly through first round games and the seminfinal games. Then you pick an entirely separate place, picked just like the Super Bowl and most leauges’ all-star games for the National Championship.

This creates even more money to spread around, and the major conferences would still get their cut because their teams would be the ones making it regularly. At the same time, smaller conferences would have just as much chance. There would be no argument that smaller teams don’t deserve it, because they would HAVE to schedule better teams to get ranked in the top 8. Going undefeated would not be enough for a non-BCS school.

I really don’t understand why they make it so complicated. Everyone in the world knows it is about money and nothing else. Don’t give me the time argument, because the national championship is already more than a week later than it used to be.

This may not be the best answer, but it seems like a legitimate one for me.

As a true BYU fan it is impossible for me to congratulate the heathen university to the north for anything, so let me thank Alabama for getting completely manhandled by a supposedly inferior opponent. Not only did you give me another win in my office pool, which I am sure no one else won, but you exposed the BCS yet again.

While I did not expect Bama to play that terribly, I knew that they were not the 10.5 point favorite that many expected. What was even more pathetic was how much the refs tried to help them win calling crappy pass interference calls throughout the game, and refusing to call anything on Bama.

I just love it when the better team wins despite having the odds, the fans, the refs, and the vast majority of America against them. It was truly an impressive showing, earned by a team that I truly hate.

What surprised me even more was all of the comments on the internet this morning in support of Utah as the number one team in the country. There were over 400 comments on one webiste, the vast majority of which agreed that Utah should be number one.

While it would be stupid to think they would kill USC, Texas, OU, or Florida, it would be difficult to argue that they wouldn’t at least give them a good game. Unfortunately the current system makes that impossible.

The case is actually quite simple for Utah: they are the only undefeated team in the country.

Some might say their schedule is weak. While the Michigan win lost its luster, no one would have expected that. Oregon St. beat USC, and while you could argue every team has an off week, apparently Utah didn’t, or at least they found a way to win on their “off” week. They also beat 3 teams that were in the final BCS standings (BYU, TCU, Alabama).

You could argue that the rankings were not accurate, but those same rankings that ranked those three teams, and kept Utah from a national title shot are the same rankings that put two teams with more losses than Utah into the national championship game.

Unfortunately, we are talking ourselves in circles because the powers that be don’t care about crowning a true national champion, they care about money. If the fans truly wanted to invoke change, they would boycott one or all of the BCS games. If the BCS lost all of that money they would be forced to make some changes. But that will never happen.

One comment I read asked how long the “mid-majors” like Utah, Boise St., BYU, and TCU would do nothing about changing the current system. This person obviously has no clue that all the non-bcs conferences have been begging for a long time for change, but the BCS refuses to budge.

What I really don’t understand is why the BCS is so afraid. If these other conferences are truly so inferior, they would never be ranked high enough to play in a BCS game, their “power conferences” would keep all of the money, and it would cease to be an issue. The reality is that just like in college basketball the playing field is leveling, and they want to keep their greedy little fingers on as much of the money as possible.

I place the blame on the NCAA for allowing a few money hungry people to control the biggest money maker in college sports. But, like everything else, I am sure the NCAA leaders get their cut and so they sit idly by letting someone else run their sport. Shame on them for letting the beautiful nature of sport and competition get taken away.

Let us all hope that someday they see the error of their ways and create a playoff system. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it shouldn’t take an act of congress to make it happen.

The top 8 teams in the final standings of the season are selected regardless of conference affiliation, and regardless of how many times their universtiy presidents have gone fishing together. Their should be no automatic bids because some years you don’t deserve one (the ACC and Big East this year for example).

These four games are played at the four current BCS bowls (or you could add the Cotton Bowl and one more to save the bigger games for the “holy” BCS bowls).

The two semi-final games could be played at the remaining BCS bowls, if you chose to add the Cotton and one more.

The championship game location is selected just like the Super Bowl and gets played all over the country spreading the wealth and building the health of the sport as not only four cities in-turn get to profit from the game.

Once again we have seen that, just like the goverment, the BCS system is broken. Unfortunately, also like the government, the people that are in a position to make change care only about the money, and refuse to make a change. Thank you Bama for exposing them once again.

So i found this article on the deseret news website. I found it to be truly entertaining, and hope you get a good laugh from it. Somebody deserves some credit for it, but like they said in the article, the author is unknown. Here it is just in case the link doesn’t work:

BCS DECLARES GERMANY WINNER OF WORLD WAR II… US Finishes Ranked 4th

After determining the Big-12 championship game participants the BCS computers were put to work on other major contests and today the BCS declared Germany to be the winner of World War II.

“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work–including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule–our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”

Questioned about the #4 ranking of the United States the BCS commissioner stated “The US only had two major victories–Japan and Germany. The computer models, unlike humans, aren’t influenced by head-to-head contests–they consider each contest to be only a single, equally-weighted event.”

German Chancellor Adolph Hitler said “Yes, we lost to the US; but we defeated #2 ranked France in only 6 weeks.” Herr Hitler has been criticized for seeking dramatic victories to earn ‘style points’ to enhance Germany’s rankings. Hitler protested “Our contest with Poland was in doubt until the final day and the conditions in Norway were incredibly challenging and demanded the application of additional
forces.”

The French ranking has also come under scrutiny. The BCS commented “France had a single loss against Germany and following a preseason #1 ranking they only fell to #2.”

Japan was ranked #3 with victories including Manchuria, Borneo and the Philippines.

As I go reading through various people’s blogs and comments across the internet there is one common problem that I have discovered. Everything is totally black and white to most people. Your team has one bad game and the season is over even if they don’t lose. How the outcome of one game barely halfway through the season could result in the rest of the season being a failure is beyond me.

I am well aware of the state of college football in which one loss, or even not applying a beat down to a lesser opponent can result in your being benched by the powers that be in the selection process, but maybe all of the talk is just what the BCS people want.

Everyday there is a plethora of articles about how screwed up the BCS is and that change is needed. While I definately have to agree with that thought process, maybe the BCS is sticking with the “any publicity is good publicity” idea. If the BCS folded and went to a real national championship that was decided on the field regardless of what conference you are from, and how good voters THINK you are what would all of the sports radio announcers have to talk about all week. Heaven forbid they actually discuss the games that were played or will soon be played.

This season and last season, more than almost any others, show that supposed experts know very little. Watching the Texas-OU game and having to listen to my favorite announcer aimlessly run his mouth about whatever was apparent to the most juvenile fan simply reaffirmed my believe that sportscasters buy their jobs, they don’t earn them.

You may be asking what does any of this have to do with BYU? It is quite simple actually. BYU is undefeated this season. They beat two teams form a supposed “power conference” putting a major beatdown on one of the most storied programs in college football. Yet their fans talk about this one week being make or break, and the media refuses to give them any credit. If you want to criticize BYU for the teams they have beaten why not attack Texas Tech? Their schedule is about to get a whole lot tougher though, and we will see how they hold up.

This week is going to be the gut check week for this BYU team. TCU is no joke holding a top 25 ranking for the second time this season with an awesome defense. On the flip side, BYU has a pretty solid defense itself, and an offense that is due for a breakout game. I am so excited to see them in person for the first time this year. Fort Worth is going to be a fun place to be Thursday night. It’s almost fitting that it will be on a Thursday night so that the whole country will be able to see the outcome independent of the Saturday chaos. Go Cougars!