So many ways the BCS hinders college football
December 9, 2010
I think by now anyone who knows, enjoys or understands college football realizes that something needs to be done about the BCS system. I was not a BCS hater until I realized what it was doing, how it was doing it and how that hurt competition.
Check out the book “Death to the BCS” and you will see what I am talking about. Most people understand how the BCS hurts college football. Ask Boise State and TCU how one loss, or no losses keeps them from playing for the national championship.
However, it seems all the points can be made about that. At this point complaining about teams not getting their shot to play for the national championship is as old as debates about health care, abortion and euthanasia. The list goes on.
Recently, my Minnesota Golden Gophers fired its head coach Tim Brewster. I was happy with this as he had no redeeming qualities about himself. He promised more than he could deliver, lied about strides the team had made and was everything but a football coach (as you can see I am bitter).
So Minnesota began the quest for a new head coach, promising its fan base a “big name” coach. Names like Troy Calhoun (Air Force), Al Golden (Temple), Brady Hoke (San Diego State), Randy Edsall (Uconn) and Kevin Sumlin (Houston) came up, just to name a few.
None of these names would be the head coach. Instead the Gophers elected to hire… Jerry Kill? Kill is out of Northern Illinois and is a straight football guy. initially I was upset with the hire, but it has grown on me as it is clear that he is a no-nonsense football guy who should do good things at Minnesota. I was perturbed though at the fact that Minnesota could not attract a big name coach. Thinking about it further though, why would any big name coach want to risk putting their name on the line to try to rebuild Minnesota? The BCS discourages those kind of decisions.
Once you get that head coaching gig you don’t want to lose it and like in all sports if you don’t win you are out of a job. Any idea how tough it is to get another head coaching gig after you lost the first one? Few and far between get that chance, especially in college.
Often, disgraced NFL guys can find their way to the college ranks as an HC. Mike Sherman at Texas A&M is an example of that.Take Edsall for instance out at Uconn. He can take a pay raise, go to Minnesota and try to win in a tough Big Ten that is only getting better with Nebraska next year. Or he can stay at Uconn, be less than mediocre and go to a BCS bowl game! That is exactly what he is doing this year.
Coaches in weak BCS conferences like the Big East have no, and need no, incentives to get better. Compete against your weak conference schedule and you will be going to a new years day bowl no problem.
Now if there was a playoff system in place, it would encourage those weak conference teams to schedule good competition, or those coaches to move to stronger competition in order to get an at large bid in a 16 team tournament. Go undefeated against no teams in the top 25 and make the tournament as a 15 seed, or go 6-6 playing teams such as Ohio State, Nebraska and Iowa you can end up with an eight seed or better.
Because these coaches have little to no incentive to move (besides money) teams like Minnesota, Indiana, Colorado, Vanderbilt and so on will continue to struggle and improve because they cannot attract that right guy to lead them. In Minnesota’s case though, I think they did get the right guy, he was just not their first choice.
This is happening all over the country. Calhoun took his name out of the Colorado and Minnesota searches, Golden took his name out of the Vanderbilt search as well as Minnesota’s. These coaches understand that if they go 6-6 or 7-5 and make mediocre bowls they will be out of a head coaching job in five years.
Now if there was a playoff system which foster competition, they could make a national tournament with less than extravagant records as long as they played top competition. And played them tough of course.Until the BCS is destroyed college football will be without a true champion and things as important as the regular season will continue to struggle.
