Concentrated Stupidity

Is it more evident among our political pundits or our sports pundits? How many times have we heard this since the beginning of the BCS system?

Team X and Team Y are undefeated and stand atop the BCS standings, but Team Z is also undefeated. How can you say that X and Y are deserving to play in the championship game but not Z? Here are reasons A,B, and C for why Team Z should be playing for the title, regardless of what those durned (computers/strength of schedule evaluators/AP voters/USA Today voters) say. If a team from this conference is once again denied a spot in the big game, then the representatives of the (SEC/Pac-10/Big-10/Big-12) are going to storm the barricades in the offseason.

Yeah.

There is only one way to determine a genuine national champion in college football, and that is a playoff. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows that any scheme designed to produce a single legitimate champion through the bowl system is going to leave some teams unhappy. It doesn’t matter how much you fiddle with the BCS formula. It doesn’t matter, really, even if you include a “+1” game, although that would help a bit. A playoff is the only thing that solves the problem. I-AA does it, Division II does it, Division III does it, and the NAIA does it.

This is hardly the most critical question facing the Republic, and I sympathize with the guys at ESPN who have to hold off an angry mob of Alabama fans by declaring that hey, maybe Alabama really IS better than USC, and who in any case have to fill up many hours of programming. But let’s not dance around the question when any four year old could identify the problem and the solution.