Analyzing ‘Death To The BCS’ : Chapter Nine

Our ‘Death To The BCS’ series trudges on slowly but surely. Just over halfway home in our breakdown of the book penned by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter and Jeff Passan, a great read that explains in detail what a sham the current Bowl Championship System really is.

Our goal is to provide a Cliff Notes-type version of the book for those who don’t have the time to dive in, all in effort to fire up college football fans, forcing all of us to demand more out of this broken, money-driven, flawed system.

Last up, Chapter Eight : It’s Always Some Team Getting Screwed. Today’s read, Chapter Nine : Cowardice and Cupcakes.

– In 2010 then-Michigan athletic director Bill Martin searched for an opening game opponent for the Wolverines, who were unveiling a renovated Michigan Stadium (after nearly a quarter-billion-dollar facelift for the then eighty-three-year old stadium). The game would be televised by ESPN, College GameDay would be on campus and Martin was even willing to offer a return game to the opponent, as Michigan would be a great draw in someone else’s stadium.

Martin worked the phones and struggled to find any takers. Florida, which hadn’t played a non-conference game out of its home state since the inception of the BCS, wasn’t going to bite. Big time schools from the SEC, Big XII and Pac-10 all said ‘no’ – and not just big name programs, even middle of the pack schools.

The best Michigan could do? A home-and-home with Connecticut, who lost 30-10 in Ann Arbor to kick off the 2010 season in front of 110,000. The return game will be 2013 at 40,000-seat Rentschler Field in Storrs Mansfield, CT — the smallest venue Michigan football has seen in “as long as we can remember”, said Martin.

“We got someone from a BCS conference,” Martin said, amid complaints from fans. “The fans have no idea how very difficult that is to do. I’m excited we could do it. it was very, very difficult.”

– Who’s at fault, yet again? The Cartel, who continues spreading the story that protecting the sanctity of the regular season is paramount and that a playoff would destroy it. In other words, why would another traditional powerhouse want to open the season at Michigan, risk losing and start the year in a hole it has to climb out of?

– The BCS has gutted the regular season by rewarding teams for scheduling cupcake opponents in a blatant effort to either go undefeated, or to secure the six wins necessary to guarantee bowl eligibility.  Because the system rewards teams with “impressive” records over ones with impressive resumes, it discourages scheduling early-season, out-of-conference challenges.

– Voters have proven over decades that they gravitate towards glossy records, no matter the opponents. Almost alway, a major-conference team going 12-0 against a weak schedule is considered “better” than an 11-1 team that went through a meat grinder.

Again, The Cartel has created a system that continues to further drain the very regular season it clams so vital to the game’s health.

– The Cartel’s “forumla” for competing in a spot in the BCS title game: Own a brand name and don’t lose in the regular season. Texas didn’t in 2009 and the Longhorns won the human vote ahead of undefeated Cincinnati, Texas Christian and Boise State. Texas had been jobbed by the BCS before and since learned to work the system.

– “They don’t penalize you for playing weaker teams,” said Michigan’s Martin. “Would we love to play Texas? You bet we would. I’d schedule them right now. We would love to play the traditional schools. But that isn’t how it works anymore.”

This is the precise reason both top-tier schools and even mid-level programs all rejected Michigan’s offer entering the 2010 season. Even teams with no realistic shot at the BCS title have little incentive to schedule an opponent against which they may struggle.

– A system has been created where athletic directors and coaches schedule to survive. Missing out on a bowl is employment suicide. If a team can start out 4-0, thanks to weak opponents, it can in essence go 2-6 down the stretch and qualify for a bowl. In the world of the BCS, that result counts as success and merits a bonus.

– The motto; “no guts, plenty of glory”. ESPN.com’s Pat Forde pointed out that in 1988 there were fifteen games between non-conference teams ranked in the preseason top twenty.  In 2009, there were four.

– While the system encourages big-name teams to schedule cream-puff non-conference games, it always rewards teams like Boise State – teams with easier-to-navigate conference schedules. This was an unintended consequence for The Cartel.

Boise State moved from the Western Athletic Conference to the Mountain West Conference and has an easier shot at an undefeated season than if it played in the SEC or Big XII. The Broncos don’t have to run the weekly gauntlet of mostly good-to-great opponents, dealing with inevitable injuries, letdowns, and huge opposing stadiums. Their season always boils down to one or two big non-conference games — usually at the beginning of the season, at a neutral site, with the entire off-season to game plan and prep.

– The BCS was designed to snuff out the likes of a Boise State or Texas Christian, but it hasn’t, which leaves major conference schools griping about the Broncos’ schedule. A playoff would end the problem, making BSU early a title-game bid like everyone else, which is how the schools wants it.

Like Michigan, Boise State runs into trouble scheduling out of conference powerhouses. And so goes the cycle, with the small-conference giants bumping their heads on the ceiling while the big-conference teas get fat on their peers’ reputations.

– Look at the 2007 Kansas Jayhawks, who cruised to 11-0 out the gate and eventually earned an Orange Bowl big against ACC Champion, Virginia Tech. KU opened with four non-conference patsies — Central Michigan, Southeastern Louisiana, Toledo and Florida International. It also benefitted from a Big XII schedule that happened to not have Oklahoma, Texas or Texas Tech on the docket that season.

Not only did Kansas get to 11-0 without playing a ranked team, it beat just two Big XII teams with above-.500 records: Texas A&M and Oklahoma State, both of which finished 7-6. Yet prior to a late November, season-ending showdown against Missouri, Kansas was No. 2 in the BCS standings.

It was a clear path to the national championship game, had Missouri not pulled out the 36-28 upset in Kansas City – and it’d have been a travesty if Kansas went 12-0 in the regular season as there were clearly superior teams who only lost one game. Still, Kansas parlayed a fortunate schedule into an unbeaten record and beating lousy teams amounted to worthiness.

Other programs followed suit and copied Kansas’ plan – proving that pride left college football’s regular season long ago.

– 23-percent of non-conference SEC games are now against I-AA foes, according to Matt Hayes of the Sporting News, while the Big Ten played 21-percent of its non-conference games against I-AA teams.

– In 2008 Texas Tech gladly schedule a pair of I-AA opponents (Eastern Washington and Massachusetts) en route to a 10-0 start and was in the BCS title game hunt until late November. At one point the Red Raiders were the country’s fifth-best team before they had even faced another ranked opponent.

Texas Tech also padded the schedule with Nevada and Southern Methodist. Sports Illustrated later reported that TTU turned down a chance to play LSU, scheduling Eastern Washington instead.

– This isn’t to say that the 2008 Red Raiders and 2007 Jayhawks weren’t good football teams. The point is that the chose to take the expressway over the craggy terrain. Instead earning their stripes and proving their worth, they took the shortcut and worked the flawed system to their advantage.

The BCS doesn’t delineate between cowardice and strategy. If ‘unbeaten’ is the goal, might as well try to avoid doing it against twelve or thirteen major-conference opponents when eight will do. If every week is a “playoff”, as The Cartel wants you to believe, no easier way to get to the tourney than to play a bunch of No. 16 seeds.

–  Former USC head coach Pete Carroll took the opposite approach. He ran his program based on competition and challenged his players in practice, trying to translate that to Saturdays. (Note: Miami fans know this as the same system Jimmy Johnson and the Canes took to another level with the ‘anyone, anytime, any place’ type mentality.)

Carroll craved the chance to test his team against hostile environments and storied programs. Carroll would schedule unheard of home-and-home series against major-conference teams like Ohio State, Auburn, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Colorado, Arkansas and Kansas State.

According to Sports Illustrated, USC scheduled 73-percent of the Trojans’ non-conference games against BCS conference teams while the national average is 36-percent and dropping.

– Conversely, Florida entered the 2009 season as the consensus No. 1 team, coming off its second BCS title in three seasons. The Gators scheduled Charleston Southern, Troy and Florida International, along with their annual, tradition, could-never-get-out-of match up against rival Florida State. Texas, a pre-season top five team, faced Louisiana-Monroe, Wyoming, Texas-El Paso and Central Florida.

There must be a solution. Saving the regular season and protecting it from scheming ADs and coaches, demands a playoff with at-large selections to guarantee that a loss wouldn’t torpedo any team’s season.

Big-conference teams wouldn’t fear a non-conference challenge, as a defeat wouldn’t slay any championship chances, while mid-tier teams would value victories against bigger, badder opponents, knowing it would boost their chances for an at-large bid.

A selection committee told to value quality of victory would reward the courageous, particularly when considering seeds. If this were the case, you can bet that teams would like up to play a home-and-home with the likes of a Michigan – a nationally televised season opener.

– “I’m concerned, because I just don’t see the strength-of-schedule philosophy being shared by as many people as we would hope if we’re really concerned with the health of college football,” said Oklahoma athletic director, Joe Castiglione, one of the nation’s more aggressive schedulers. “There are some things on the horizon that make some of us wonder if it’s a disincentive to scheduling harder non-conference games.”

– Next up; Chapter Ten : Diluting The Regular Season

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