I love college football. But there is so much I hate about it. These are 10 Things I hate about college football. Why 10? Because it’s a round number. I am sure I could have divided some of these categories and come up with more.
1. The BCS- The system gives us a national championship game. Problem is we don’t agree with who they select to play in the game half the time. And even when the majority may agree with who is in the game, we could still create an argument for a team left out like TCU this year. The BCS also has destroyed the old rivalries that played in bowl games and diminished the value even more of the other games. What might be worst is that we see all the flaws and those in charge continue to feed us the line that the system works.
2. The Bowls– First, there are way too many of them. 6-6 and 7-5 teams should not be rewarded, especially when they go 2-6 or 2-5 in conference. Any value, and there isn’t much to begin with, is crushed by the fact that more than half the teams in America get to go to one. Second, the bowls used to build up to the bigger games. Now they are scattered all over the place with no order. Third, New Year’s Day used to be a sports fans holiday. Now there are more games after January 1st than there are on it.
3. Bowl selection process- Further destroying any credibility that bowls may have is the lack of any pecking order due to a flawed selection process. A team’s record has no impact on where they go. A team is selected only on the basis of how many butts they can put in seats on game day. That’s why SEC East champ South Carolina is playing in a “lesser” bowl game than Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi State despite having the better season.
4. Polls- The only purpose of their existence should be to give fans and media an idea of how good a team is. That’s what they are used for in any and every sport on every level of competition. Except college football which treats them like the gospel. And why that doesn’t work is there is no rhyme or reason for how they function. Different voters value different things. Voters stick to their preseason guesses instead of allowing the season to make their polls fluid. And coaches and media can allow their bias influence how they vote, which can result in who goes where and more importantly, how much a school and conference can make monetarily in the postseason.
5. Uneven conferences- 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Those are the sizes of different conferences in I-A football. And that is just numerically uneven. Competitively the conferences are way out of balance too making it damn near impossible to ever fairly evaluate teams against each other.
6. Conference scheduling- When you have a different number of teams, you have odd scheduling. While the PAC-10 plays round-robin, meaning 9 competitive games, others like the Big-10 and SEC play 8, making room for a patsy on the schedule and padding their win totals creating a false-sense of supremacy. The other problem is determining a fair schedule in 11 or more team conferences because not all the teams play each other. That leads to strange finishes like the Big Ten’s three-way tie this year because Michigan State and Ohio State did not play one another.
7. Out of conference scheduling- Oklahoma plays FSU, Cincinnati, Air Force, and Utah State while conference rival Oklahoma State plays Washington State, Troy, Tulsa, and Louisiana. FSU plays Samford, Oklahoma, BYU, and Florida while conference rival Boston College plays Weber State, Kent State, Syracuse, and Notre Dame. And somehow we call it an even playing field?
8. Different number of home and away games- One of the most overlooked factors in a team’s success. This year Auburn, Ohio State, and Michigan State had 2 combined losses. Do you think they benefited much playing 8 home games and just 4 away games??!?! Meanwhile Oregon and Stanford played 6 home and 6 away. TCU and Boise State played 5 road games and a neutral game. Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, and Alabama played 7 home and 5 away. Could you imagine the Steelers playing 10 home games and 6 away the Patriots playing 8 home and 8 away and then pretending nothing is wrong with that picture?!?!??
9. NCAA rules- Too many of them. Too tough to understand. Too tough to enforce. Too many loopholes. Too many coaches, players, and teams bending or breaking them.
10. National signing day- Not many things are harder for old school folks to swallow than watching a 17-year kid acting like he is a superstar and holding a press conference to simply announce where he’ll be going to college. And we feed the beast by giving the kids the platform to build their monster egos and make them think they are above the fray.
