What's in a word?

Who are we? What are our goals? Why do we do the things we do?

Perhaps, if we spent just a little more time explaining ourselves and coming to grips with our intentions, things would be a great deal easier. Usually it comes down to a word or two.

I want to take the opportunity of helping you move from this deep headspace into something much more ridiculous: college football, and more specifically, the BCS.

So what is the designated purpose of the BCS? Is it to determine the best team or is it to crown the top team? Before we can feign to fix the system, we must determine its goal. So which is it?

If its purpose is to find the best team, then I wish you the best of luck. To figure out ‘best’, wins and losses are simply statistics in that situation. In 2003, an unknown USC dropped its first two games of the season, but went on to win ten straight, including the Rose Bowl. When the season was over, they were clearly the strongest and most potent team in football, led by their acclaimed quarterback, Carson Palmer. Voters couldn’t name them #1, though; not with two losses. Redemption came in a preseason #1 for the following year. Nor do best teams always win (just ask our basketball teams in international play). And let’s not forget that ‘best’ can mean the greatest solitary achievement as much as it does career-spanning dominance. In other words, a playoff is actually a worse determining factor of ‘best’ than voting!

Then perhaps it is to find the top team—the one that survives the gauntlet. If this is the case, why do we even dare to determine objectivity? What makes a team succeed in the Big Ten requires dealing with the cold, and in the SEC the heat. How do conditions and style of play factor into determining the “top” team? Such a subjective environment is ripe terrain for voting, not playoffs!

And speaking of the playoffs a second, are we ready for the effect they would have on the most popular sport in North America? Bo Schembechler, the late great coach of Michigan famously suggested that every year, his main goal was to win the Big Ten. If they did that, then the next goal was winning the Rose Bowl. National Championships are the territory of sports writers, not coaches. Playoff brackets would eliminate not only the beauty and diversity of college football, but it would eliminate all of the best storylines of this year and actually reduce excitement to a “who gets in” race, not to weekly contests. This season wasn’t just about the Florida blowout, but the Boise State upset of Oklahoma; Wake Forest, Louisville, and West Virginia looking like real power-house programs; and of course Rutgers. None of these are stories in a playoff scenario.

I have two big examples of this nightmare. First is Boise State. For as much as we would all love to see how they would do after defeating Oklahoma, the likely blowout to come would destroy the beauty that was their upset. As it is now, they have already stolen recruits for next year and will be even stronger. They completed one of the all-time great games that will not only be played regularly on ESPN Classic, but will be talked about for decades. That game, in the midst of a playoff, would become a lot less.

A Second example is the inevitable ‘wrong team wins’ scenario. Let’s say Indiana loses its four non-conference games, but sweeps the Big Ten. Do they get in the playoffs? What about the 11-1 Wolverines or Nittany Lions that lost by a field goal or (God forbid) a blown call? Does Indiana go? Do the voters ‘fix it’ for the computers like they did with Florida this year? Are the conference champs screwed over so that a better team can go?

College football is really not about ‘best’, it is about scholar-athletes that do their best and learn to be men. It is about millions of people watching on Saturdays as their favorite teams duke it out for bragging rights for another year. It is about statistics and feats of heroism. It is about flashy and gritty playing next to each other. It is about Senior Day and freshman sensations. It is about underdogs and upsets. It is about mascots and rivalries. It isn’t about playoffs, and it sure isn’t about 117 teams playing over 1,400 games just to have everything narrowed down to one winner and 116 losers.

Now bring on the draft! I can’t wait to see which stupid team drafts the biggest headache because of his ‘upside’.