The Importance of a Weak Schedule

The BCS is in effect a one game playoff system. Number one and number two make the playoffs. The newest BCS official excuse is that it is in place to ensure of us the most meaningfull regular season in sports. To be fair it does make big games into huge games, the SEC championship is already a spectacle, but when the winner goes to the NC game the atmosphere becomes insane.
But the BCS has opposite effects on other games: when Oregon State played USC the Rose Bowl was on the line, but if there was a playoff system a spot in the tournament would be on the line. The same would be true for the ACC championship game, Ohio State versus Penn State and a slate of other games.

Perhaps the non-conference schedule gets hurt the worst. A few weeks ago when I took the AP top 25 and looked at the schedule of the ranked teams 19 of them had played FCS schools, of the six remaining schools only USC had played all BCS conferense teams in a non-conference schedule which includied Ohio State. I think in this day and age USC, whether you like them or not, has to be commemded for that. They are not, they are blasted for the weak conference schedule, something they could not control.

If we had a playoff system that gave automatic bids to the conference champions then non-conference schedules become more competitve, teams would be rewarded for early season battles in experience and not be penalized for them by the BCS. Thus more early season big games would occur. Also more conference games would have national championship meaning. This was a great regular season of college football, but the bowls are far from the icing on the cake. There are seven BCS one loss teams, two undefeateds from mid major conferences, and we only get one meaningfull game out of all them. This is the perfect season for the playoffs. Let Penn State play USC, then let the winner keep going. Let Texas play Ohio State and see who move on to the next round. Let Alabama play Utah and see if the Utes got enough fight in em to beat the big dawgs, and if they do let em show it again. Playoffs give us all BCS matchups then more.

I don't ever want to hear that playoffs would take too long, someone ask Ohio State how long they waited two years in a row between the end of Big Ten conference play and the Natoinal Championship. A month and a half. Every other level of college football has playoffs.

I also don't want to hear that the bowls will lose meaning. Take ten teams, give the first six byes and let playoffs go. I would never use the bowls as steps for the playoffs, in that case then they do lose meaning because one team could start with the Poinsettia Bowl, and also win the Alamo, Outback and Orange in one year. Instead of a system like that let the playoffs decide the national champion then assign bowls. You have the ten teams that would make the BCS anyways, now the national championship is legitimate, and the BCS match the teams that lost along the way. No non-BCS bowls would be affected by this, the Chikfila bowl would still be the Chikfila bowl with the same damn teams and now the BCS teams are more evenly matched. The only issue I can see with this is that the Rose Bowl is no longer gaurunteed the Big Ten Pac 10 matchup, which doesn't bother me one bit because the game has been boring as hell with that matchup the last few years and that mechanism gives the Big Ten and Pac 10, weaker conferences, an unfair advantage in putting in at-large teams. Someone look me in the eyes and tell me Illinois belonged in the BCS bowl games last year, they stole a spot and then played horribly as thanks. Perhaps we can take twelve teams and add another BCS bowl game, when has college football not been open to adding more games? The way things are going right now with the SEC and Big 12 putting two teams in the BCS every year make the cotton bowl BCS. I don't know, I am just saying there are many ways to do this.

If this trend continues top-tier teams are will soon no longer be apalogetic for scheuling weak games. West Virgina will soon announce they will never again play Marshall, East Carolina or a team from the FBS even. USC will play Washington and Wahsington state as non-conference games. Oklahoma will drop TCU and add SMU. Texas Tech will add a third FCS opponent, Penn State will exclusively play teams will football programs less than ten years old. Michigan State will no longer play Michigan and instead add yet another MAC team. Florida will stop playing Florida State, Georgia and Georgia Tech will be no more, Illinois and Missourri, Colorado will get tired of losing to Colorado the first game of the year, Iowa will drop Iowa State. Ohio State will continue to play a Big Ten schedule because it has worked for them in the past. I cannot wait.