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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Wednesday, November 21, 2007 :::
BCS rules state a team must have at least nine victories and finish in the top 14 of the final standings to qualify for an at-large bid to one of the five marquee bowl games. But because no conference can have more than two teams, including its champion, in the BCS, officials were facing the possibility of not having enough eligible teams to fill the 10 spots this season. Well, potentially.The Big 12 has four teams (No. 2 Kansas, No. 3 Missouri, No. 10 Oklahoma and No. 13 Texas) in the top 14. The Pac-10 has three (No. 6 Arizona State, No. 9 Oregon and No. 11 Southern California), as does the SEC (No. 1 LSU, No. 7 Georgia and No. 12 Florida). Each of these conferences is likely to see a team get an at-large bid; if #15 Hawaii beats Boise State, they should move up into eligibility, and if Boise State wins that and no ACC team qualifies, it seems that either Illinois or Boise State probably would.
Anyway, that's not what I'm on about at the moment so much as this:The BCS announced Tuesday that if fewer than 10 of the top 14 teams in the standings are eligible for an at-large bid, the qualifying standard will extend to the top 18. If enough teams are still not available, the standard would be pushed back four spots until the pool is big enough to fill all the bowls.... Slive said BCS officials were determined to make as few alterations to the qualification criteria as possible. They never considered allowing a conference to have three teams receive BCS bids. See, teams aren't viewed as teams, but as members of conferences, and equality of outcome in conference representation is more important than justice; treating teams fairly simply isn't the reason for the system.
These folks would have done well in any of the grievance studies departments that are so prevalent at their schools.
I'm also a bit mystified as to why they want to add slots four at a time, rather than simply admitting the top-ranked school that hasn't committed the unpardonable sin of being in a conference with good teams in it. Frankly, I'd drop the wins requirement, too.
While I'm on college football's bowl system, it seems a bit much to require bowls to take any eligible 7-5 team over any 6-6 team. Maybe 8-4, if you're trying to prevent bowls from taking grossly worse teams whose fans "travel well" over better teams, but it looks for all the world as though the 7-5 teams that will be beating out 6-6 teams are generally worse teams that played weaker schedules, and I'd much rather leave it to the bowls' discretion than hang the decision on how many crappy opponents a team played.
::: posted by dWj at 6:58 PM
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