Sunday, January 4, 2009

Why not Utah?

My biggest beef with college football's postseason is not that the best team doesn't always win the championship. It often does, and no playoff system in any sport guarantees the top team will win it all. It's not that the postseason isn't exciting. Although there are some boring games, games like the Texas-USC Rose Bowl or the Boise - OU Fiesta Bowl were classics that stand up with any Superbowl or postseason game in any sport.
My biggest complaint has always been that in any given year at least half the teams in the highest division of college football have no mathematical chance of winning the championship. no other sport in the world eliminates more than half its teams before even one game is played. Why even bother having so many teams in that classification if their only purpose is to serve as a Washington Generals-type patsy for the big name schools.
For that reason, I feel that Utah deserves the national championship, no matter what happens with OU and Florida. If Utah can't win a national championship as the only undefeated team in the country when they beat the team that beat USC, beat a TCU team that was the only team to beat Boise State, and when they dominated an Alabama team that gave Florida all it could handle, than why bother having them (or any other non-BCS team) in FBS? No other team has done as much this season to earn the title.
The BCS is victory by definition. It's a national championship, but only for the "true" teams that meet our pre-defined definition of what a national championship team should be.