[Note: This column appears in the Nov 30 edition of Flyer News]
In a year where nothing but the unexpected can be expected, it is certainly appropriate that college football fans everywhere still have no idea what’s going to happen.
The unexpected has seriously infected this year’s BCS season, and exposed an incompetent and flawed BCS system. This may sound like the same old song that Auburn sang in 2004, but this year and all the upsets that have come with it have changed the tune.
Normally, college football is largely without parody. The teams that should win normally do. But this year has been different – a good different. There have been a number of fantastic upsets this year – Stanford over USC, Kentucky over LSU, Illinois over Ohio State and Harvard over Yale, just to name a few.
Other championship-determining systems are structured to embrace the underdog, but not the BCS. The Olympic men’s hockey tournament found a permanent spot for the legendary 1980 U.S. Hockey team in the hearts of American’s everywhere. NCAA basketball’s March Madness tournament has given us the N.C. State Wolfpack’s championship run in 1983, George Mason’s run from CAA obscurity to a Final Four birth in 2006, and even provided a job for ESPN’s Joe Lunardi. Why can’t college football and the BCS give us the same?
It can give us all of that, and potentially more with a few alterations. Here are my suggestions:
First of all, every college team should play the same amount of games. There is no reason a team like Missouri should have to play an extra game which can ultimately do them no good. If they win, they’re still number one. If they lose, their season is done.
Unfortunately for Missouri, they do have to compete for a Big 12 Championship against Oklahoma this weekend. Meanwhile, Ohio State, USC and Georgia get to watch someone else win them a chance to play in a National Title game.
Missouri, with a loss this weekend, would finish the season at 11-2 and out of the National Title game in favor of Ohio State, even though the two Missouri losses would both come at the hands of a top-10 Oklahoma team – once at Oklahoma and once at a neutral site, whereas Ohio State’s lone loss came to a then unranked Illinois team at home.
With both a Missouri and West Virginia loss, Georgia could also potentially compete for the National Title without even winning their division. How can a team win a National Title if they can’t even win the SEC East? The short answer: they can’t, or rather, they shouldn’t.
Something needs to be done to institute a playoff system in the BCS. The “Big Six” conferences should all determine a winner somehow. Each conference would have their choice of playing a championship game or just crowning a regular season champion to determine a winner. Those six teams go on to play in the postseason playoff.
The remaining two spots in the eight-team playoff would go to two at-large bids from the remaining Division I-A conferences and the four independent teams. A formula much like the current BCS system could determine the two best teams from this category. This may seem like it creates the same problem for the small-conference teams, but less teams vying for two spots makes for better odds than the current system.
The eight teams that qualify for the postseason tournament are then ranked numbers one through eight by the BCS formula to determine the matchups. This playoff structure makes the BCS formula seem like a kick off wedge-buster instead of a starting quarterback in the football game of postseason championships. It’s still a factor, but it has less control over the final outcome. After that, a miraculous thing happens: the teams simply play to determine a champion.
I’m not saying its perfect, but this hybrid system may take the BS out of the BCS.
Wednesday 28 November 2007
Wednesday 7 November 2007
From the Back Page to Page 2
[Note: This post is a roommate collaboration. My roommate, Nicholas Iannarino, and I wrote this in response to a heinously ignorant article in our college newspaper.
Before you read our letter to the editor that follows, make sure to read the aforementioned artricle at this link:
-http://www.flyernews.com/article.php?section=Sports&volume=55&issue=14&artnum=02
This post was published in the Nov 7 edition of Flyer News.]
We were at a loss for words.
After reading sports editor Will Hanlon’s recent column, the overblown and excessively dramatic “Legendary Columnist Rick Reilly Sells His Soul,” we, needless to say, were justifiably baffled at the words printed in front of us.
Along with Mr. Hanlon, we are both longtime fans of “Sports Illustrated’s” legendary back page columnist. While the three of us have a, perhaps, unhealthy infatuation with Mr. Reilly, we couldn’t disagree more with Mr. Hanlon’s column.
The author details his obvious displeasure for Reilly’s decision to move to ESPN after 23 years at SI. We too were very surprised to learn of Reilly’s announcement, but it doesn’t take much consideration to realize that this could actually be an exceptional scenario for any true fan of Reilly’s.
Monetary reasons may have had an impact on Reilly’s decision to leave SI for ESPN, but there is much more to this move than simple dollar signs. Reilly, as it has been reported by ESPN, will be much more involved at his new company than he was with the writing of “The Life of Reilly,” his previous weekly column at SI. For ESPN, Reilly will, of course, regularly contribute to “ESPN the Magazine.” But, since the magazine is only circulated monthly, he will provide additional, longer, and more frequent content for ESPN.com and appear regularly on one or more of ESPN’s cable television networks.
The more Rick Reilly the better. Maybe he simply wants to be more involved in other aspects of media. The times are a changing, and Reilly, most likely, realizes the internet and television would be a different, more creatively challenging form of media for him to pursue.
Reilly’s been at SI since 1984. 23 years is a long time to be doing anything, be it bagging groceries, selling insurance or writing a weekly sports column. Reilly’s probably burnt out. As a writer himself, Mr. Hanlon should know that redundancy and repetition are fierce rivals to creativity. Change is not something to be feared or, in this case, despised, especially when it could allow an artist to continually improve (even when we may think they have no room to do so) or to prolong a career. Would you rather see Reilly remain loyal and potentially watch his work suffer?
As pretentious as Mr. Hanlon’s personal list is, there is no reason to drop Reilly behind any other sportswriter on this planet. He is changing jobs. Not his style. Not his humor. Not his personality. Thankfully, Reilly’s at a point in his career where he doesn’t need to care what the sports editor of some university newspaper in Ohio thinks of him.
If Reilly’s motives were purely monetary then he absolutely would have left SI years ago. We can’t imagine this is the first time in 23 years that ESPN, or any other organization for that matter, has offered him a better deal than SI. The circumstances must have been right this time. He must have liked what was being offered in the way of new opportunities, exposure and workload. And there’s no reason not to take advantage.
Yes, ESPN may maintain somewhat of a monopoly on sports entertainment. But it isn’t without merit. They are the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” because they employ the best writers, reporters and sports personalities on the planet. Rick Reilly fits that mold, and will fit in well at ESPN.
If Reilly’s work was compromised through this move, then we could go ahead and call him a sellout. But whether Reilly’s on the back page, or Page 2, he will always be the same writer entertaining us all with every word he writes.
Before you read our letter to the editor that follows, make sure to read the aforementioned artricle at this link:
-http://www.flyernews.com/article.php?section=Sports&volume=55&issue=14&artnum=02
This post was published in the Nov 7 edition of Flyer News.]
We were at a loss for words.
After reading sports editor Will Hanlon’s recent column, the overblown and excessively dramatic “Legendary Columnist Rick Reilly Sells His Soul,” we, needless to say, were justifiably baffled at the words printed in front of us.
Along with Mr. Hanlon, we are both longtime fans of “Sports Illustrated’s” legendary back page columnist. While the three of us have a, perhaps, unhealthy infatuation with Mr. Reilly, we couldn’t disagree more with Mr. Hanlon’s column.
The author details his obvious displeasure for Reilly’s decision to move to ESPN after 23 years at SI. We too were very surprised to learn of Reilly’s announcement, but it doesn’t take much consideration to realize that this could actually be an exceptional scenario for any true fan of Reilly’s.
Monetary reasons may have had an impact on Reilly’s decision to leave SI for ESPN, but there is much more to this move than simple dollar signs. Reilly, as it has been reported by ESPN, will be much more involved at his new company than he was with the writing of “The Life of Reilly,” his previous weekly column at SI. For ESPN, Reilly will, of course, regularly contribute to “ESPN the Magazine.” But, since the magazine is only circulated monthly, he will provide additional, longer, and more frequent content for ESPN.com and appear regularly on one or more of ESPN’s cable television networks.
The more Rick Reilly the better. Maybe he simply wants to be more involved in other aspects of media. The times are a changing, and Reilly, most likely, realizes the internet and television would be a different, more creatively challenging form of media for him to pursue.
Reilly’s been at SI since 1984. 23 years is a long time to be doing anything, be it bagging groceries, selling insurance or writing a weekly sports column. Reilly’s probably burnt out. As a writer himself, Mr. Hanlon should know that redundancy and repetition are fierce rivals to creativity. Change is not something to be feared or, in this case, despised, especially when it could allow an artist to continually improve (even when we may think they have no room to do so) or to prolong a career. Would you rather see Reilly remain loyal and potentially watch his work suffer?
As pretentious as Mr. Hanlon’s personal list is, there is no reason to drop Reilly behind any other sportswriter on this planet. He is changing jobs. Not his style. Not his humor. Not his personality. Thankfully, Reilly’s at a point in his career where he doesn’t need to care what the sports editor of some university newspaper in Ohio thinks of him.
If Reilly’s motives were purely monetary then he absolutely would have left SI years ago. We can’t imagine this is the first time in 23 years that ESPN, or any other organization for that matter, has offered him a better deal than SI. The circumstances must have been right this time. He must have liked what was being offered in the way of new opportunities, exposure and workload. And there’s no reason not to take advantage.
Yes, ESPN may maintain somewhat of a monopoly on sports entertainment. But it isn’t without merit. They are the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” because they employ the best writers, reporters and sports personalities on the planet. Rick Reilly fits that mold, and will fit in well at ESPN.
If Reilly’s work was compromised through this move, then we could go ahead and call him a sellout. But whether Reilly’s on the back page, or Page 2, he will always be the same writer entertaining us all with every word he writes.
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