I don’t mean to steal the spotlight from the effort the Lady Irish put forth last night, but the latest edition of BCS stupidity just can’t go untouched today.
In this moment of derp, the BCS announced some of the playoff options that they were looking at, one of which includes a fun little twist with the Rose Bowl:
In the [Rose Bowl] plan, the four highest-ranked teams at the end of the regular season would meet in semifinals unless the Big Ten or Pac-12 champion, or both, were among the top four. Those leagues’ teams still would meet in the Rose, and the next highest-ranked team or teams would slide into the semis. The national championship finalists would be selected after those three games.
If that just doesn’t seem to make any sense at all that is because it doesn’t. How a proposal that calls for three semi-finals between four teams wasn’t simply laughed out of the BCS meetings is beyond mind-boggling. Then again, division may just be beyond the reach of conference presidents that fail to properly count the correct number of teams they have.
Now, I get that the Rose Bowl is important to the Big Ten and Pac-12. I really do. I’m an alum of Notre Dame, I understand wanting to preserve tradition and the high value placed upon it; however, since the birth of the BCS title in 1998, the Pac-12 has had their only title vacated and the Big Ten has won just a single title. Don’t forget, that title is better remembered for one of the most controversial calls in college football history:
And yet somehow, the rest of the BCS is actually entertaining the thought of bending over backwards for both of them.
I’d be saying the same thing if ND somehow squeezed their way into some kind of strange third semifinal provision as well. This isn’t a hard concept. Take the top four teams in the nation, have two semi-final games, and a title game. Done. Simple.
Then again, nothing is simple with the BCS, especially when your thought process looks something like this:
Texan by birth, Irish by choice.
First-generation Domer and a former student manager, HLS podcast host, HLS Sim creator, Extra Life streamer, and technical problem haver. You can find more non-Notre Dame related writing on his Patreon.
- Epilogue - January 3, 2022
- HLS Podcast Finale - January 2, 2022
- The Final Fiesta: Notre Dame vs Oklahoma State NCAA ’14 Sim - December 31, 2021
Please stop referring to them as the “Lady Irish.” Notre Dame’s women’s teams are the Fighting Irish, or the Irish, just like the men.
That’s interesting, I still receive periodic email updates from the assistant golf coach entitled “Lady Irish Golf Update”.
It isn’t a slight in the least and ensures no one gets them confused with our other basketball team that had a rather quick postseason exit.
But hey, focus on semantics that don’t matter.
Glad you don’t take it as a slight. Others do, though. And anyone who would confuse our men’s hoops teams with our women’s is not worthy of your efforts to distinguish.
I agree that this is completely stupid, but you can’t use the lack of championships from the Pac-12 and Big-10 as rationale against this plan. By that logic, they should just name the SEC champion the National Champion because they have the most championships recently, hence the most influence over the championship decision process.
The lack of championships thing is more of a “you are seriously bending over backwards for them?” kind of thing. I really don’t understand how that benefits any other conference at all, power aside.