BCS BULL: AN ANGRY CALL TO BOYCOTT
I won’t list a bunch of reasons to justify the need for a playoff system in college football because I’d be preaching to the choir, but I will illustrate how absurd the BCS system is. Imagine the NFL skipping the wild card, divisional, and conference playoff weekends. Imagine them going straight from the regular season directly to the Super Bowl with the best team in the AFC and the best team in the NFC. To hell with all those “lesser” teams who deserve a chance to get to the Super Bowl. How stupid would that be? So if we see the utter stupidity of going directly to a two-team playoff (Super Bowl) after the regular season in a league with only 32 teams, then why would we go directly to 2 teams to play in the BCS Championship in a league with over 100 teams? To further illustrate how dumb this is, imagine that the NFL does have wild card, divisional, and conference post-season games, but they are only consolation games. They can’t play in the Super Bowl—even though many are outstanding teams and capable of beating the two best teams. Would you watch those games? That’s exactly what currently happens with the college football bowl season, excluding the BCS championship game. The magnitude of this stupidity is off the charts. The great majority of teams know they cannot win the national championship at mid-season. For the past several years, I’ve watched the BCS Championship game, and very few of the other bowl games. I don’t like to watch consolation games. But what can we do about it? Boycott.
I’m uncertain if the true source of the problem lies in the BCS committee, the college presidents, the television networks (or some combination), but I do know a solution. I don’t accept the idea that the fans are powerless. In fact, the fans can be almost entirely responsible for the BCS structure changing to a playoff system of 4 or more teams. How? Hit ‘em where it hurts—it the wallet. I’m not calling for a total boycott of all future games. Few of us would do that. Rather, I’m calling for a TV boycott of the first week of the 2012 season. I’m asking all fans in the USA to avoid watching televised games in week one. The sponsors will likely apply enough pressure to get us results. The lost revenue of this one week would send the message that the fans are taking control if they don’t cough up a playoff system. This BCS bull must end and the fans are the suckers if they don’t act.
