Season's greetings.
Allow me to spread some holiday cheer:
TO: People Who Make it Their Life Mission to Find Fault With the Bowl Championship Series and the Lack of a Playoff System in College Football
FROM: Me
SUBJECT: Please, Just Stop With the Bitching Already
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I'm not one to poo-poo a rage against the machine. But at some point, you just have to lay your arms down and accept that a revolution might not result in anything better than the status quo.
The BCS poll is, again, under assault from NCAA writers, fans, and coaches for being a broken system by which to determine a national football champion. We know this because twice in the last 12 years, two teams had to share a national championship. We know this because in each season played under the tyranny of the BCS, there are always two-to-five teams whose fans swear they wuz robbed by some crazy SuperComputer and its twisted, good-for-nothing coaches' poll.
And it's happening again this season, as undefeated Auburn gets to play the malcontent while USC and Oklahoma play for the national title. God forbid you're a writer who dares to vote against the bridesmaid's bridesmaid. Paul Gattis of the Huntsville Times in Alabama put the Sooners, Trojans, and Tigers in order. His e-mail inbox was flooded with unprintable comments from Auburn fans who felt betrayed by a writer who just so happens to be the beat reporter for the rival Crimson Tide of Alabama.
Gattis responded with a proverbial "Get a life, will you people?" column addressing his critics. (Sample prose: "You think I'm biased against Auburn because I cover Alabama, but you want me to be biased for Auburn against Oklahoma because you say it's great to be an Auburn Tiger? Please give me a minute to figure that one out.")
Then his editor, Melinda Gorham, pathetically cowered in the face of an advertiser boycott or subscription cancellation fest and sold him out with a column on the front page of the paper.
(Sample prose: "As several of you have pointed out in e-mails, voice mails, and face-to-face conversations, the tone of the column was mean-spirited and callow, brushing off the opinions of hundreds of Times readers with its 'I really don't care what you think' attitude." Jeez, lady ... why not leave the guy with some of his pride intact and simply yank his pants down for a spanking in front of City Hall next time?)
The sportswriters can't win because they're either seen as misguided homers or -- even worse -- as manipulating the poll to determine where they'll spend the holidays. The BCS computer can't win because fans of jilted teams feel its criteria is flawed. And the coaches can't win, because their votes aren't made public. And why should they be? Doesn't Mack Brown have enough pressure as the head coach at the University of Texas without having to spend a nanosecond explaining his role in Bollweavill State being 17th instead of 16th in the country?
You know who else doesn't have to reveal the way they voted? Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Why? Because their votes are based on either predisposed bias, entrenched political loyalty or, in the case of best short-form documentary, pick-the-funniest-name haphazardness.
Yet, for some reason, movie fans aren't asking for a six-film playoff series to determine Best Picture.
Of course, the Oscars are subjective. So is the NCAA, in both football and basketball. For all of the finality the NCAA men's basketball tournament offers, nearly half of its teams are subjectively selected, and all of its teams are subjectively seeded.
In football, the entire process is subjective. Deal with it. Want a plus-one format? Explain to the No. 1 team in the nation why it has to play two extra games just to say No. 1. And then explain to the No. 5 team in the nation why it's on the outside looking in on the "top" four teams. Same thing goes for the No. 9 team in an eight-team format, the 17th team in a 16-team format, and the 25th team in a 24-team format. There's always going to be someone whose fans are going to feel they wuz robbed.
(While you're at it, explain to games like the Rose Bowl how they'll make a fraction of the money they make now going from a game with a definitive victor to a quarterfinal in a playoff series.)
The BCS isn't perfect. No system is going to be, unless you eliminate the conference format and make every single Div. I team independent and free to craft the toughest schedules they can. Because strength of schedule is the crux of the majority of these BCS debates. It's something, on an annual basis, that teams just can't control. They are at the mercy of their conferences. And you know what? That's sports.
The Philadelphia Eagles will probably come flying out of what might be the most pathetic excuse of a conference in the history of the NFL and into the Super Bowl this season. Is that fair to the Patriots, Steelers, Colts, Chargers, Jets, Ravens, Broncos, Jaguars, and Bills, all of whom would be a lock for the postseason had they played in the NFC this season? Who cares? That's just the way the League works. No one's crying for a 24-team round robin playoff because their team missed out on the wildcard.
It's bad enough so much time in sports is spent debating what happens off the field. (For example, should I care if Karl Malone made a pass at Kobe's wife, when Kobe already admitted to sleeping with a little white girl on the side? I'm guessing not.) What's worse is that the college football season will annually disintegrate into unending jawing between warring factions of Bubbas, arguing about computer rankings when the majority of them refer to a computer in casual conversation as "the TV what has the words in it."
Wanna fix the BCS?
Stop bitching about it being broken.
Random Thoughts
I never thought I'd see the day when a skinny jheri-curled Dominican coming to New York City would actually be uncommon enough to warrant a headline in the New York Post.
Let alone the back cover.
Then again, not every skinny jheri-curled Dominican has a 182-76 career record with a 2.71 ERA. And a midget friend.
As a Mets fan, I'm completely torn on bringing Pedro Martinez to Shea. Four years, guaranteed, for a guy who will never, ever, ever, never, ever become the closer he should be four years from now? Fifty-four million for an "ace" who can't hit 96 on the gun in the six innings he can go on a start-to-start basis?
Oh, and did I mention he's a bit of a loon?
But as I was saying to a fellow traveler as the deal was being finalized: this certainly is familiar. Pedro (and don't you love that like Shaq, Kobe, Mario, Terrell, and Cher, it's now just "Pedro?") is the kind of personality the Mets have when they win. Think about the rascals of '69, or Tug McGraw in '73, or the druggies, drunks, and Dykstras of '86, or even the team that lost the Subway Series with the manager who wore disguises in his own dugout. Now, the 2005 Mets will have Pedro, Anna Benson, potentially Delgado, and maybe still Pizza. This is starting to look like the zoo-on-a-diamond the Mets need to have in order to win...
Ashlee Simpson's father, Joe, has forced the filmmakers behind his daughter's movie debut, "Wannabe," to change a plot involving her character's lesbianism.
Maybe she can take on this problem like she has other professional challenges.
It'd give a whole new meaning to lip syncing...
The Washington Nationals may not play in Washington after all, as the D.C. City Council passed an amendment that asked for a 50/50 split of public and private stadium funding. Reacting to this sudden decision, MLB put the Nationals' promotions and baseball operations departments on hiatus.
See, this is already a positive move for the franchise. The Expos used to wait until the All-Star Break to close up shop...
The NHL lockout debate has been fun lately, with the players basically offering to give back a quarter of their salaries, and the NHL owners claiming that move was an admission by the players that the league had lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Then the commissioner comes back and offers the players another plan: one that would rob the elite players in the league, but basically leave the grunts' salaries untouched. This would be the proverbial "Breaking the Union" plan the NHLPA has been warning about for months.
Is there going to be hockey this year? Even my non-hockey friends have been asking. And here's my answer:
Yes.
Yes, because I think the Players' Association wants a season. Because its members want their money, and don't want to have to fight both Bettman and Father Time. And because guys who have bills to pay, wives/girlfriends/groupies to love and children to care for don't want to play in Europe through May.
The sides are closer than they appear on a number of issues. I expect to see a cap in place, although a bit higher than expected, and for other concessions on a smaller salary rollback and lowered free-agency age limits to be negotiated. Then it's "game on" by the end of January.
(Oh, and as a Devils fan, lockouts have obviously been beddy, beddy good to me.)
The wildcard in all of this is whether the owners are just determined to break the union at all costs. In which case, this entire negotiation is a ruse, and The Game will return in the Fall of 2005 with replacement players and scabs. Which, in the grand scheme of things, would mean most teams would look like the Penguins, minus Mario...
Finally, I just wanted to take a moment and thank everybody for reading the column this year, which has been one of interesting personal and professional growth for yours truly. Next week is a bye, and then we'll come back with the annual Story of the Year column for the 2004 finale.
Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. And if you're going to lay money on the Continental Tire Bowl ... don't.
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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