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Insights and Observations
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Henry's Highlights
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
By Henry Hinton |
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BCS has no shame
CARTEL'S
TRAIL OF GREED, REPERCUSSIONS FOR HAVE-NOTS TELL THE TALE
©2005 Bonesville.net
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Is it just me or do they
screw up the Bowl Championship Series worse each time they purport to fix
it?
Here they go again,
plugging the voting hole left by the
Associated Press's departure in favor of a grouping of media, former coaches and
players. Oh, that ought to make it more equitable (chuckle).
Let me get this straight.
The answer to making the BCS formula a more fair system is to introduce more
guys that have cronies inside college football?
The truth is the BCS
cannot be fixed. And it cannot be defended no matter how many adjustments
are made.
The answer then and the
answer now is to stop the double talk and spin about a playoff system and
get on with it. If it works in other divisions of the NCAA, why not in
Division I?
The hypocrisy of it all
is laughable. One of the major arguments against the playoff system from the
beginning has been the number of games necessary to determine a national
champion. Since that time, conference championship games, preseason charity
games and now a 12th regular season game have been introduced.
Think about it. These are
the same guys that allow basketball scheduling that literally makes it
impossible for a student-athlete to attend class. Teams like East Carolina
are forced, due to economics and scheduling problems, to miss weeks at a
time during the season.
Too many games?
Poppycock.
Maybe we should take a
tip from the recently outed Deep Throat. Remember Hal Holbrook’s
characterization in the movie “All the President’s Men?"
“Just follow the money,"
he said.
The same advice could be
valid for anyone trying to dissect the convoluted scheme at the heart of the
BCS. Bottom line: The powers that run college football have created a group
of haves and a group of have-nots, with the haves running the BCS and
milking it for all they can to the competitive and financial detriment of
the have-nots.
Smaller, lesser known
programs have fought this all the way back to the inception of the old
College Football Association in the ‘70's.
East Carolina won that
long-ago battle but now finds itself on the bottom end of the stick once
again. As a member in good standing of Conference USA, the Pirate program is
on the outside looking in.
Director of Athletics
Terry Holland acknowledged the problem in an interview earlier this summer
on Talk 1070. In outlining the priorities on getting the program back on
track, Holland listed inclusion in the BCS system as job one.
“Our first obligation has
to be to make Conference USA a player in the BCS system,” Holland said.
“Let’s face it, Utah did it. We can’t say it can’t be done. There’s more
access now than when Utah did it. So it’s improving a little bit every year.
We have to find a way to make our conference competitive enough to be able
to have access to that whole championship series.”
Bettering the league’s
status and improving its chances of inclusion in the BCS is a noble goal but
one that will continue to be an uphill battle.
As a result, Holland
continues to leave the options open. He has said repeatedly that ECU would
do what is best for its own future.
“We’re loyal to
Conference USA or whatever our conference may be,” Holland said in the
June 10 interview. “But when the time
comes we’re going to do what’s best for our school so we’re going to be very
audible. We’re going to be above the board with Conference USA but in the
end we know that no one is going to care about East Carolina when the time
comes except those of us who are here.“
One might interpret this
to mean that ECU will do whatever it can to become a player in the BCS,
including leaving C-USA. This new system announced earlier this week
seemingly does nothing to give the league a better position.
Holland will keep
plugging and the final chapter of this book is yet to be written. However,
the powers that control college football will continue to close ranks and
try to make the rich richer.
Ultimately college
administrators whose institutions are not included may have to do what they
have threatened from the beginning — take the BCS to court.
Deep Throat said it best.
“Follow the money.”
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02/23/2007 10:16:28 AM |
