We all know that Dan Wetzel hates the BCS. He has a column every week or so where he comes up with another reason that we need a playoff. This week's broken-record is about scheduling. As usual, though, his bias shows through with the use of selective information.
On Sept. 5, while Florida feasted on Charleston Southern and Texas opened with Louisiana-Monroe, the Oklahoma Sooners played a strong BYU team on a neutral field.
First, the Oklahoma-BYU game in Arlington, Texas, was neutral field in name only. It's neutral-field when they play Texas, but not BYU. Ask the Cougars if that was a friendly atmosphere.
Second, you could use a given date as a condemnation of any team. On September 12, when Oklahoma was crushing I-AA Idaho State, Michigan faced Notre Dame and UCLA travelled to Tennessee. Does that make Oklahoma a patsy-scheduler?
A week later, while Florida annihilated Troy and Texas blew out Wyoming, Southern California played at Ohio State.
These are bad games? Troy is the perennial winner of the Sun Belt conference. This is the exact type of game that would happen all the time if Wetzel's playoff system were introduced. And Texas played at Wyoming—we can only hope more BCS conference schools follow that example. Later he castigates teams for "staying home," yet ignores Texas' road trip because it would soften his criticism.
despite the BCS’ claim that it, unlike a playoff, protects the “sanctity of the regular season,” it has actually cut down on the exciting games the sport was built on.
I disagree—I think it's the 12-game season that has diluted the excitement of the pre-season. And how would a playoff system solve this? Teams would still want to be seeded higher, by being ranked higher, by winning games. This has always been the modus operandi in college football: win games.
The Horns’ future opponents are only modestly more challenging than this season. UT will play three weaker teams and add a single major conference opponent per season, none of them true heavyweights – UCLA, Mississippi and Cal.
Amazingly, after touting Oklahoma's game vs. BYU and USC's game at Ohio State, he dismisses Texas' future scheduling of UCLA, Mississippi, and Cal. The latter two were pre-season top 10 teams this year. BYU is not a "true heavyweight" and Ohio State is the butt of many jokes because they don't win the big game...should we dismiss them, too?
UF hasn’t played a non-conference game outside the state of Florida since the BCS was created
Of course by stating it that way he can ignore games vs. Miami and Florida State (while mentioning that the latter is faltering, of course), as well as South Florida.
In the 1980s, pre-BCS, there were annually between 15-20 non-conference games featuring two preseason ranked teams. This year there were just four.
I'd like to see the math on that, but assuming it's correct, it's still misleading. Remember that in the '80s, FSU, Miami, and Penn State were all independents. Along with Notre Dame, they'd schedule three or four top teams each. I wouldn't be surprised if that accounts for all of the difference between 80s matchups and this year's.
There was a time when scheduling a Football Championship Subdivision team (formerly I-AA) was unheard of; now teams regularly play two of them.
That's clearly not the fault of the BCS system, but the bowl system and the 12-game schedule. With 12 games to fill and the ability to count an FCS win toward the 6-game goal, almost every team added an FCS opponent. A simple change—not allowing these games to count for bowl eligibility—would improve schedules dramatically.
Also, it's completely untrue that playing two FCS teams in a season is a "regular" occurrence. Seven teams play two FCS teams: Duke, Kansas State, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Rutgers and South Florida. All are from BCS conferences and should be ashamed of themselves. That should be the real push of Wetzel's article: getting rid of counting an FCS win toward the six game bowl-eligibility mark.
Now we get to his favorite team, Pete Carroll's USC Trojans, and how they deserve to be national champions every year despite losing to unranked teams:
Carroll, whose team took two long trips to the Midwest this season, has future series with Notre Dame, Virginia, Boston College, Texas A&M, Syracuse and Hawaii and is looking for more.
How can he seriously even list A&M, Syracuse, and Hawaii after scoffing at UCLA, Mississippi, and Cal? That's because that was about Texas, a team he doesn't want in the national title game. USC is lauded for traveling to those places, but Texas got no props for traveling to Wyoming. This is bias, pure and simple. Wetzel wants to see USC in the national title game every year, and when they don't make it? It's playoff time so they get a second, or third, chance.
Apparently Pete Carroll and Bob Stoops still believe in the sanctity of the regular season. It’s the BCS that doesn’t.
Oh give me a break. The playoff system wouldn't solve a thing regarding scheduling. Getting rid of the 12-game season would help, and not counting FCS wins would go even further. There are plenty of good arguments for having a playoff, and many good arguments against the current BCS system, but this isn't one of them.
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