Sorry, Blue

Who's #2? The BCS' dumb obsession with finding America's second-best college football team. By Chris Suellentrop

Chris Suellentrop has a very good point in this article. People who are once again bashing the BCS--which, by the way, brought us one of the all-time classic games last season in Texas-USC and made dozens of games this season interesting to even someone like me who usually pays attention to only a few--are missing the point of the system. It's designed to produce a game after which college football has a champion. How would an Ohio State-Michigan game accomplish that? If Michigan were to win, wouldn't that just mean it was time to play the rubber match?

Here's Suellentrop's killer paragraph:

Do we know if Florida is the second-best team in the country? Of course not. Here's what we do know: Michigan is not the best. How do we know that? By the traditional criterion: They scored fewer points in a football game than Ohio State did. The only team that has the "right" to play in the BCS championship game is the best team, Ohio State. And the only teams that should be scratched without question are teams that have already been determined to be "not the best," like Michigan.

Exactly. I wanted Michigan to win the Nov. 18 game. I hate OSU. And I know that if Florida somehow wins this thing, there will be those who say that they should have to play Michigan to be the real champs. (Unless USC clocks Michigan, in which case I say give the trophy to Boise State if they can knock off Oklahoma.)

All of this jibber-jabber is, of course, simply more fuel on the playoff fire, and I'm all for that. How can we know for sure that, for example, Boise State could not have run with the big boys? But until that happens, I have no problem with a system that declines an inconclusive rematch in favor of a title bout between the champs of the two conferences that produced the top four teams in the BCS standings, six of the top nine, and seven of the top 12. Because if Florida was good enough to win the SEC, and Ohio State was good enough to win the Big 10, can you really deny that whichever team wins a game between the two of them is good enough to be this year's champion?