The What if Basketball BCS

My buddy posted this on his blog...I had to share:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=62207544&blogID=366464424 (not sure if you can read it this way...so here is the whole thing)

So back in December I presented my "What If" college football tournament. I got criticism from one college football fan, saying a tournament would ruin the special nature of college football. I mean who needs giving mid-majors a fair shot and deciding a champion by playing games instead of using a computer program and rankings based largely on pre-season expectations and historical biases. I have to say, the anti-tourny faction has a point. The fun and excitement of a one-and-done big dance has nothing on a month-long extravaganza of pointless exhibition games named after any company that can shell out the cash. So in that spirit, I say screw the big dance in college basketball. Here we go with the "What-if BCS of Basketball."

So on to my methodology. Much like in football’s BCS, the champions of the majors conferences get into the BCS Bowls, so congrats to the champions of the SEC, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10, ACC, and WCC. I guess since there are more D-I hoops programs than football programs we can admit two more conferences to the pantheon on the majors, so welcome to the fold Conference USA and the MVC. The Big XII can go screw itself until they get a team not named Kansas that can compete once in a while. For teams not in one of those conferences, they must get to 15 in the polls to even get a shot at the big money. And since no one in this bizarro world wants the fun and excitement tournaments can bring, let’s just assume the conference tournaments don’t happen.

In the national championship we have UNC vs. UCLA. The Tar-Heels are a lock here, the consensus 1 in all the polls, but the AP has Memphis at 2, while the ESPN/ USA Today poll favors UCLA. The ESPN Power 16 goes with UCLA so the Bruins win out. Now, since without a tournament, we place more emphasis on the sacred regular season, UCLA would have earned their spot with their regular season finale which would have been really exciting. Oh wait, it was really exciting anyway. Do you think the Tigers are better? Well, the beauty of system is that people will argue about it, and even if 95% of them say that the system is a mess and needs to be scrapped, it’s still publicity.

So what happens to Memphis? Well they get shipped off to the Granddaddy of them all, the Rite-Aid Bowl in LA to face Big Ten champ Wisconsin. Do you think the one-loss Memphis Tigers should have a shot at a national title? Well, they don’t get one. They lost that honor when they lost to second ranked Tennessee. Now without a tournament, the regular season means something, so that game would have been a lot more exciting. Oh wait, it was really exciting to begin with. Never mind.

With the ACC champ in the title game, the Commandante Brand Cuban Cigars Bowl in Miami, FL pits the SEC champ Tennessee against Gonzaga out of the WCC. Now remember, conference tournaments don’t exist in this world, so the feel-good Cinderella run of San Diego in the WCC tourney never happened. The BCS frowns upon feel-good Cinderellas. Now, why take the Zags instead of a team like Georgetown or Duke? Gonzaga "travels well" and that is far more important than who happens to be the better team.

Speaking of Duke, the Blue Devils get to go to the Michael Brown Helluva Job Bowl in New Orleans where they shall face the upstart Kansas Jayhawks. Now sure, maybe if we had a tournament, Rock Chalk would get a shot at the national title, but here we can’t have these small conference teams crashing the party, so we give them a nice pat on the head and shuffle them off to a game no one’s gonna care about.

In the Velvetta Cheese-Type Product Bowl in Tucson, the MVC Champ Drake gets to face Georgetown. Being the champion of a major conference has its privileges, even if you are Drake. Sure, they are a good team, and sure, they are nationally ranked and won one of the oldest conferences in the nation, but they aren’t really a traditional power, and that’s all that matters in the BCS, so they are the last team selected.

We get two at-large picks in our final BCS Bowl, the Elliot Spitzer Bowl on Dort Hwy in Flint, as Stanford faces Xavier. Now sure, Texas is ranked ahead of both of those teams, but they are the second team in a smaller conference, so screw ’em. It was like pulling teeth getting the BCS committee to take Kansas. Besides, maybe a lot of Xavier fans will buy tickets under the mistaken impression that Brad Redford is in a Musketeers uniform this year.

Texas can play in one of the 138 other, lesser bowl games, like the Bicycle Playing Cards Bowl in Cincinnati or the Beef-A-Roo Bowl at Lakeview Elementary School in Negaunee. They shouldn’t be sad. A lot of good teams will be playing in those games no one cares about, which have been around for about two years, but we’ll keep claiming they have history as a way of defending the system as a whole. Those teams include 28-3 Butler, certainly a good draw for the Kingsford Charcoal Bowl in Iron Mountain to be played on the same day as the Elliot Spitzer Bowl, so as to give both teams the impression that it means something. Also invited to one of these post season exhibitions is Florida, the defending national champ that kinda sucked this year, but hey, they are a big name team from a big name conference, and they had a winning record so they get to play.

Now see how easy it is? We don’t need some fancy tournament which has given us some of the most exciting moments in sports in the past 30 years. We can use computers to choose a champion! If it’s good enough for football, why not hoops as well? And instead of just one champion getting to hang a banner in the rafters, we get over a hundred. Sure, as it is now a team with hang a banner if they, say, make the sweet 16, and let recruits see it and remember back to that three at the buzzer in the second round, but wouldn’t it be so much better for everyone if they could just hang a "2008 NyQuil Bowl Champs" banner instead?

Plus, these athletes really need to study.

 

Soooooooo ... who fucking won? I didn't read that. Hurt my eyes. Paragraph breaks are your friend.

 

Take it from Bubbler. He knows.

 

Fozzy Bear wonders why he's shoving down an erection when Ms. Piggy isn't even around.

 

Methinks you buried the lead.

Nobody ever argued that the tourney is not exciting. It's just that you have go through an annual forgettable regular season to get there. Or are there a bunch of memorable regular season college basketball moments I'm not remembering?

There simply has to be more to a sport than three weeks of "madness" and office pools.

Besides, the last 15 months have showed there really is no difference in college football and basketball. Ohio State loses to an SEC team.

 

I think the millions of fans who attend regular season games disagree that it's March Madness and nothing else. I think the fans who want non-stop information from those regular season games on my beat would disagree too.

 

And if college basketball was done the same way as the BCS, we'd have plenty of time to hype the game. After UNC and UCLA finished play this weekend in their conference tournaments, they would wait until late April to play the national-championship game. I'm sure a five weeks without any games wouldn't change the quality of the game, right?

 

What do you have against Negaunee?

 

BLOGS!

 

He's from Flint, went to school at NMU...hence mid-Michigan and U.P. towns mentioned

 

He lost me when he made the freaking WCC a major conference and dissed the Big 12.

 

And his argument for that is the only team from the Big 12 that competes is Kansas. Who even competes from the WCC? Gonzaga is good, but they aren't as good as Kansas has been.
San Diego? Santa Clara?
What?