Heisman Trophy & Bowl Championship Series Buried Leads

Only in college football you can find a team win all of its games and not compete in a national championship game.

You'll read that lead a million times from now until mid-January.  Cincinnati, Boise State and Texas Christian (TCU) each were undefeated and were the undisputed champions of their conference.  That we know.
 
But consider the following factors.

Texas Christian University found itself screwed because its school name doesn't stop at Texas.

At what point does a 28.3 margin of victory come into play?  I guess that only works if you're one of the big boys.  Gotcha.

The Longhorns came into the season ranked No. 2 in the country because of the return of quarterback Colt McCoy.  Its non-conference schedule featured Louisiana-Monroe (6-6), Wyoming (6-6) and UTEP (4-8).  The only non-conference opponent with a winning record was UCF (8-4).  Basically, all Texas had to do was load up on cupcakes and coast into the Big 12 championship game.

It's hard to take this whole system seriously when the BCS says it wants to make the regular season games have more of an impact, even though we all knew the winner of the Big 12 and Southeastern Conferences would be represented in the BCS title game.


Cincinnati might have the biggest beef because the system that was supposed to help it get to the title game cornholed it into a match-up with Florida.  Cincy owns wins at South Florida, when it was ranked 21st, against West Virginia when it was ranked 25th and at Pittsburgh when it was ranked 15th.  The Bearcats also defeated Oregon State, which currently 18th in the country.

And all it did was get them in a bowl game against Tim Tebow in what surely will be nothing short of an overblown going away party/Tebow slurp fest.

Do you think that if there was a playoff system in place, Brian Kelly wouldn't be feverishly putting together a game-plan for the Bearcats rather than wearing a lime-green tie in South Bend, Ind.?

Boise State's got beef too.  You can't say they didn't play anyone this time around.  In fact, the Broncos are the only undefeated team (other than Alabama) to have played an opponent heading to a BCS Bowl.  You all remember the punch, but apparently it doesn't matter much to the selection committee that Boise State beat Oregon in the process.

You could blame the computers or the voters with power conference ties, but the real culprit here is the pre-season poll.  It automatically puts teams in non-BCS conferences at a major disadvantage.  There is no level playing field from the get-go.  If the BCS system doesn't go after this season, the powers that be should really take a look at abolishing the pre-season poll.  Not having polls until Week 5 should give everyone enough time to separate the contenders and pretenders.

As for the Heisman, that now is too turning into a popularity contest. 

McCoy gets an invite because he was the best quarterback on one of the top teams in the country, despite posting numbers that were not as good as last year.  Mark Ingram gets the nod because he's the best offensive player on the nation's top team. 

It's unfair Ndamukong Suh gets punished because 1) He plays defense and 2) His team didn't get enough TV time.  Why should that matter?  Guess that means Toby Gerhart's trip to NYC is in vain as well.

And how come C.J. Spiller doesn't get an invite despite being the only player in college football to score a touchdown in each of his team's games.  Oh, right.  Because his team wasn't really good.  That's great.  Where does it say the Heisman is supposed to go to a player on a team that is ridiculously good.

(Checks.)

Nowhere.

I know a lot of people who think the government getting into the mix is stupid.  They couldn't be more wrong.  Sure, there's a two-front war going on, a nasty unemployment rate, a fledgling economy and health care on the docket -- and how is that different from any other time Congress is in session?  You know where you can place the blame for the two-front war. 

As for the umemployment rate, economy and healthcare, that can all be solved if Congress checked its ego at the steps of Capitol Hill and at least pretended that it cared about the people rather than what kind of pork it can get for signing a bill.

And why should the government be involved with the BCS anyway?  Simple.  Look at the two teams in your title game.  The University of Alabama vs. The University of Texas.  Two public universitites funded by government grants and such.

I dare you to tell me the government doesn't care about the schools it helped put on the map in the first place.