Lame Sports

LSU Wins - Does it Really Matter?

By Rob Dauster

After falling behind 10-0, the LSU Tigers scored 31 unanswered points to blow out the Ohio State Buckeyes in the BCS national title game.  It marked the second straight year in which OSU was unable to make the College Football championship game even remotely interesting after the first half.  Personally, I was watching the new American Gladiators last night instead of this game.  Did anyone else notice Laila Ali sounds like a man?  Regardless, the show is still SO bad ass.  Gotta love Wolf’s howl.  But I digress.

Maybe it’s just me, but how can you take a sport seriously when their national title game is determined by a popularity contest?  Look at it like this: in the last ten years in NFL Playoffs, the top two teams (both regular season conference champions) have played in the Super Bowl exactly ZERO times, only four times has the Super Bowl included two teams that both had byes in the Wild Card round, and, to top it off, the lower-seeded team has gone 7-3 in those Super Bowls.  If the Super Bowl participants were determined the same way the BCS chooses its championship game, at least seven of the last ten NFL champs would not have had the opportunity to win.  And in a year where parity in college football was more prevalent than it’s ever been have we ever had a more compelling argument for a BCS playoff?

Now I’m sorry for getting all preachy.  When I sat down to write this column, I had no intention of talking about why college football needs a playoff.  Every single sportswriter has written a piece about it, so I know all the arguments for and against.  But now that the University of Georgia’s president Michael Adams, chairman of the NCAA executive committee no less, has proposed an eight-team playoff on Tuesday, it seems that this idea may now have some legs.  If you thought people went crazy with their pools during March Madness, imagine what would happen with a BCS playoff.  I propose the name December Delirium, patent pending.  But, like I said, I had no intention of writing about a college football playoff, so back to my original point…

This game was doomed from the get-go.  Why?  For starters, OSU was completely over-matched against an SEC opponent, again.  They played in a severely watered down Big Ten.  Don’t believe me?  Illinois and Michigan tied for second in the conference this year.  The Illini lost by 32 to USC in the Rose Bowl, and Michigan opened the season with the loss to Appalachian State.  The Buckeyes started the season outside the top 10.  LSU was #2.  And to top it off, OSU had an almost 50 day layoff between their conference championship game and the BCS title game.  Just for reference, that means that the last time they played before the title game was pre-Thanksgiving.  It also didn’t help that the only intriguing story line - whether or not Les Miles would a) leave LSU for OSU’s sworn enemy Michigan and b) murder Kirk Herbstreit for breaking the story that he was going to leave - was squashed when Michigan hired Rich Rodriguez.

The bottom line is that if there was a playoff, Ohio State would not have been runner-up. One-loss teams (Hawaii and Kansas), conference runners-up (Georgia) and conference champs that stumbled during the regular season (USC, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma) would all have a puncher’s chance to win a title.  Look at this bracket:

#1 OSU vs. #8 Hawaii

#4 West Virginia vs. #5 Oklahoma

#2 LSU vs. #7 USC

#3 Georgia vs. #6 Kansas

You wouldn’t go crazy for a tournament like this?

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