Note to Readers: I will be abandoning the "Can You Pass the Test Concept" for weekly posts, and instead, I will hope to relate sports stories to past, and present stories of my life. Thank you for understanding.
The more time passes by, the more I miss, and yearn for, my elementary school days. Although I will never live the days of extended recess, fountain-like hand washing stations, and milk cartons ever again, my glory days [if you could call them that] can be related to a mess that all of us are complaining about each and every day.
During the fall of my third grade year at Frenchtown Elementary school - when Velcro sneakers were still cool and kickball was everyone's favorite sport - a number of fads emerged on the playground. Not only did Yo-Yo's and Beanie Babies take the school by storm, but so too did Pokemon. Well actually, Pokemon could be considered a tsunami in the tidal pool of 3rd grade culture. Pokemon cards and GameBoy games were so popular that a new rule had the be added to the school handbook that no child was allowed to carry around Pokemon cards at any time for fear of them taking away from the learning process. Before that, kids would bring in binders full of laminated Pokemon cards to lunch just so that they could show off the new cards they bought on eBay from some Japanese guy who lives in his mother's basement in California. Being the true economist that I always have been, I saw no value in a silly card, however when it came to the video game, I was all over it. The first generation of the Pokemon games for the GameBoy Color could not be topped back then, and I just had to get my hands on the first edition. So, like any other 8 year-old, I whined. I whined, and whined.... and whined some more. All in effort to snag this little video game. I whined until my throat hurt, I whined until my face was as red as a tomato. But I actually whined to no avail. My parents never bought me the game. Back them I said that I hated my parents for taking away such a precious game - a "must have" in the "who's who" of 3rd grade socialites - but in retrospect, I am glad that my parents did what they did. They taught me a valuable lesson that I will never forget - whining will never get you anywhere.
My fiasco with the Pokemon video represents the debacle that the surrounds the current BCS mess perfectly. For we the fans and the media are just like myself when I was younger - the ones yearning for the video game, or as I like to call it, a playoff system. We have the notion, just like I once did, that whining 24/7 would get you what you want, but in fact, it does anything but that. Whining exacerbates the once simple problem into something that it is not, and now that the BCS mess has been blown out of proportion, in my mind, there is no way that we will ever be able to recover. We all need to take a lesson from the textbooks of parenthood and realize that our constant whining and nagging will get us nowhere.
There are many reasons why we should keep or destroy the current BCS system, many reasons why we should preserve all of the bowl games, and many reasons for why every college football critic may have a dead wrong solution to the system.
First off, I like the the BCS point system - it creates a computer generated answer to dictate who is where in the nations rankings with no bias whatsoever. But by no means should it be the last element in deciding who are the two teams to play for, or who deserves the title of "Best Team in the Nation." The rankings and numbers are only based of numbers, and not the intangibles - the things that happen on the field, the emotions, the joy ride, and most importantly, the pressure. The point system should only exist for numerical and ranked based purposes only, not for deciding the best team in the nation, and cutting off the dreams of another well deserving school. In a dream world, I would like to see the national championship decided by a 8 game-playoff, where the rankings are decided by the BCS system. This allows the Boise States of the nation to sneak in there, if deservedly so, and really make a run. All the meanwhile, the NCAA would continue its other numerous bowl games for the schools that could never make it into the playoffs - allowing most college players their one last shot at victory.
But every rose has its thorn...
The problem with having a playoff system is that it would extend the football season at least 3 more weeks for the deserving and winning teams, and in case you didn't forget, the players are college students. It seems hard for me to imagine a student to be able to invest so much time in the game while taking so much time away from his studies at his respective university. Traveling wouldn't be by buses anymore, players and staff would have to travel cross country for games, and then travel away from school for weeks at a time. All this missed school can really add up and hurt a player's academic success. This all also adds up to extra stress and strained bodies as well, for the players would be going through a schedule almost as long as NFL franchises. I guess that won't work either...
The point I'm trying to make is that the BCS will never see a revolution in a long, long time. There is too much money invested in the bowl games, and the fact that ESPN just bought out a lot of those production rights, just makes this spectacular event, that much more insane. In my mind, the best way for us fans to lash back at the system, or "The Big Man", as I would like to call it, is simple. We must file simple, and orderly complaints through the schools and divisions of our favorite team, and not rant and whine on television or the radio. The talking heads on sports broadcasting stations deserve as much blame as the common fan, for our collective complaints add more fuel to the BCS fire... and that is just want they want us to do. The big shots for the BCS want to have all this news around their system, for in the end, it will only bring in more voters. I think that the only way we could really make a true effort and make a dent in this flawed system would be to boycott all the bowl games. Although it is impossible to create a nationwide revolution and have thousands or millions boycott, the hypothetical idea is one to consider. Just imagine what would happen if no one watched the televised games - sponsors would pull out knowing that they had no reason to air their advertisements, schools wouldn't reap in the benefits, and the BCS would loose all of its momentum and news coverage. Which in essence means that America needs to take a long hard look at what they are doing, quit whining, and listen to mommy and daddy.
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