No offense against any of the LSU players or *shudder* coaching staff, who played an excellent game in beating OSU tonight. They did what they were supposed to do, and will be called the national champions of 2007. However, they took advantage of a broken system to get there. The major argument for this current bowl system (which, btw, has become incredibly boring) is that there is no need for a postseason tournament because the college football regular season serves essentially as a double elimination playoff, where teams that win at the end of the year get the chance to play in a title game. The problem with this season is, there wasn't a single team in Division I-FBS that satisfied those criteria. LSU? Lost to Arkansas at home in next to last game for second loss. Ohio State? Lost to Illinois at home in next to last game. West Virginia? Lost at home to Pitt in last game. Oklahoma? Lost two games to mediocre Colorado and Texas Tech (and then got smoked in bowl game). USC? Lost to Stanford for goodness sakes. Virginia Tech? Was hot at end of year, but couldn't legitmately put them in ahead of LSU after they got smoked by the Tigers earlier in the season (plus they lost the bowl game). Hawaii? Undefeated, but played a bunch of high school teams (then got smoked in the bowl). Georgia, Missouri, Kansas? Gotta win your conference title to get a spot in a 2 team playoff. So we had LSU and Ohio State back in to a game that neither earned the right to play in. This season has been the biggest argument for a playoff yet. Most of us have blogged about this already, but after tonight's uninspiring "title" game it bears mention again. Imagine if there was a 16 team playoff involving all of the above mentioned teams, and a few potential Cinderellas? It would be the most exciting three weeks in sports, it would provide a climactic ending to a wonderful regular season, and when one team would emerge victorious there would no doubts about their worth. Instead, we have to wait several weeks before a bunch of meaningless bowl games, and then have one game that decides it all, that more often than not is dominated by one team. Very anticlimactic.
Here at Sports Fountainhead however, we get our own vote after the season. And rather than vote for the Tigers, I will respectfully cast my vote for someone else (like they really care what Steely McDonati thinks in Baton Rouge right now). The obvious choices for #1 would be Georgia or USC after their BCS blowouts, but they have the same flaws as they did at the end of the regular season, and its not clear whether those games were indicative of how good those teams were or how poor their competition was. Instead, I choose a team that has just as many losses as the assumed national champion, a team that has a quality win against a Top 5 team on the road, and most importantly a team that was able to survive a legitimate 16 team tournament of their peers at the end of the season and truly be known as champions. That's right friends, my number 1 vote goes to the Mountaineers of Appalachian State. And why not? They beat Michigan, Michigan beat Florida, Florida beat Kentucky, Kentucky beat LSU. So you know they could give the Tigers a game. And they're the only Division 1 team to truly earn a championship. So there you have it. Since the coaches poll is now transparent, I'm going to make my final Top 25 transparent too (jot it down Mays, consider this your email):
1 Appalachian State
2 LSU
3 West Virginia
4 Georgia
5 Kansas
6 USC
7 Missouri
8 Virginia Tech
9 Ohio State
10 Oklahoma
11 BYU
12 Tennessee
13 Boston College
14 Florida
15 Hawaii
16 Texas
17 Arizona State
18 Oregon
19 Cincinnati
20 Michigan
21 South Florida
22 Illinois
23 Auburn
24 Clemson
25 Oregon State
So that does for the college football, which has been a primary source of material for this blog over the past few months. But never fear loyal readers, Steely is working diligently on his college basketball rankings, which should be making their debut sometime in the next week. I will also be able to focus more energy on the Penguins, who are suddenly on fire. Mr. Mays himself will keep updating his fascinating mock NFL drafts. And of course TAS (who does suck), E, and the other guys will throw in spectacular content as well.
All things said and done, it's been a fun season.
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