BCS gets it wrong again

Don't you want to see Georgia play Oregon?  Why should Florida play in the Sugar Bowl instead of a Georgia team that (1) beat Florida and (2) came within a whisker of beating Alabama in the best SEC championship game ever?

Look, I am not a Georgia fan.  Ordinarily, when Georgia plays I root for the stadium to collapse, taking out the hedges and 80,000 lunatics who are still living in 1980.  But this Bulldogs team is clearly the second-best team in the SEC, and only second by the closest margin.  (Time will tell if second-best in the SEC means second-best in the country.  It usually does.)  This Bulldogs team deserves the right to play for the title of #2.  Bama gets Notre Dame.  Fine.  Georgia should get whoever is next, no matter what.

But while the BCS gets lambasted most years for not getting the championship game right, the dirty fact is that they screw up the rest of the BCS bowls annually even worse.  And this year will highlight the problem.  Georgia is probably playing in the Cotton Bowl - a game which hasn't been relevant since the Nixon Administration - as a thank you for being not-quite-on-top at the end of the best college football game played this season, and several in the past.

Now that we have become fully-invested in deciding the champion on the field, none of the other games really matter.  But that doesn't mean somebody - hey, how about the networks that spend a few billion televising these things - shouldn't want the games to be as entertaining as possible.  Instead we get pointless matchups based on conference affiliations from the Golden Era (Pre-Massive TV contracts)- Rose Bowl pits the Pac-10 champ against the Big Ten champ, etc. - that nobody wants to see.

And in case you didn't notice, the Big-12 gets two teams into the marquee bowls.  After Kansas State, the entire Big-12 stinks on ice.  Texas played Kansas State for the championship.  Oklahoma gets a spot in the Orange Bowl.  I would have put this up higher, but Oklahoma drilled Texas earlier this year and is therefore slightly less fraudulent.  But seriously, people - Florida State, Oklahoma, Louisville?  Northern Illinois doesn't sound nearly as ridiculous, given the lack of quality teams playing.  Hell, Texas A&M is more interesting than all of those schools.  And better.

Florida v. Kansas State.  Georgia v. Oregon.  Those are the only two matchups that would be interesting.  Two more clashes between up-tempo, 70-point a game, flyers and kill-your-grandmother defensive behemoths.

And just remember, some of these same geniuses will be in charge of deciding the four-teams in the playoff come 2014.  As in - "Georgia lost to Alabama, so we should put the team that lost to Georgia in the playoff instead."

The powers-that-be in college football have for decades demonstrated the ability to screw up a one-car parade.  More stupid things to come.