Because the sport employs a traditional playoff rather than polls and computers, a Cardinals championship will be deemed far more legitimate than Florida’s BCS title this past college season. Four great playoff games will override four months of mediocrity.

Much the same thing occurred last year when the New England Patriots beat the New York Giants in the regular-season finale to become the first team in history to finish 16-0. In the end, though, all that mattered was the Giants — a 10-6 wild-card team — beating the Patriots in a February rematch.

Mandel goes on to make the ludicrous “every game matters” under a BCS system argument.

One has to wonder if Mr. Mandel is suffering from amnesia. Did all 13 of Utah’s wins matter? Did Texas’s win over Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout matter? Did every bowl game that wasn’t played on Jan. 8 matter?

College football, under the current system, has hundreds of meaningless games a season played by teams like Utah and Boise State that start the season with zero chance at winning a title. The real crime here is that an 0-16 Detroit Lions played in more meaningful games this year than the Utes.

If the Cardinals somehow manage to pull off another miracle and beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, they’ll have won four straight games against playoff-caliber teams to do it. Florida only had to beat two teams that finished in the top 12 of the final regular season BCS standings to earn their title. One of their “meaningful” late season wins was a 70-19 beat-down of The Citadel on Nov. 22.

With all due respect Mr. Mandel, an Arizona Cardinals Super Bowl title would be considered far more legitimate than the Florida Gators computer-generated popularity contest trophy because it would be a far bigger and more exciting feat in a sport where every team starts the season with a chance to go to a non-ceremonial post-season and every playoff team has a shot to win it all.

By Matthew Ralph

For the majority of college football fans who justifiably detest the BCS, there is sure to be continued protest long after the anticlimactic finish of the Division 1 college football season on Thursday night.

No matter what the outcome ends up being.

If Florida does what many think they will — Florida’s offense, Bradford winning the Heisman and the bulletin board material an OU d-back gave them on media day suggest this could be a likely scenario — the cries will come for 13-0 Utah and a one-loss Texas team that already beat Oklahoma in the regular season to get a share of the title.

If Oklahoma wins, the cries will be even louder for USC, the poor Pac-10 team supposedly the victim of east coast media elites who I guess were too enthralled by Rutgers and Connecticut to pay much attentino to USC’s winning another warm weather game in their backyard against a possibly overrated and long-rested Penn State team. 

The claims fans and UConn/Scarlet Knight-loving media elites in New York City will make will be all over the map.

They’ll point out that the Pac-10 was undefeated in pointless bowl games this year but they’ll shun any further analysis of match-ups and forget how little credit the Big East received for going undefeated in bowl games a couple years ago.

They’ll point out that Utah’s Mountan West conference went 8-2 against so-called real BCS conference teams in the mighty Pac-10 and SEC.

They’ll argue that Texas deserves the title because they beat Oklahoma in a so-called neutral venue in Texas and that a Texas Tech team that beat Texas didn’t have the same argument for a spot in the Big 12 championship because of how many touchdowns they lost to Oklahoma by.

They’ll argue that Oklahoma beat top 25 teams Florida, Texas Tech, Cincinnati, Oklahoma State, TCU and Missouri and that Texas beat only four (Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Missouri and Ohio State).

They’ll argue that Texas only beat a team USC blew out in the regular season by three without taking into account time off, match-ups or any of the other factors that make final scores largely irrelevant.

They’ll argue that teams in the Pac-10 and Big 10 should have to play a conference championship game like those in the SEC and Big 12. And that the Rose Bowl is a joke.

They’ll argue that Utah should have scheduled better non-conference opponents even though we all know that big schools only need to win their conference to be in the mix for a title and want nothing to do with talented mid-majors with an axe to grind.

They’ll argue that teams that start the season with zero chance to win a national title based on reputation and how a team looks on paper should be allowed to compete for a title elsewhere.

They’ll even argue, as Salon.com’s King Kaufman has, that a case can be made for virtually any team — Tulane University was 2-10, but did beat Louisiana-Monroe, who beat Troy, who beat Middle Tennessee, who beat Maryland, who beat Mississippi, who beat Florida and Texas Tech, who beat Texas, who beat Oklahoma.

And so on.

For even the fans who get what they wanted in the end, the nonsense of how good the team you lost to was, what teams the teams you beat beat, what conference is better or worse, how a team would have faired without an untimely injury or two, whether or not a two touchdown win is a blowout kind of arguments will likely leave a bad taste.

I mean, does any legitimate fan really want their team to win by a technicality or have opponents foaming at the mouth for months even years about how their team that didn’t play in a conference championship game or play in the “title” were really the best team that year?

I still have mixed emotions about Kansas winning a basketball championship because of missed free throws and that was in a sensible college sport where the undisputed champ is decided on a court and not by computer, human votes and weird tie-breakers.

Debate in sports is inevitable, good for sportswriters and bloggers and even enjoyable to a point. But debating whether or not a team should be included in an eight-game playoff would be as memorable or important in the long run as the arguments over the field of 64 in college basketball once a team proves its worth winning three straight games against elite opponents to win an undisputed national championship.

Arguments for or against USC, Utah and Texas having a shot at a national title wouldn’t have much to stand on if a champion was decided where every other major college and pro sport decides it– on the field of play.

Photo by Michael Ralph

Even by the absurd standards of the BCS, having voters not bother to watch an undefeated team play a single game is a new low.

Whether Utah deserved to be ranked No. 1, 2 or 25 isn’t the point of this argument. The Utes deserved to have voters at least see them.

-Dan Wetzel

A second-half rally by Penn State in a 38-24 Rose Bowl loss to Southern California was a mirage – just like the notions that the Big Ten deserves its reputation as an elite football conference and that the Bowl Championship Series can provide a satisfying ending to the college football season. On this day, on a national stage, the culprits were exposed together.

-Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports

A member of Congress, who perhaps unsurprisingly is a Texan, was planning to introduce legislation on Wednesday aimed at forcing college football to use a playoff to determine the Division-1A national champion.

According to an Associated Press article, Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, isn’t too happy with the way the current system leaves certain teams out.

One of those teams happens to play in the state of Texas – the Longhorns were denied a spot in the title game despite beating Oklahoma, a fellow one-loss team that will take on Florida, another one-loss team, in the final.

His bill, which fellow Texas Republican Michael McCaul and Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush are co-sponsoring, “will prohibit the marketing, promotion, and advertising of a postseason game as a ‘national championship’ football game, unless it is the result of a playoff system,” according to the AP.

Barton was apparently careful enough to not name the Longhorns in his interview with the AP.

His examples cited were USC in 2003 and undefeated Auburn in 2004. He also mentioned “two undefeated teams” and “four additional teams with only one loss” who won’t get a fair shake at a title this year.

This is probably the least of our country’s worries right now considering everything else that’s been going on with the economy but kudos to Barton for at least trying to get what a majority of college football fans desperately want.

“That’s right, you heard me. College basketball’s regular season is far more meaningful, far more compelling and far more important than college football’s. That’s because college basketball actually has a postseason tournament where the champion is decided not by pollsters and computers but by what happens on the court. Since more teams have a chance to win the championship, more games are worth watching in the months preceding it. The NCAA basketball tournament enhances, rather than diminishes, the value of the regular season.”

-Seth Davis

In simplest terms, this was a Nixonian strategy—an attempt by Obama to bathe himself in college football’s populist glow. But railing against the Bowl Championship Series is particularly astute. It’s the equivalent of calling for rock bands in the cafeteria in a student council election: Your constituents will love you for it, even if they understand it’s highly unlikely you’ll be able to deliver.

-Josh Levin, in a Slate.com article about President-Elect Barack Obama complaining about the BCS.

“I think it is about time that we had playoffs in college football. I’m fed up with these computer rankings and this and that and the other. Get eight teams — the top eight teams right at the end. You got a playoff. Decide on a National Champion.”

-Sen. Barack Obama, talking on Monday Night Football about one thing he would change in sports.

Sen. John McCain was asked the same question. And while his answer was more serious and probably more practical — “take significant action to prevent the spread and use of performance-enhancing substances.” — Sen. Obama’s response should be a battle cry for those of us, Republican, Democrat and Independents alike, who desperately want this idiotic BCS nonsense to end.

Check the latest polls (the NCAA D-1 football polls that is). We have another mess on our hands that is probably going to result in a deserving Big 12 squad watching from the sidelines another lopsided victory for the SEC over the Big 10. Another year, another mess, followed by another discussion of playoffs/at the very least a plus one game that goes absolutely nowhere.

Can Obama become NCAA commissioner if this whole president thing doesn’t work out for him?