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First -- congratulations to the World Champion Green Bay Packers!
Second -- congratulations to the officials -- no obvious and major screw ups. Nice to see it can be done still.
Third -- The Game was over, with the half time show, and the extra commercials, by 10:06 -- that is 3:37 minutes. NOW -- can the NFL do that when there ISN'T enormous pressure from Fox to get Glee on during sweeps? Don't believe me -- watch how quick they get out of the postgame crap that no one really cares about (I am writing immediately following the game).
Four -- The Weis Guy posted this as his status at the game's end -- and I think he has it EXACTLY right -- Did Green Bay win? Or did Pittsburgh lose? I think a STRONG case can be made that it was the latter. They did nothing to force Green Bay to even pretend to run the ball, and even though the run was working, they got away from it way too quickly to force Green Bay. In a game in which they could and should have dictated, they appeared not to be prepared. The "experience factor"? I think it made Pittsburgh overconfident. Doesn't matter how many guys with microphones and vested interests say it was a great game -- only by the low standard set by previous Roman Numeral Fests could that even been claimed with a straight face....
Five -- To help prove my point above -- who deserved to be the MVP of this game? For my money, Hines Ward may have been the best performer on the field. Jimmy Johnson just called Aaron Rodgers "outstanding." What game was he watching? 300 + yards passing means NOTHING in a game where your offense rushes only 10 times! Of course Rodgers will win it (again, writing BEFORE the announcement!) -- just not sure it is deserved. And, is he REALLY a better QB tonight than he was this afternoon?! 24-39, 304 yards, 3 TDs? Sure, that equates to a decent passer rating, but mostly because the equation grossly overvalues a high TD to INT ratio. 62% completion percentage? Nice, not spectacular (and only 2 of those "drops" had to be caught!). Less than 8 yards per attempt? Nice, not spectacular. 12.5 yds per completion? Nice, NOT spectacular. In other words -- he played well -- NOT great!
Six -- How many HUGE plays did Green Bay get off of the ridiculous overload blitz that Capers drew up? It was clear that Green Bay had that one solved the first time, yet I saw it backfire at least twice more. In critical moments. Again -- won or lost? Again -- QBs' doing? Or lack of preparation and overconfidence?
Seven -- turnovers, turnovers, turnovers. Pittsburgh made them, 2 of them EXTREMELY poorly -- and what a coincidence, but BOTH led to Green Bay touchdowns. Green Bay did not. Roethlisberger did not acquit himself well, and lost (anyone else bracing for the "disclosure" of how badly he was hurt in this game?). Is he a worse QB tonight than he was this afternoon? And does something that has little to do with the offense at all make Rodgers a better leader or quarterback? Sure, he led them to the scores to convert those TOs into points, but where would they have been without the TOs???
Eighth -- I KNOW football is a contact sport. It IS physical. These ARE two physical teams. BUT -- why did it seem like there were too many injuries occurring because of contact with -- the turf? There were more such injuries in this game -- on the golden field, with the roof closed, than in that ill-fated outdoor game in Minnesota!
Ninth -- Can the NFL now avoid the disaster of a lock-out or strike? And please, oh please, oh please, can we fix the officiating for next season? See my pre-game rant about the axiomatic truth of the value of a running game. Not completely disproven here -- mostly for Pittsburgh's failures on both sides of the ball to make this a game about the run. But still, dealt a serious blow -- and I believe the rules are to blame.
Tenth -- I NEVER want to hear ANY other fans -- especially Ravens' fans -- EVER complain again that Pittsburgh ALWAYS gets the calls when they need them. Period!
Post-script #1 -- I agree with LP -- musically, I was unimpressed with the Black Eyed Peas. I knew I would be -- theirs is not my music, and my younger friends tell me they are terrible live. But for entertainment value? Wow -- Sir Paul rocked us, and saved the NFL's keister for running after "Nipple-Gate". But NO ONE has ever used the massiveness of the stage at half time better than what I saw tonight. I have NO idea what show everyone on Facebook was watching that hated it....
Post-script #2 -- Likewise, I was generally impressed with the commercials... the excellence and cleverness, and actually some intelligent advertising essentials far outweighed the poor efforts -- been a while since that was true.
And the last two words -- Brett who???
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Thoughts in Advance of the Super Bowl (tm) XLV (really!?)
1. I just hope it is a good game. Too often they are not. And, for all my griping about the impotence and incapability of officials, and the stupid over-officiousness of the NFL in particular, I hope the game is won, or lost, on the field, by the players. Not by some arcane and ridiculous interpretation of a rule, a missed call, or, as last year, the callous exploitation of the uncertainty and chaos of a pile-on for a loose ball.
2. It really doesn't matter which team wins -- as Rick Reilly so eloquently pointed out, in most fundamental ways, there is little distinguishing these two teams from each other. It really doesn't matter which team wins -- in a league that prides itself on parity, almost to the point of parody, what does the winner of this game really prove, beyond that they won the 3 or 4 games needed to get to that point. By any reasonable measurement of the regular season, neither of these teams was the best in their conference -- and adding 2 more games to the regular season will NOT make the football season any more relevant in determining its ultimate champion!
3. Can we PLEASE get some common sense into the discussion about the importance of this game for the two quarterbacks? In truth, there are TWO things NFL quarterbacks are counted on to provide. One, of course, is throwing the ball and leading the offense. The OTHER is providing leadership. It is this latter one, to me, which is a bit squirrelly.
Sure, the quarterback starts every play with the ball. He must read the defense and make sure the called play will work. He gets the ball where it needs to be. But that, apparently, is not what the media means or looks at in this discussion of leadership. Winning championships is. Even though winning a game requires three squads -- offense, defense, and special teams -- to perform well enough; even though, as number 2 above makes clear, most close games come down to the outcome of a handful of plays at most, making the previous truth even more significant (and most games that AREN'T close can be chalked up to a failure of preparedness, or lack of overall talent) -- apparently only winning a Super Bowl authenticates great quarterbacks???
If that notion isn't stupid enough on its own weight, let me try this. If Pittsburgh wins today (more on that in a minute), then Ben Roethlisberger has won three Super Bowl (tm) rings. He will be haled by these talking heads as one of the great quarterbacks of all time. All for being fortunate to be surrounded by outstanding players, very good coaches, and an outstandingly solid organization, and plays for a team built around running and defense!? Really?
Instead of looking at the other allegedly greatest of all-time quarterbacks with whom he will be lumped with 3 rings (Aikman? Bradshaw? yes he has 4), let's try this comparison. Let's compare Big Ben and his three rings (circus?) to the following list: Marino, Favre, Elway, and P. Manning. BETWEEN those 4 are exactly 3 rings. Is anyone who doesn't already bleed black and gold seriously going to rate Roethlisberger anywhere but 5th on that list (and only THAT high because there aren't more choices)?
Or look at it from the other side -- if Green Bay wins, does this ONE victory authenticate everything he did in leading his team on the improbably journey that got them there in the first place? Five must wins just to REACH the game? I think THAT is a far greater demonstration of his ability to lead a team than the outcome of one grossly overhyped game played under circumstances totally foreign to the running of a football game would be! Yet no one is saying that getting here validates him. Only that he needs the SB win to become a great QB. Really? Marino isn't one of the best of all time without ever having won one? Seriously?
4. And while I am picking on the talking head hype-meisters, the vast majority of whom picked Green Bay to win, what happened to the axiomatic truth that the ability to run and to stop the opponent from running is what wins the big game? Assuming it is still true, why are we not being told to expect a Pittsburgh victory? If it is no longer true, when and why did it cease to be true? Is it a result of the same rules committee tinkering that has otherwise destroyed the game by micromanaging making it almost impossible for even the best defenses to adequately defend the pass anymore? If so, what does it say about the powers that be in this game?
When do pitchers and catchers report? :)
2. It really doesn't matter which team wins -- as Rick Reilly so eloquently pointed out, in most fundamental ways, there is little distinguishing these two teams from each other. It really doesn't matter which team wins -- in a league that prides itself on parity, almost to the point of parody, what does the winner of this game really prove, beyond that they won the 3 or 4 games needed to get to that point. By any reasonable measurement of the regular season, neither of these teams was the best in their conference -- and adding 2 more games to the regular season will NOT make the football season any more relevant in determining its ultimate champion!
3. Can we PLEASE get some common sense into the discussion about the importance of this game for the two quarterbacks? In truth, there are TWO things NFL quarterbacks are counted on to provide. One, of course, is throwing the ball and leading the offense. The OTHER is providing leadership. It is this latter one, to me, which is a bit squirrelly.
Sure, the quarterback starts every play with the ball. He must read the defense and make sure the called play will work. He gets the ball where it needs to be. But that, apparently, is not what the media means or looks at in this discussion of leadership. Winning championships is. Even though winning a game requires three squads -- offense, defense, and special teams -- to perform well enough; even though, as number 2 above makes clear, most close games come down to the outcome of a handful of plays at most, making the previous truth even more significant (and most games that AREN'T close can be chalked up to a failure of preparedness, or lack of overall talent) -- apparently only winning a Super Bowl authenticates great quarterbacks???
If that notion isn't stupid enough on its own weight, let me try this. If Pittsburgh wins today (more on that in a minute), then Ben Roethlisberger has won three Super Bowl (tm) rings. He will be haled by these talking heads as one of the great quarterbacks of all time. All for being fortunate to be surrounded by outstanding players, very good coaches, and an outstandingly solid organization, and plays for a team built around running and defense!? Really?
Instead of looking at the other allegedly greatest of all-time quarterbacks with whom he will be lumped with 3 rings (Aikman? Bradshaw? yes he has 4), let's try this comparison. Let's compare Big Ben and his three rings (circus?) to the following list: Marino, Favre, Elway, and P. Manning. BETWEEN those 4 are exactly 3 rings. Is anyone who doesn't already bleed black and gold seriously going to rate Roethlisberger anywhere but 5th on that list (and only THAT high because there aren't more choices)?
Or look at it from the other side -- if Green Bay wins, does this ONE victory authenticate everything he did in leading his team on the improbably journey that got them there in the first place? Five must wins just to REACH the game? I think THAT is a far greater demonstration of his ability to lead a team than the outcome of one grossly overhyped game played under circumstances totally foreign to the running of a football game would be! Yet no one is saying that getting here validates him. Only that he needs the SB win to become a great QB. Really? Marino isn't one of the best of all time without ever having won one? Seriously?
4. And while I am picking on the talking head hype-meisters, the vast majority of whom picked Green Bay to win, what happened to the axiomatic truth that the ability to run and to stop the opponent from running is what wins the big game? Assuming it is still true, why are we not being told to expect a Pittsburgh victory? If it is no longer true, when and why did it cease to be true? Is it a result of the same rules committee tinkering that has otherwise destroyed the game by micromanaging making it almost impossible for even the best defenses to adequately defend the pass anymore? If so, what does it say about the powers that be in this game?
When do pitchers and catchers report? :)
Thursday, January 6, 2011
I Get it Now - BCS = Because Cash Sells!
I know, it has been a while, and there has NOT been a lack of subjects to choose from. But as we approach the National Championship Game (TM) that will prove nothing to anyone who follows football about who the best team in college football is this year, it is time to pound the greed and arrogance that is the Bowl system in college football, the hypocrisy that is the BCS, and the pathetic failure of the entire FBS (formerly Division I-A) season.
Lest we forget, by the time the last bowl game is played on JANUARY 10, this season there were THREE undefeated teams, only 2 of which, by their protected and annointed enrollment in the RIGHT conferences, had any expectation of being recognized. THAT problem, honestly, I can live with. No matter how appalling the lack of ability to punish Cam Newton and Auburn, in the midst of an undefeated season, by both the SEC, which, as the 4 time defending national champion conference (TM) has a vested interest in keeping their strongest contender alive, even if, on paper at the start of the season, they barely made the top 6 in the SEC; no matter how many of us have already forgotten the disgusting spectacle of LeGarrett Blount physically assaulting a Boise State player on the field after losing to Boise State to open last season, and then being returned to he team from suspension in time for their bowl appearance -- which SHOULD prevent us from rooting for them EITHER -- the truth is, in the case when three teams are undefeated, until there is a playoff system in place, one team must be left out of the equation. And until all of Division !A is treated equally, and the so-called "little sisters of the poor" can actually get bigger schools to schedule them, the strength of schedule SHOULD leave TCU as the odd man out!
No, my problems with the BCS, and they should be yours as well, go far deeper than the surface. How can a game played on January 10, 5 week's after the SEC championship game, and longer since Oregon's last game, credibly determine which of them were better for a season that is already history and almost completely forgotten by now? It can't. And because of the "bowls plus one" "upgrade" of the cartel a few years ago, the championship game is free to be played anywhere, because it has been removed from the old bowl structure completely. We still have all the bowls -- they just added a Super Bowl for the alleged top 2 schools. And by rotating it prohibitively between the sites and bowl aristocrats of the big 4, it forces this game to be played long enough AFTER the main bowl games in those sites to allow the field to be fixed, and the necessary media hype to be waged, that we get the nonsense of a January 10th bowl game.
So, of course, the other big games now spread out off of New Year's Day, careful not to cross paths with the end of the NFL regular season (a ratings nightmare that the bowls would lose, and which would piss of the networks!), and even some minor invented bowls between mediocre teams that wouldn't even make most credible playoff fields have now leeched into the first week of January as well.
Yes, Boise State's 2 year run of perfection and being arguably, but sadly unprovably, the best college team of that span, ended in their last regular season game in an overtime loss, that fell solely on the inability of the best place kicker in college football to kick a game winning field goal in regulation, or a game-extending field goal in overtime (although you would be hard pressed to prove conclusively that either actually missed, as both were kicked higher than the tops of the seemingly too short goal posts at Nevada, and at least one of them appeared on replay to have been clearly INSIDE the extended post!). And their reward? Quick -- where did 1 loss in 2 years Boise St. play in their bowl game this year? Anyone remember? Didn't think so.
BUT -- Big Ten teams went 0-5 on New Year's Day alone (Take THAT, President Gee -- who are the little sisters of the poor now?) And, before you get to trotting out your own Ohio State team, that DID win their BCS bowl game, utilizing the 5 players who were suspended for the first 5 games of NEXT season, but were allowed to play in their precision bowl game ("Justice delayed IS justice denied!"), can we examine how they were matched with Arkansas, a TWO loss BCS wild-card team that didn't even qualify for their own conference championship? How a 4 loss Connecticut team inherited a reserved spot in a BCS bowl, but Boise St. played in the "WTF Bowl"?
But stop claiming that the Big East no longer deserves the automatic birth. That argument, no matter how clear, has never carried any weight. Again, it was Boise St. that seemed to have the right -- meaning logical and ethical -- solution, when they agreed to switch conferences, to join with BYU, Utah, TCU, and others in a conference that WOULD have demanded attention and an automatic birth. WOULD HAVE, but now won't, because BYU went independent, Utah will be part of the PAC 10 (12), and TCU has agreed to join the.... Big East (really? no wonder American kids are appalling BAD at geography) -- the last a move so cynically based to kill TWO problems at once -- TCU is now in a protected conference, AND the Big East can use TCU to maintain their protected slot, rather than requiring their school's football programs to actual IMPROVE! Leaving Boise St. - -again -- out in the cold, in their new conference, which may actually now be weaker than the one they left!
And btw -- between Utah, Boise St. TCU and BYU -- in the 6 BCS bowls matching a big vs. a little, with TCU's victory this year, the series stands 5-1 -- in favor of the little guys!!!! But don't get carried away. If you are a FOOTBALL U school from the cartel, playing even in a BCS game is a consolation prize to not making the championship game, a reward to players, coaches, and boosters for a season well done. For the little guy, it is their shot at the spotlight and glory, a chance to prove themselves on the big stage. Any surprise that hey come in hungrier, better prepared, taking it more seriously, and win? Not really!
But the biggest fraud this year was actually played out on the playing fields. There are now so many bowl games, that it was routine to see 6-6 teams win. More teams played football bowl games from Division IA this year than there will be teams in the expanded NCAA BASKETBALL tourney in March!! True! And, as a result, the 7th best team from a BCS conference, playing the 6th best team from another, or the third best from a minor conference was the normal match-up. Heck -- three SERVICE ACADEMIES played bowl games this year!
And, in a season which ended with the firing of Ralph Fridgen, the ACC Coach of the year, because he couldn't put enough fannies in the seats as he used to to make Maryland a more attractive bowl selection, bowl meisters, in an effort to sell tickets, went local. With the exception of Sand Diego St. vs. Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, where BOTH were the home team legitimately, too many of these low rent bowl games were nothing more than another extravagant payday for the same olds, but now often turned into a glorified extra home game for one of the participants!
And it is in this last that the worst abuses came to light. because for me, no matter how good (or bad) the championship game might yet still prove to be, the "BCS is corrupt and needs to be shut down" moment of the bowls for me was the ending of the Pinstripe Bowl -- the first bowl game in decades at Yankee Stadium. It matched those perennial also-rans and natural rivals, Kansas St. and Syracuse, in a game that really, no one outside of the two Manhattans and snow-covered upstate New York should have cared about.
Until it became a game in which both offenses shone, and neither defense could make a stop in the 4th quarter, creating one of those rare "save the BCS" moments -- a game worth watching and caring about in the mess! Until, with Kansas State trailing by 8 late in the 4th quarter, they scored a touchdown on a very well executed running play. The ball carrier slipped through a narrow opening between defender and sideline and scored. A successful 2 point conversion would send the game, in all likelihood, to overtime. But wait...
As he ran through the end zone, the K State player dropped the ball in the end zone, and instinctively, and without fanfare, saluted to the stands. For THAT, the end zone official flagged him for unsportsmanlike conduct, moved the 2-point try to the 18 yard line, from which it failed, and the game was over. But wait again...
With the need for an onside kick now, K State failed to let the ball go the required 10 yards before touching it (and recovering it). Three officials huddled for over a minute before telling the world what had been very clear to the naked eye in real speed -- the ball had NOT gone 10 yards. And that huddle suddenly made it obvious -- there had been no similar huddle, no attempt by any other official, to talk this over-officious end zone ref into changing his hideously bad call on the unsportsmanlike conduct!
And then, to make it worse, in the very next game, after their first touchdown, the Tennessee quarterback and receiver who combined on the touchdown ran together in the endzone... and saluted each other! No penalty was called! And the offending official, after the game, was quoted as saying to the K State player as he saluted "Bad choice, son..." before throwing his flag. Am I the only one who sees the potential that this official was looking for a way to influence the outcome of an otherwise meaningless bowl game, in favor of the more geographically favorable team?
And I don't even remember the participants in the other bowl game that ended in regulation on a game-winning field goal that occurred with 0.4 seconds left on the clock -- even though football does not use the fractional clock of basketball! This, after the game was originally called over in favor of the other team, because the clock seemed to have run out. On further review, however, it was determined that the quarterback had spiked the ball with 0.4 seconds left -- even though his team was in the process of rushing players onto the field and had about 19 guys on the field at the time of the snap. It is for EXACTLY this reason that the NFL runs 10 seconds off the clock in addition to taking yardage in such a case at the end of the game. But in this bowl game, a team was allowed to come back on the field after apparently losing, receive 5 yard penalty, and STILL kick the winning field goal!
So much for the old saw about the bowl system's value being that "dozens of teams, and not just one, can end the season with a victory." Even those are being tainted and taken away now -- THAT is how corrupt the BCS system has become.
Stop trying band-aid fixes, and please get the talking heads from the networks who are co-conspirators to shut up about how good the system is. We can all see that the emperor is not only buck naked, but butt ugly as well! And this patient doesn't need a band-aid -- it needs to be euthanized!
Lest we forget, by the time the last bowl game is played on JANUARY 10, this season there were THREE undefeated teams, only 2 of which, by their protected and annointed enrollment in the RIGHT conferences, had any expectation of being recognized. THAT problem, honestly, I can live with. No matter how appalling the lack of ability to punish Cam Newton and Auburn, in the midst of an undefeated season, by both the SEC, which, as the 4 time defending national champion conference (TM) has a vested interest in keeping their strongest contender alive, even if, on paper at the start of the season, they barely made the top 6 in the SEC; no matter how many of us have already forgotten the disgusting spectacle of LeGarrett Blount physically assaulting a Boise State player on the field after losing to Boise State to open last season, and then being returned to he team from suspension in time for their bowl appearance -- which SHOULD prevent us from rooting for them EITHER -- the truth is, in the case when three teams are undefeated, until there is a playoff system in place, one team must be left out of the equation. And until all of Division !A is treated equally, and the so-called "little sisters of the poor" can actually get bigger schools to schedule them, the strength of schedule SHOULD leave TCU as the odd man out!
No, my problems with the BCS, and they should be yours as well, go far deeper than the surface. How can a game played on January 10, 5 week's after the SEC championship game, and longer since Oregon's last game, credibly determine which of them were better for a season that is already history and almost completely forgotten by now? It can't. And because of the "bowls plus one" "upgrade" of the cartel a few years ago, the championship game is free to be played anywhere, because it has been removed from the old bowl structure completely. We still have all the bowls -- they just added a Super Bowl for the alleged top 2 schools. And by rotating it prohibitively between the sites and bowl aristocrats of the big 4, it forces this game to be played long enough AFTER the main bowl games in those sites to allow the field to be fixed, and the necessary media hype to be waged, that we get the nonsense of a January 10th bowl game.
So, of course, the other big games now spread out off of New Year's Day, careful not to cross paths with the end of the NFL regular season (a ratings nightmare that the bowls would lose, and which would piss of the networks!), and even some minor invented bowls between mediocre teams that wouldn't even make most credible playoff fields have now leeched into the first week of January as well.
Yes, Boise State's 2 year run of perfection and being arguably, but sadly unprovably, the best college team of that span, ended in their last regular season game in an overtime loss, that fell solely on the inability of the best place kicker in college football to kick a game winning field goal in regulation, or a game-extending field goal in overtime (although you would be hard pressed to prove conclusively that either actually missed, as both were kicked higher than the tops of the seemingly too short goal posts at Nevada, and at least one of them appeared on replay to have been clearly INSIDE the extended post!). And their reward? Quick -- where did 1 loss in 2 years Boise St. play in their bowl game this year? Anyone remember? Didn't think so.
BUT -- Big Ten teams went 0-5 on New Year's Day alone (Take THAT, President Gee -- who are the little sisters of the poor now?) And, before you get to trotting out your own Ohio State team, that DID win their BCS bowl game, utilizing the 5 players who were suspended for the first 5 games of NEXT season, but were allowed to play in their precision bowl game ("Justice delayed IS justice denied!"), can we examine how they were matched with Arkansas, a TWO loss BCS wild-card team that didn't even qualify for their own conference championship? How a 4 loss Connecticut team inherited a reserved spot in a BCS bowl, but Boise St. played in the "WTF Bowl"?
But stop claiming that the Big East no longer deserves the automatic birth. That argument, no matter how clear, has never carried any weight. Again, it was Boise St. that seemed to have the right -- meaning logical and ethical -- solution, when they agreed to switch conferences, to join with BYU, Utah, TCU, and others in a conference that WOULD have demanded attention and an automatic birth. WOULD HAVE, but now won't, because BYU went independent, Utah will be part of the PAC 10 (12), and TCU has agreed to join the.... Big East (really? no wonder American kids are appalling BAD at geography) -- the last a move so cynically based to kill TWO problems at once -- TCU is now in a protected conference, AND the Big East can use TCU to maintain their protected slot, rather than requiring their school's football programs to actual IMPROVE! Leaving Boise St. - -again -- out in the cold, in their new conference, which may actually now be weaker than the one they left!
And btw -- between Utah, Boise St. TCU and BYU -- in the 6 BCS bowls matching a big vs. a little, with TCU's victory this year, the series stands 5-1 -- in favor of the little guys!!!! But don't get carried away. If you are a FOOTBALL U school from the cartel, playing even in a BCS game is a consolation prize to not making the championship game, a reward to players, coaches, and boosters for a season well done. For the little guy, it is their shot at the spotlight and glory, a chance to prove themselves on the big stage. Any surprise that hey come in hungrier, better prepared, taking it more seriously, and win? Not really!
But the biggest fraud this year was actually played out on the playing fields. There are now so many bowl games, that it was routine to see 6-6 teams win. More teams played football bowl games from Division IA this year than there will be teams in the expanded NCAA BASKETBALL tourney in March!! True! And, as a result, the 7th best team from a BCS conference, playing the 6th best team from another, or the third best from a minor conference was the normal match-up. Heck -- three SERVICE ACADEMIES played bowl games this year!
And, in a season which ended with the firing of Ralph Fridgen, the ACC Coach of the year, because he couldn't put enough fannies in the seats as he used to to make Maryland a more attractive bowl selection, bowl meisters, in an effort to sell tickets, went local. With the exception of Sand Diego St. vs. Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego, where BOTH were the home team legitimately, too many of these low rent bowl games were nothing more than another extravagant payday for the same olds, but now often turned into a glorified extra home game for one of the participants!
And it is in this last that the worst abuses came to light. because for me, no matter how good (or bad) the championship game might yet still prove to be, the "BCS is corrupt and needs to be shut down" moment of the bowls for me was the ending of the Pinstripe Bowl -- the first bowl game in decades at Yankee Stadium. It matched those perennial also-rans and natural rivals, Kansas St. and Syracuse, in a game that really, no one outside of the two Manhattans and snow-covered upstate New York should have cared about.
Until it became a game in which both offenses shone, and neither defense could make a stop in the 4th quarter, creating one of those rare "save the BCS" moments -- a game worth watching and caring about in the mess! Until, with Kansas State trailing by 8 late in the 4th quarter, they scored a touchdown on a very well executed running play. The ball carrier slipped through a narrow opening between defender and sideline and scored. A successful 2 point conversion would send the game, in all likelihood, to overtime. But wait...
As he ran through the end zone, the K State player dropped the ball in the end zone, and instinctively, and without fanfare, saluted to the stands. For THAT, the end zone official flagged him for unsportsmanlike conduct, moved the 2-point try to the 18 yard line, from which it failed, and the game was over. But wait again...
With the need for an onside kick now, K State failed to let the ball go the required 10 yards before touching it (and recovering it). Three officials huddled for over a minute before telling the world what had been very clear to the naked eye in real speed -- the ball had NOT gone 10 yards. And that huddle suddenly made it obvious -- there had been no similar huddle, no attempt by any other official, to talk this over-officious end zone ref into changing his hideously bad call on the unsportsmanlike conduct!
And then, to make it worse, in the very next game, after their first touchdown, the Tennessee quarterback and receiver who combined on the touchdown ran together in the endzone... and saluted each other! No penalty was called! And the offending official, after the game, was quoted as saying to the K State player as he saluted "Bad choice, son..." before throwing his flag. Am I the only one who sees the potential that this official was looking for a way to influence the outcome of an otherwise meaningless bowl game, in favor of the more geographically favorable team?
And I don't even remember the participants in the other bowl game that ended in regulation on a game-winning field goal that occurred with 0.4 seconds left on the clock -- even though football does not use the fractional clock of basketball! This, after the game was originally called over in favor of the other team, because the clock seemed to have run out. On further review, however, it was determined that the quarterback had spiked the ball with 0.4 seconds left -- even though his team was in the process of rushing players onto the field and had about 19 guys on the field at the time of the snap. It is for EXACTLY this reason that the NFL runs 10 seconds off the clock in addition to taking yardage in such a case at the end of the game. But in this bowl game, a team was allowed to come back on the field after apparently losing, receive 5 yard penalty, and STILL kick the winning field goal!
So much for the old saw about the bowl system's value being that "dozens of teams, and not just one, can end the season with a victory." Even those are being tainted and taken away now -- THAT is how corrupt the BCS system has become.
Stop trying band-aid fixes, and please get the talking heads from the networks who are co-conspirators to shut up about how good the system is. We can all see that the emperor is not only buck naked, but butt ugly as well! And this patient doesn't need a band-aid -- it needs to be euthanized!
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