Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports writes that No. 3 Penn State is benefiting from what he believes is a terrible BCS title game system.
Penn State faces Iowa, Indiana and Michigan State. Only the home game against the Spartans presents any meaningful challenge. The lack of a Big Ten conference championship game means Paterno can cozy up before Thanksgiving and watch everyone kill one another off.
This riveting system is what BCS apologists call a playoff, even if not everyone has to face playoff competition.
There is no logic to the illogical way college football crowns its champions, though. So this is what you get – a nation of fans already howling that Penn State is running an end around on the system.
The Nittany Lions’ best nonconference win is over Oregon State. This doubles as the best nonconference win for the entire Big Ten. The only other contenders are Michigan State over Notre Dame and Wisconsin over Fresno State. That’s it. For the entire league. The Big Ten failed to defeat a single currently ranked nonconference team.How difficult is it to win the modern Big Ten? Well, Minnesota still has a shot at the conference title by winding up 11-1. Last season, the Gophers were 1-11. Nice story, but any league where you can go from 1-11 to 11-1 in a single season is under serious suspicion. It just is.
The BCS got lucky last year that there were so many close regular season games towards the end. They said, “See! We do have a playoff system!” But calling the final three regular season games a “playoff” is a freaking joke. And Wetzel is right – there are certain programs (namely in the Big Ten) that benefit from having a weaker schedule every year. And that’s not to take anything away from Penn State because they’ve had a great year and at this point, deserve to play for a national championship.
But the system is still greatly flawed and while this seems like it will always fall on deaf ears I’ll write it anyway: GIVE FANS A REAL PLAYOFF SYSTEM.
