FROM THE REAL ART SPORTS DESK
FUCK THE BCS SYSTEM

From the AP via the Huffington Post, in an article published before the bowl games were announced:

Alabama Or Oklahoma State For No. 2 Spot?

A rematch between LSU and Alabama in the national title game seemed almost a foregone conclusion heading into conference championship weekend.

But with Alabama idle, Oklahoma State made one last, strong push by beating Oklahoma 44-10 to win the Big 12 title.

Now, instead of Sunday being a coronation there's another BCS controversy: Should Alabama get another shot at the only team that beat the Tide, even if that means an all-SEC title game and a matchup that will surely play far better in the South than anywhere else? Or should the Cowboys, who beat five teams ranked in the last BCS standings and whose only loss was a double-overtime upset on the road to Iowa State, get the nod?

More here.

Let me get this out of the way first. Texas lost, which was not unexpected, but still gets to go to the Holiday Bowl, where they've gone several times before, but with much better records. LSU won the SEC championship in grand style, and Tyrann Mathieu played so well that he made it into the Heisman final round. So, of course, LSU gets to play for the national championship now that they're 12-0 for the first time in team history.

That's where they'll play a team that they've already beaten, that lost its conference, as well as its division, and had fewer victories against top 25 teams than the BCS number three squad, whose only loss was immediately after the school suffered the devastating deaths of two well known basketball coaches.

In short, the BCS system is way fucked up.

It really ought to be Oklahoma State versus LSU. And it really should have been Texas versus Florida for the 2008 season national championship. I'm getting sick of this shit. I mean, a playoff system may very well have achieved the same result, a rematch between Alabama and the Tigers, but, at least, we would have known that the Crimson Tide earned its berth without a doubt. Indeed, a playoff system would shut everybody up, except, maybe, for the university athletics departments that make millions off the entire bowl game institution. After all, that's why we have this big fucking Frankenstein mess: none of the powers-that-be want to risk all that money coming in from all those December and January bowl games, and fuck the fans, and fuck the teams.

How much more football bullshit must we tolerate? How bad does it have to get before the outrage outweighs the greed? I have no idea. But this pisses me off.

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