A Season That Will Live In Infamy - By Ben of BCSBusters

Editor’s Note: Below is a selected portion of the aforementioned article, to read the rest of the article click here.

“Weekend Recap - The Top Games to Review”

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I thought last Saturday’s celebration by the LSU’s fan base was a bit excessive, especially considering this miraculously-zany and unbelievable college football season thus far is just now entering the early minutes of the third quarter…the teams have really only recently emerged from the locker room, where the best coaches in the nation are just now beginning to recognize the identity of their own team and frantically making adjustments.

When the stadium announcer in Baton Rouge thundered the words Stanford 24 - USC 23 across Death Valley last weekend, red flags began to fly inside my BCSBusters mindset.

Hyperbolic phrases like “Be Careful, Hold Your Mud or Focus on the Present,” certainly came to the forefront. Although Cal coach Jeff Tedford heeded those words as he was heading into the locker room leading Giant Killer Oregon State 14-13 (as he too learned of Kentucky’s upset) the Bears suffered the same fate as #1 LSU - which is the first time since 1996 that #1 & #2 had fallen on the same day.

Given that the Top-10 oligarchies continue to crumble, who would step in to claim the latest pole position in college football? Certainly not Missouri, Cincinnati or UCONN - five more undefeated’s fell yet again, making the last three weekends the most infamous in college football history!

Please don’t console Les Miles and Jeff Tedford, because this is just the latest trend in an already volatile college football stock market, which is definitely heading in a bearish direction. BCS administrators be warned, the leaks in the dam will lead to a flood of controversy this coming December.

I wondered aloud last week if the hysterical celebration by Tiger Nation was an ominously bad omen, especially considering the mighty Gators quickly quieted the festive crowd with a convincing four play drive to take a commanding 10 point lead entering the early stages of the 4th quarter.

Yes, the Tigers did come back to win the game - one of the greatest games I’ve witnessed certainly within the last decade, but given the slew of shockers which have occurred just inside the framework of this season alone - someone forgot to wake up Tiger Nation, or at least provide some coffee breaks to sober up the alcoholic frenzy taking place on campus - for the throng of fans failed to comprehend that the LSU-Florida tilt was just a mid-term exam and that there would be other test and quizzes on the BCS horizon.

In what has been tabbed “The Year of the Upset,” it would be wise for all Fan Nations to hold their mud and actually act as if you’ve been in a championship race before, savoring the true dog-pile celebration for the end of the season. Who knows what is going to happen next week, given the recent surge from the upstarts located in Boulder, Tampa, Corvallis, Palo Alto, Lexington and Boston?

Red Flags Are Swarming - College Football Take Warning! - By Ben of BCS Busters

Editor’s Note: This column is by Ben of BCS Busters and is part of our NEW partnership. Ben has a lot of great thoughts and his columns will appear here weekly and you can see these columns AND MORE on his homepage.

An excerpt from the article:

Red Flags are Swarming - College Football Take Warning!

Posted by bcsbusters under College Football

“Oh what a tangled web we weave when what we first practice is to deceive.” When ESPN Gameday host Chris Fowler raised this specter during the “trick play” segment on Saturday’s broadcast from my hometown in Eugene, it triggered an emotional and philosophical irony I have been struggling with throughout these last four years as I have been pounding away researching and analyzing the rich diversity and bevy of issues behind the BCS Controversy.

For this philosophical statement covers such a wide range of hot button items specific to the controversy - which is currently in hyper-drive right now as parity continues to march onward - I’m not sure where to begin, but you can bet this will most certainly lead to yet another chapter in my book manuscript “The Grass Ain’t Blue in Georgia - The Story Behind The BCS Controversy.”

I have been hyping the parity concept now for several seasons - as a result of the 85 scholarship rule - and I have warned many of you that the red flags are prevalent and ripe with intellectual significance. I have openly warned many of you who follow this blog that this day was fast in coming, but since the BCS began in 1998, have we ever witnessed a weekend like we’ve had in the last 48 hours in college football? Or a season that has given the term “a riddle wrapped up inside an enigma” a whole new meaning?

Although Fowler (ESPN) later chimed in that “we could go decades and not see the kind of results thrown forth on Saturday - six of the Top-10 teams in the nation lost, with five of the losses coming against un-ranked foes,” the networks continue to spew forth forgone conclusions and CFA (College Football Association) favoritism, before the actual games take place, and after the results contradict their own statements and opinions.

As the parity storm clashes with BCS traditions and network favoritism extended to those teams who earned this branded identity in a previous era (non-85 scholarship rule where stock-piling players was the norm), I hope people are finally beginning to recognize that the controversy isn’t going to fade away.

In fact, it is going to compound itself and mushroom into one of the largest firestorms in recent sports history if we don’t begin to actively search for a solution where the current platform (bowl games / 12-game regular season) can be maintained with a head-to-head itinerary for national supremacy.

Instead, we -the fans- receive nothing but accolades in relation to the convoluted system we have in place, while the networks continue to embrace the sacred cow concept behind the “every game is playoff in college football mantra,” which will continue to uphold a CFA alliance which practices discrimination and preaches bias and favoritism on a weekly basis throughout the season. Will anyone stand up and fix the situation?

Who’s In Control Of The BCS? - By Ben of BCS Busters

Editor’s Note: This column is by Ben of BCS Busters and is part of our NEW partnership. Ben has a lot of great thoughts and his columns will appear here weekly and you can see these columns AND MORE on his homepage.

Who’s in Control of the BCS?

Posted by bcsbusters under College Football

Photo by: Tuscaloosa News “The NCAA was bowled over by the College Football Association and its unanimous southern contingency nearly 25 years ago and the fans are left to wonder - who exactly is in charge of refereeing the direction of college football? - BCSBusters.

Bowled over nearly 25 years ago by the College Football Association, the NCAA has become a mere spectator in the annual controversy known as the BCS. This year, as we race onward towards another bitter dispute connected to the BCS disaster, the feuding sides of the NCAA (Big-10 & PAC-10 Alliance) and the College Football Association (Southern Contingency of the Big-12, ACC & SEC) will continue to battle over the slippery oblong ball that bounces indiscriminately in all directions as parity has arrived in unprecedented proportions.

So as the college football season continues to march onward - who can believe it is already week number four - the fans are left to wonder who exactly is in charge of directing the new emerging national past-time?

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Stewart Mandel of Sports Illustrated took a stab at this subject lately in his book “Polls, Bowls and Tattered Souls,” likening the BCS era to the political stalemates often occurring on the steps of Congress. In his words - “You have your congressmen (Conference Commissioners & Athletic Directors), your senators (University Presidents and Chancellors), your lobbyists (bowl games and smaller conference schools), and your fund-raisers (the television networks), each exercising their respective influence on the decision-making process while at the same time seeking to protect their own best interests. Meanwhile, there’s no singular leader - like, say, the President - to steer the ship in any particular direction. The Result: Nothing ever changes.” It’s important to note we lost our refereeing president, when the NCAA was stripped of its governing authority by the college football powers in the 1980’s, which led to the super-conference movement and ultimately to the BCS controversy of today.