System Failure

By Audrey Hart

College football is intermission for a couple weeks while everyone prepares for the bowl games. That doesn’t mean there still isn’t plenty to talk about though. It’s time for the post-season system failure.

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

The bowls were announced last week to the general disappointment of everyone. Once again, the BCS system has failed to match the best teams against one another and instead has resulted in match ups between Florida State and Northern Illinois in the Orange Bowl or unranked Wisconsin against Stanford in the Rose Bowl.

The Cotton Bowl, which pits Texas A&M against Oklahoma has a better match up then those games!

The problem is this though; the BCS bowl selectors just followed the rules.

 The rules of the selection process state that if a team from a conference with non-automatic BCS bowl bid, such as, uh the Mid-American Conference, finishes in the top 16 of the BCS rankings, and outranks at least one conference champion with an automatic bid, then that team gets a bowl slot. Which is how, after propelling themselves to No. 21 in the rankings by beating No. 23 Kent State, Northern Illinois ended up in the Orange Bowl. After Stanford pounded UCLA twice in one week, Nebraska was creamed by Wisconsin, and Texas had a disappointing performance against Kansas State, the NI Huskies ended up No. 15 and playing in the bowl.

Wisconsin’s argument is much shorter. Simply, they won the automatic bid for the Rose Bowl when they beat Nebraska in the Big 10 Championship.

ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said it best, the BCS is in “a sad state for college football” right now. The BCS was originally established to determine the national champion for college football, while also showcasing the premier teams in the country to enhance the bowl system. While that’s a great idea in theory, it’s hopelessly flawed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t wait for the bowl system.

(Pause for a moment to reflect on the fact we could have had play off between Notre Dame, Alabama, Oregon, and Florida.)

Point is, this controversy is really quite uncontroversial. There was nothing in the system that could have been done, kind of like Heisman trophy that will be presented tonight.

Johnny Manziel is by far the favorite for the trophy. His most impressive statistic though of course, is his performance against Alabama. But everything else he did, his yards, touchdowns, and highlights, were against second-rate teams like Sam Houston State, South Carolina State, Southern Methodist, and Louisiana Tech.

Since it’s traditionally an offensive award, you can expect him to win it. The true description says though that the “trophy annually recognizes the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.”

And that isn’t Johnny Football. It’s the only player who led his team to an undefeated season, Manti Te’o.

Notre Dame coach Manti Te’o describes him as the “backbone” of the team. He had 103 tackles, seven interceptions, and 11 passes defended. And he did this all against the country’s hardest pre-season schedule, including eight tackles and two interceptions against Michigan, 11 tackles against Stanford, 11 tackles and an interception against Oklahoma, and five tackles and an interception against USC.

He is the only player that actually earned his Heisman spot from the first season to last, in every single game.

Unfortunately, Te’o will most likely not get the trophy. He walked away the other night with six honors though, including the Maxwell Award as college football’s best player.

It is understandable why Te’o won’t win, just as it makes sense why Northern Illinois is in the Orange Bowl. System failure in college football is as traditional as anything. Might as well look toward next year and move on. It all evens up in the NFL. Just think, would you rather be Andrew Luck or Tim Tebow?