One reason to watch — Bama kicker Cade Foster
The college football season reaches its anti-climatic climax Monday night when LSU plays Alabama in the BCS title game. I won't call it the "national championship game" because that would give it more weight than it deserves. It's basically the SEC championship game a month later.
Major college football has the lamest and most absurd postseason of any sport. Even if Bama wins Monday, all they will have done is split the season series with LSU. The Tide could not even make its conference championship game and yet it gets voted into the most lucrative game of the season. Had these two teams gotten here via a legitimate playoff, then the winner could claim they're the champs. But in a system as phony as the BCS, a one-loss Bama team is no better than a one-loss LSU or Oklahoma State. Only a LSU win would feel right.
One reason to watch — Bama kicker Cade Foster
The college football season reaches its anti-climatic climax Monday night when LSU plays Alabama in the BCS title game. I won't call it the "national championship game" because that would give it more weight than it deserves. It's basically the SEC championship game a month later.
Major college football has the lamest and most absurd postseason of any sport. Even if Bama wins Monday, all they will have done is split the season series with LSU. The Tide could not even make its conference championship game and yet it gets voted into the most lucrative game of the season. Had these two teams gotten here via a legitimate playoff, then the winner could claim they’re the champs. But in a system as phony as the BCS, a one-loss Bama team is no better than a one-loss LSU or Oklahoma State. Only a LSU win would feel right.
Bama got here the phony way — by winning enough votes in the coaches' poll to pass Oklahoma State, which came ahead of the Tide in the computer rankings. Bama coach Nick Saban had a vote, and he put Oklahoma State No. 4, thereby hurting its chances. As ESPN noted: "Saban was the only one of the six SEC coaches on the panel who didn’t vote Oklahoma State No. 3." Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy did not have a vote this season. That tells you all you need to know about what a joke this system and game is — a coach with a direct interest gets to vote and help decide which teams get to play. Sounds like an election in the old Soviet Union, where the president would win 99.9% of the vote.
This system always pisses me off since college football is such a great sport to watch. Imagine if this year's Oklahoma State-Stanford Fiesta Bowl or Oregon-Wisconsin Rose Bowl were quarterfinal playoff games instead of meaningless exhibitions; we'd be dissecting them days later instead of watching and then moving on. I still don't know why Division II and III can have playoffs and not the BCS schools.
I doubt whether ESPN will discuss Honey Badger's nude photos or what a rockin' body Bama kicked Cade Foster has. But, for me, those are more interesting than the blather Musberger and Herbstreit will dispense.
Part of me wants LSU to win, to shut up the insufferable Alabama fans who act like their team's inclusion in this game is obvious to anyone. Another part of me wants an ugly Bama win and then AP voters keeping LSU No. 1 and having a split championship. Anything to show what a fraud the BCS is.
