Was it just me, or were the BCS games pretty much stinkers? I watched (at least parts) of all four games. They were all decided rather decisively and relatively fast. Illinois had a late comeback to try and close the gap, but Maryland/Colorado/Nebraska were slapped around pretty good. LSU did some slapping until Illinois closed the gap.

I don't think this is what we all have in mind when we think of marquee matchups of the top teams. I am sure that the BCS folks/bowl reps/and big schools are happy with the financials of the games. However, I am reading that fans are starting to vocalize their discontent.

I am not sure that the eight teams were all wrong, but the matchups clearly were. I think that Illinois and Maryland (in particular) were worthy of their spots, but maybe should have played each other. They were both big surprises this year coming from nowhere (sort of) to win their conferences.

I love college sports and support a lot of different schools as a fan. However, the regular season was way more exciting than the bowl season was, and that is unfortunate.

I agree Charlie. The BCS has done nothing to improve college football. The BCS only makes sure that teams run up the score on lesser opponents and that is about it.

Tennessee certainly deserved a spot in one of the four "big" bowls but the SEC champ, the second time around, earned the Sugar Bowl bid.

The other teams did earn their spots in the big bowl games but I would rather that each bowl go after a certain matchup like they did before the years of the BCS.

I would have like to have seen:
Oregon - Miami
Maryland - Illinois
Tennesse - Nebraska
Colorado - Florida

I think with those matchups I might have watched more than one quarter of the game, like I did during the BCS games.

Excerpt from a column in today's Philadelphia Daily News:

[quote] Maybe we could have had the Miami vs. Oregon, Ken Dorsey vs. Joey Harrington shootout that emerged as the obvious No. 1 matchup were there a playoff system in place the way there is for all the rest of the NCAA sports. We could have had three weekends of slashing runs by Clinton Portis.

Isn't there something vastly bogus about the anointed 1-2 teams sitting idle for a month since their regular-season final games?

Shouldn't this have been the climax of three great weekends of college football, beginning with eight quarterfinalists? Didn't we need to see matchups like Miami vs. LSU, Florida vs. Colorado, Oregon vs. Oklahoma and Texas vs. Maryland or Illinois unfold using all the traditional bowl sites?

It is truly amazing that the institutions that have helped make America history's greatest nation can't muster the brain power it takes to figure a playoff system will work if the Old Boys Network of bowl lobbyists and conference presidents are told to get lost.

Instead, they turn what should be something as vital and thrilling as their deservedly famed basketball tournament - March Madness - into a charade in which all the bowls but the last one have completely lost their character and relevance.

Well, the NCAA has reaped the fallow crop it has sown. The average television rating for the six games played on New Year's Day was a lamentable 7.4. That is a shockingly low result on a day when more Americans are at home or in family groups than on any other. What else is there to do but watch football? Anybody care to bet more people were watching "The Sopranos" second season on their new DVD players than South Carolina vs. Ohio State in the Outback Bowl?

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Link to entire article

And guess what? Ratings were down 22 percent...
Ratings story

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: Joe in Philly ]

You'd think that some folks here are under the impression that the BCS is directly responsible for LSU clobbering Illinois, for Florida demolishing Maryland, for Miami killing Nebraska and for Oregon humiliating Colorado.
Sorry folks. I disagree vehemently. You saw a collection of conference champs and two at-larges slugging it out. All of these big time programs earned their place in this fray. What they did once they got there was entirely up to them, not the BCS.
We can all quibble about how "Oregon should have been in the Rose," or "Illinois should have played Maryland."
What's to say that Miami would not have destroyed Oregon? Then everybody would have whined in the opposite direction about "Colorado should have been in the Rose."
And what's to say that the miserable TV ratings wouldn't have been even worse with a Maryland/Illinois matchup? Blech! No way would I watch that!
College football was f**ked up before the BCS. College football is f**ked up with the BCS.
Saying that they should go back to the way it was pre-BCS is just plain asenine. Locking conference champs into specific bowl games and crossing your fingers that #1 and #2 face each other is like counting on "Pick 3" lotto odds.
For all the BCS's flaws, the fact that they are attempting something is better than nothing.

[quote]Originally posted by AU Tiger in LA:
And what's to say that the miserable TV ratings wouldn't have been even worse with a Maryland/Illinois matchup? Blech! No way would I watch that!

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Yet people manage to watch teams like Gonzaga in the basketball tournament. (No slight meant towards Gonzaga. I just wanted to use an example of a school from a smaller conference that most people haven't even heard of.) Why? Because it means something. Win or go home. The bowl games this year were utterly meaningless. I didn't watch one from start to finish. Most of them I didn't see more than 5 minutes of.

[quote]For all the BCS's flaws, the fact that they are attempting something is better than nothing.

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"Damning with faint praise" is what I'm thinking.

[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: Joe in Philly ]