If you can, slip into something comfortable. Like just dress socks. Or for you 36-25-34 girls, maybe a little nighty, undergarments optional. Or for you Miley, what they wore before the Forbidden Fruit (not an Elton John joke). And after you do, grab a bottle of your finest $6.99 wine. Just so you can imagine this scenario...(go ahead, put your bunyons up)
It's late in the college football season and UCLA is this year's surprise team. As in, they're ranked as one of three unbeaten teams in college football, #2 at the time, going into their game against 0 loss Southern Cal. In the Harris Poll, SC is ranked #3. In the AP Poll (which I KNOW doesn't BCS count, smartass) they're #2. In the computer rankings, they're #1. But in the Coaches Poll, they're unranked. And when UCLA beats them, they get no more credit for the win than had they beaten Maine. UCLA wins an epic tilt, 27-20. In the last game of the season over their toughest opponent, they drop out of the top 2 in the BCS standings.
Imagine this one...Oregon is one of three teams vying for the second spot in the BCS game. They COULD have been aided by a win over Southern Cal, who's lost only that game all season...and projections show that had that win been calculated, they'd be pushing for the #1 ranking...but Southern Cal, their best win doesn't count.
Carve 2010 on the BCS tombstone, and let Clint Eastwood pour his PBR's out right next to the pool of urine and Hallmark cards from the town necrophiliac right below the "Died on" date. The decision to omit Southern Cal from the Coaches Poll...1/3rd of the BCS equation...was probably the most short sighted and potentially suicidal decision college football has made in the last 50 years. And that counts killing SMU, whom no one actually cares about.
The scenarios above aren't that far fetched. Well, the UCLA thing might be me blowing flute tunes out of my rectum, but it was just to prove a point. A Pac 10 team with Southern Cal on the schedule will be greatly harmed by beating a team that won't count, in spite of the fact that it probably is the most talented team on their schedule. I don't expect much from an outfit that lets Gary Pinkel vote, but how could they have overlooked this?
After all the BCS has been through to convince us it works (like the director of Water World, telling us it was worth seeing more than gouging your eyes out with a pick axe), it seems almost fiction that they could make such an oversight on behalf of an already pathetic Coaches Poll. The same Coaches Poll that stripped transparency, claiming it "caused coaches to vote certain ways." Which was the point. Causing them to vote where something really stupid would draw the ire of the nation. For crissakes, I'm sure glad the Coaches Poll doesn't run the Sex Offender Registry in this country.
"Well, Judge, we don't think the public here deserves to know that Chester likes to touch little boys and then make 3D-Blu Ray out of the film he tapes with them. Instead, how bout we just know between us that ole Ches likes the vienna sausage and keep that to ourselves....?"
I implore the Coaches Poll to rethink their decision on Southern Cal. Not allowing them as a voting option in the poll does nothing to hurt that program anymore than it already has been hurt. You think kids sit around and say "damn, and to think, I came here to see my team's name somewhere in the Coaches Poll under "also receiving votes"?" All it does is hurt the fan base...and plow the Pac 10 when they're not looking. This legitimately could cost the conference a team in the title game. Whereas others get off playing Charleston Southern or UMass, the other 9 members of the Pac 10 get Southern Cal instead, all which will count the same way in the BCS.
Actually, maybe it'd be more fun if Notre Dame was in the discussion. Late in the season, knocked out of a title shot because of a win over their arch rival. And instead, the BCS game is Boise State vs (insert Big East team here, since none of them are watchable). When it could have been the Irish and their Houston sized fan base of fairweather friends. Maybe the BCS would learn its lesson the only way it really cares about...financally. So get it right, BCS, and take the Coaches Poll by the balls here. The stake of the national championship might rest on a team everyone's pretending doesn't exist.