Welcome Back, BCS Penalties

It took until mid-October, but the BCS penalty has returned in full form. Fitting since the first BCS rankings will come out on Sunday that the BCS penalty shows its head on Saturday.

What is the BCS penalty you ask? It's when a referee or official makes a sketchy call for the benefit of a top-level BCS team. Almost always, this takes place in a tight game where the highly ranked team is struggling and barely leading or even behind.

You know it when you see it, since the announcers question the legitimacy of the call, and you're sitting at home wondering why that awful call was just made. The BCS penalty is the answer.

When a system is in place that basically benefits two conferences and about five other schools, those schools have to be protected from losses. For example today, a loss by Florida would have been devastating to their BCS title changes. Let me rephrase that, it would have made their path more difficult.

Florida lost at home last year to Mississippi and it didn't make much of a difference. After all, Florida is in the SEC, one of the two conferences the BCS structure has to protect.

The Big 12 is the other, of course. Losses don't matter nearly as much as they do to Mountain West or Big 12 teams not named Ohio State or Big East teams.

Think about the storyline and what the experts will say. Florida struggled but came out on top and are still in prime position for the BCS title game, even if they fall behind Alabama.

Texas struggled against a beaten-up Oklahoma team with a backup quarterback and they're still in line for the title game.

Boise State plays a close game against Tulsa and analysts state how they have no shot. After watching those three teams play this week, I'm telling you that Boise State has a really good shot to beat both of them.

Arkansas played a very strong defensive game, but offensively they couldn't pass the ball except for one long touchdown pass. This is where I sensed the BCS calls coming into play.

On the touchdown, the booth had the referee review whether it was an Arkansas touchdown or not. I can see that Greg Childs probably fumbled before he reached the end zone, except one small problem. Childs recovered the ball in the end zone.

What were they reviewing? Any conclusion they came to was a touchdown. The next drive was where the BCS penalties came through.

Florida was driving with a first-and-10 at the Arkansas 36, Tebow threw a pass to the end zone. Now the Arkansas defender didn't turn around to look for the ball, but then again, he didn't touch the receiver.

Pass interference was called on the play. He obviously was called for taking up space on a very bleh call on a play that happens all the time and is mostly called good coverage.

The next play was the awesome BCS penalty. Tebow throws a pass out to the right and the pass is complete, and then a personal foul penalty is called on Arkansas. A Florida lineman was running towards the Arkansas defensive lineman near the end of the play and the Florida lineman was going to block.

The Arkansas lineman saw this and hit the Florida player and knocked him to the ground. Blocking is now considered a personal foul.

On a drive where Florida desperately needed to score to tie the game, the referees gave them 30 yards on bad calls. This same scenario will happen in at least five more games this year.

Florida is the better team, and Arkansas probably didn't deserve to win with two missed field goals and a horrible passing game that failed to take advantage of four turnovers.

Florida is a good enough team to where they don't need help by the officials to win. Yet they got the calls that were bad.

If the NCAA wants to claim that this BCS system is the fairest system to determine a national champion, the least they could do is provide fairness in the games leading up to the title game.

Arkansas had 10 penalties, Florida had three, and when Florida needed to show their excellence, the referees handed them a bone. How does that help anyone?

In the comments, please provide other examples of BCS penalties in recent years. I know their have been plenty of them, but I forget them so quickly because I know the system is so slanted and worthless.