The BCS Controversy Can Be Placed Squarely on the SEC's Shoulders

Please SEC, use your non-conference schedule to give mid-majors a loss, like all other BCS conference schools do, instead of playing FCS cupcakes.

Legend has it that after an embarrassing 1984 college football season where the virtually unheard of Brigham Young University went 13-0, and by beating Michigan in the Holiday bowl, was voted NCAA National Champions. Southern school athletic directors began brainstorming for ideas to stop this insanity.

The solution they came up with is now known as the BCS. It's grand design is to keep the attention away from up and coming college athletic programs and therefore the money from college football right where it has been for the previous 50 years.

The so-called BCS power conferences completely ignore certain parts of the country in favor of coastal population centers where media dollars are the greatest.

It was a pretty good plan, if it's true, and has worked quite well. Even if it is just a rumor, it has had the same result.

Recently, however, there have been some chinks in the BCS armour. Cries from all over the nation about uninteresting bowl match-ups and biased ranking procedure have hurt the credibility of their crowned national champions.

2009 is shaping up to be the worst offender of all with at least four teams with a legitimate claim to the No. 1 ranking, and two non-BCS conference teams ranked in the top 12 not invited to play at all.

The most illustrative, however, is an undefeated No. 6 Utah team pounding a highly regarded Alabama team in the Sugar Bowl.

Sports media cover-ups of this scandalous SEC failure have been tediously predictable.

Among them are that Alabama players were so disappointed not to be in the National Championship and just couldn't motivate themselves to try harder. How about being embarrassed by a mid-major? Is that enough motivation?

Another excuse I have heard is that the coach of the year, Nick Saban, failed to scheme and prepare properly. The players and the program though...are obviously way better than any Mountain West team.

And finally, Alabama is just not the same team without one offensive lineman that the coach, unfortunately, suspended.

Reality is that Utah was also disappointed not to be in the National Championship game, again, after another undefeated season. They were NOT just happy to be included, like the last kid picked on the playground.

Utah's 2004 undefeated season was credited to their "genius coaching" by Urban Meyer, who promptly left for Florida, enticed by the same things the BCS promised it's schools, attention and money.

I wonder which BCS failure is going to hire Kyle Whittingham to turn around their program next season. Would Catholics hire a Mormon?

As for the suspended offensive lineman, Nick Saban is a proven liar and unscrupulous recruiter and coach.

If Little Nicky, as I like to call him, thought for a second that by suspending one player it would affect the Crimson Tide's chance of winning the Sugar Bowl, he would have swept it under the rug until the game was over. Typical arrogant overconfidence from the worst NFL coach ever.

As I have written in previous articles, there is a solution to all of this controversy, and it is NOT a playoff.

Just make sure that stronger mid-majors have a game or two during the regular season against a quality BCS school, preferably from the SEC or Big 12. The Pac-10 is trying its best, but they keep losing.

SEC athletic directors need to get over their Bear Bryant mentality of only scheduling teams they are certain to beat for non-conference and bowl games.

FCS games should diminish an FBS team's ranking whether they win or not due to a week of dodging real competition.

This will usually give teams like Utah and Boise State a regular-season loss so they will not have a legitimate claim to being the best team in the nation and as a bonus, it may expose overrated BCS teams like Alabama before they steal a Sugar Bowl spot from someone else.