Not So Fast My Friend: Why Lee Corso Gets Boise State in BCS Game Debate Wrong

Lee Corso has to be one of, if not the most, idiotic of all sports commentators. Few have the acumen to make Joe Morgan look brilliant, but if there's someone who does, it's Lee Corso.

Whether it's spending the entire evening after LSU won the National Championship game talking about how USC should be the champion because they beat a team (Illinois) that beat the team (OSU) that LSU beat to win the National Championship (I'm not making it up, it really happened), he's making the sort of moronic argument he made today on ESPN's "College Gameday."

Corso argued, and again, I'm not making this up, that Boise State should not be allowed to play in the National Championship game because they don't play enough BCS schools; they play only two. Earth to Lee, they aren't in a BCS conference.

The nature of college football is that teams spend the majority of their season playing teams in their own conference. I know this is complicated logic, but it's valid. Try to wrap your brain around it, Lee. Boise State isn't playing a schedule full of BCS teams because they aren't in a BCS conference. In a word, "duh." 

Looking deeper into Lee's philosophy, we find that those two schools are Virginia Tech and Oregon State, teams who are very much possibly going to win their BCS conferences. Add to this that essentially the same team beat last year's Mountain West champion as well as the eventual Pac-10 champ.

They aren't merely beating BCS teams, they are beating the best BCS teams, and they are beating the best teams from other conferences as well. How many teams from BCS schools can possibly boast at the end of the season that they've beaten five conference champs in the last two seasons? I know that the Oregon State game is yet to be played, but that doesn't negate the discussion. 

A large part of the problem lies in distinguishing between schools as "BCS" and "non-BCS." Shocking news for you here, some BCS schools are better than non-BCS schools.

Corso's logic would have win at Washington State as a better win than Nevada, while Nevada is clearly a much tougher game. I am not arguing that a WAC schedule is tougher than a Pac-10 schedule, but I will say that it's misleading to merely lump things into BCS and non-BCS categories.

There are at least six teams on the Boise State schedule that could be playing in Bowl Games, Virginia Tech, Wyoming, Oregon State, Fresno State, and Nevada. Sure, only two os those games are against BCS teams, but the schedule is not as weak as a "non-BCS" dismissal might indicate. 

The argument highlights the problem with the NCAA system, though. In spite of having a program that has at the very least earned the right to play against the best over the last several seasons, Boise State has problems scheduling elite teams to play.

It's expensive to travel to Idaho, and the fans aren't likely to follow. It's an intimidating place to play with it's blue field and passionate fans. If you win, you were "supposed" to and get little credit. If you lose, it's a strike against you regardless of how good the Broncos are. Losing to them will keep you out of the National Championship, but beating them won't help your argument very much. 

For BCS schools the prospect of going on the road and losing to a non-BCS school spells doom for their National Championship hopes. There is high risk and little reward for the schools who venture into Idaho, and now, after last week's performance, "neutral" sites (which aren't really neutral) are going to be harder to come by as well.

The more Boise State proves itself a worthy opponent, the less teams with championship hopes are going to want to do with them. As a result the team with the longest winning streak in the country, and who might possibly beat two champions of BCS conferences, could be locked into No. 3 in the rankings all season because of their conference, not their quality of play. 

This is the best argument for a playoff. I understand there are arguments about how far you extend it, and that no matter how far you go down, it will not be enough. First it will be a plus-one, then an eight-team playoff and so on. Someone will always be on the outside looking in, and that's always going to leave one group of fans complaining.

Even considering that, though, there seems that there has to be some middle ground between a 94-team playoff and locking out a team from the national championship that hasn't lost in two years based on their conference though.