TCU and How the BCS Cartel Lost a College Football Fan For Life

Just to get it right out of the way, I've never been as much a fan of college football as I am of NFL football.

But at one point in my life, it was close. In the years prior to the advent of the BCS, I enjoyed Saturday and Sunday almost equally.

I suppose, in those days, that you would have called me a Michigan fan. But it wasn't Michigan football I enjoyed, before you equate my falling out with college football the decline of Michigan football.

I loved upsets. Forget school pride, tradition, dynasties, and the ridiculously untrue notion that because players are (supposedly) not being paid, they are therefore playing "for the love of the game."

The one thing that college football has the the NFL can't match is the scale of the upsets, because the NCAA does just about everything it can to eliminate parity.

Even today, nothing gets me more excited than seeing some mid-major unknown beat a Top-10 team. They're not just overcoming a more talented team in that game, they're overcoming the system that makes them that way.

One of the best examples of that came against Michigan a few years ago. Even though I was a little upset that Appalachian State beat Michigan, I couldn't help but think, "Wow, this is going to be great for college football."

And so it follows that I have been particularly excited in recent years to see relative unknowns like Boise State, Texas Christian, and Utah gain prominence in recent years as potential underdog contenders to the national crown.

Subsequently, I have been frustrated, annoyed, and disappointed to see said teams repeatedly disrespected by the "cartel" (to use the words of ESPN's Michael Wilbon) known as the BCS.

We all know the arguments for and against teams from the likes of the WAC and Mountain West Conference. I won't restate them here, since you already have your mind made up one way or the other, and that doesn't concern me.

But it seems to me that the NCAA is doing a great job of taking away the greatest thing that sets it apart. And it's starting to do it in transparently shady ways. It's hard not to see the decision on Cam Newton as being extremely agenda-driven.

Sure, maybe Cam himself didn't do anything, but is the NCAA comfortable with setting a precedent of "it's okay for the parents of student-athletes to go pay-for-play with major universities now, as long as we can't prove the kid was directly involved?"

Under normal circumstances, probably not, especially with all the scandal the NCAA has had lately with this sort of thing. This was their chance to send a message, and not just retroactively, like Reggie Bush giving back his Heisman.

They could have shown they were cleaning up their game by punishing someone who, at least by extension, was breaking the rules and still playing college ball.

But they didn't. Because the alternative is giving a small-time school a chance to prove it deserves its unbeaten record, and that, apparently, must be avoided at all costs.

TCU is going to sit on the sidelines of the national title discussion this season, despite winning every one of their regular-season games for two consecutive years (and in 2008, they finished with two losses, both to Top 10 teams). The NCAA has been sitting on storybook endings for years, and they continue to pass on them.

Why? Because the NCAA and the BCS have no interest in football.

Like any good cartel, the BCS knows not to get high on its own supply. If they started concerning itself with trivial things like parity or good football matchups, they would miss out on all the money there is to be made from propping up the same handful of teams from the same four conferences.

Now if you disagree with me at this point, I probably know why. And sure, I'll admit that if you have to pick two teams and only two teams, the ones that make it through the SEC and Pac-10 undefeated are the ones you have to go with, over the one that beat the Mountain West.

But the fact that Oregon and Auburn have run the table and are getting their shot over a potentially deserving mid-major only serves to stoke my anger. For years, we have heard the arguments. The mid-major schools wouldn't be undefeated if they had to play stronger competition.

Never mind Boise beating Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, or Utah humiliating Alabama (which took most of the same roster and won a national championship the following year) in the Sugar Bowl. Never mind the fact that almost all recent evidence points in the opposite direction.

Only in college football can an undefeated team be scoffed at, mocked, and made fun of for being sub-par.

This year was supposed to be different. For most of the season, Boise State and TCU sat in third and fourth. It was almost a given that one of them would get a title shot, and then we would see, once and for all, if David could defeat Goliath.

Instead of having this war of attrition about whether my undefeated trumps your defeated, we would have 60 minutes of tangible proof. Win, and they belong. Lose, and they don't.

I wouldn't even have cared if the chosen mid-major lost by 30. If that happened, at least I would know. I could say to myself, "wow, I guess the difference really is night and day between the mid-majors and the power teams." Argument settled.

Not to be. Not now, presumably not ever.

Even though Boise State lost to Nevada (yet another underrated team), they wouldn't have gotten a shot anyway. If anything, Boise losing kept them from being paired up with TCU in a bowl game for the third consecutive year.

You see, the BCS decided they didn't like their big-money teams getting humiliated in bowl games by mid-majors. They figured they were just letting Oklahoma get fat off an overrated team from a garbage, non-AQ conference.

The win would look better when it came time to convince people they were more worthy of a bowl game with one loss than an undefeated Utah.

So for the past two years, Boise and TCU, both sporting records strong enough to make them unavoidable in the BCS discussion, ended up playing each other, so as not to upset the cartel's big-money clients.

No promoter wants their celebrity prize fighter roughed up on national television by an unglamorous, hard-nosed underdog.

Look what it did to Apollo Creed.

More importantly, the BCS does not want these teams to prove they belong. And right now, they're winning. All of the most powerful teams are moving to bigger conferences in an attempt to gain respectability, just the way the BCS wants it.

A cartel that can't beat down its enemies simply absorbs them, and soon, any mid-major power that wants a title shot will understand that it cannot be done from a mid-major conference.

This is the heart of the problem. In any sport, in any country, with any organization, anywhere in the world, one thing remains constant.

When the season begins, no matter how good or bad your team is, you have a chance to be champions if you do what you're supposed to.

College football is now the exception.

Several years ago, there was outrage over USC going undefeated and not getting a shot in the national championship. They won their bowl game, and the BCS alleviated the controversy be naming USC and LSU co-champions.

If TCU beats Wisconsin/Stanford/whoever in their BCS bowl 70-3, the BCS will alleviate the controversy by sending TCU a free copy of the Sports Illustrated Oregon/Auburn 2010 Champions! Collector's Set.

And so I'm done. I have watched a team go undefeated for two years in a row, and be snubbed, two years in a row. This year, they started the season at No. 6 in the preseason AP poll.

They won their games handily, posted the nation's top defense, and watched every other team in the preseason top 10 lose, only to have No. 11 Oregon and No. 22 Auburn shoot past them.

If a team starts the season ranked sixth and still has absolutely no control whatsoever over their championship hopes, they play a game that I no longer care to watch.

I don't know if there are many like me in this regard, but I'm tired of raging against the system. I just want to enjoy the great game of football, not understand business politics.

This rant is the last thing I have to say on this matter, ever, because I no longer have any confidence in the system to change.

The BCS and the NCAA have not only defeated TCU and Boise, they've defeated the will of this would-be fan. I'm exhausted from rooting for the resistance under a totalitarian regime.

Even though I sort of like Oregon, I won't be able to watch the National Championship game, because I can't afford a new TV.

And that's what I will need after my existing one shows me the game's announcers feeding me the inevitable, "these TRULY ARE the best two teams in college football" line.

I'll believe it when I see it. I'll see it when deserving teams get a fair crack at being considered the best team in the nation.

And the way things are now, I'll never see that.

So from here on, you'll find me on Sundays exclusively, where teams who go undefeated in the regular season are never snubbed for a title shot, and "strength of schedule" is a playoff tiebreaker nobody even knows exists.

I hope this is what the BCS wanted.