Bill Hancock's BCS Arguments Fall Short Again

Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS, might very well have the worst job in the world. However, he's the gift that keeps on giving for college football writers, as he continues to violate a basic rule of common sense: When you're in a hole, stop digging.

Hancock's most recent attempt to defend the indefensible was made to the Football Writers' Association of America, and reprinted at ESPN.com here.

I'm not the first person to take Hancock's words and dissect them, paragraph by paragraph. Spencer Hall did a great job of doing so with Hancock's previous USA Today column here. 

So, without further adieu, here are Hancock's comments, made on the eve of the BCS Championship game between the University of Oregon and Auburn University, and appropriate responses thereto:

In the past few weeks, I have received dozens of calls and e-mails from folks who have said, "Congratulations & the BCS got it right again."

I'll go out on a limb and guess that few of those "dozens" of calls and e-mails were not from fans of the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs.

Or Stanford.

The BCS uses its smoke-and-mirrors of coaches' polls, "experts'" poll and computer rankings to generate a one-versus-two match up. Then, BCS defenders pat themselves on the back for having No. 1 vs. No. 2 play yet again.

Well, duh, of course they did. That's like buying a toaster and being pleasantly surprised every morning when toast comes out. 

In computer parlance, the BCS standings would be called "garbage in, garbage out," meaning that the end result of a system isn't worth anything if the information fed into the system is unreliable.

Anyone want to stand up for the reliability of the coaches' votes? The Harris poll voters? The computers?

Please, Mr. Hancock, stop insulting the intelligence of college football fans by saying that getting your self-determined No. 1 vs. No. 2 means the BCS got it right. 

The BCS got it right because University of Tulsa student-athletes, from my part of the country, were able to visit the USS Arizona memorial and museum. It was the first trip to Hawaii for many. For some, it will be the only time -- only because of a bowl game.

And, the BCS got it right because Kansas State students were able to visit New York City. Many for the first time and some probably for the only time. Maybe some of us take trips to Times Square for granted, and Yankee Stadium for granted, and we are wrong to do that. The BCS got it right because those students had the experience of a lifetime -- only because of a bowl game.

Pardon me while I squeegee off the layers of patronizing drivel from Hancock on this one.

Look at all those shiny lights and sunny beaches those poor hicks from hell-holes like Oklahoma and Kansas got to experience!

If it wasn't for the benevolence of the BCS, those refugee-like kids would never have seen such wonders! Why isn't the New Era Pinstripe Bowl being nominated for a Nobel prize, fer cryin' out loud?

Of course, as the muckety-mucks from the BCS remind us when it is convenient for them, the BCS only represents four bowls and is independent of the bowl system.

There are certainly no checks being written by the BCS—an entity which, at times, argues it doesn't even exist—to support the fine humanitarian work being done by the AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl, ensuring that the underprivileged college football players don't go their whole lives without seeing the wonders of Shreveport, La.

Of course, we know that some people want something different. I appreciate their feelings. But I have to believe that most of those people don't realize they would snatch those opportunities away from the students. But please don't kid yourselves -- it would happen.

Name a sport with a multi-team playoff that also has a second vibrant neutral-site post-season event. Even though a few bowls probably would survive in a playoff era, certainly the athletes in the playoff would not have a bowl experience. A great part of college tradition would die, and that would be a shame.

Gosh, Bill, thanks for appreciating our feelings. And thanks for acknowledging that "a few" bowls would "probably" survive in a playoff era.

To my knowledge, that's the first time you have at least acknowledged reality, at least a little bit. But I have yet to hear a coherent argument from Hancock or any other BCS defender as to why the great majority of bowls wouldn't continue in a "playoff era."

We've had an explosion of bowl games in the last few years. Why? Because ESPN and other networks have a lot of programming time in the weeks after the college football season to fill, and it seems that people like watching college football.

Having a playoff would not change any of those dynamics. 

So, rest assured, Bill. Even with a playoff, those poor, oppressed youth from Miami or Syracuse will still get those great, life-affirming, not-at-all-done-for-television-revenue experiences of a minor bowl game.

The teams would fly in for their games and they'd fly out afterward. For the 7 or 15 schools that lose, their season would be over. No celebration. No bowl-week memories.

Let me get this straight. Teams that are in bowls now don't really care about winning or losing, just having those "bowl-week memories?"

That might be news to all the fans that shell out big bucks to help support these great humanitarians in oddly-colored blazers running the bowls. (Although, if you watched Nebraska play in this year's Holiday Bowl, you might be convinced Hancock was at least partly right).

And teams that won a playoff game wouldn't celebrate? The idea behind avoiding a playoff is to protect the delicate sensibilities of top-level athletes who came to school for competition? Heck, if that's the case, let's just stop keeping score all together and just have the teams share orange slices at midfield after the game.

And I certainly understand the lure of filling out a bracket, kicking up your feet with a bag of Tostitos and a jar of queso and enjoying the excitement of a four-week playoff from your sofa at home.

Your corporate masters—I'm sorry, I meant your sponsorship partners—at Frito-Lay are well-pleased with your product placement. But you left some out. The script was:

"... kicking up your feet with a bag of Tostitos, which you bought on your Discover card, while watching the game on your Vizio television, in your house insured by Allstate ..."

But, it's really all about the kids, and has nothing to do at all with corporate shilling, right, Bill?

And what about the many avid fans who love going to bowl games? Many plan their family vacations around their school's trip to a bowl. Would they go to Miami one week, then to Pasadena, then to Phoenix?

Well, there's a whole bunch of proposals that involve the early playoff rounds being at the home field of the higher-seeded team.

Don't you think those avid fans—and the bars and restaurants in those college towns—might enjoy getting to see their beloved teams in a playoff game in their home stadia?

Can you imagine someone 60 years from now, telling a stranger that his granddad played in the 2025 first-round game between Troy and Wisconsin in Madison?

Can you imagine someone 60 years from now, telling a stranger that his granddad played on a 6-6 team in the 2010 New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque, and lost by 28 points?

In a playoff, there would be no week in the sun.

Huh? There would be at least one week in the sun for everyone in the playoffs. And some would get two. Or three. Or four. Horrors.

But you know that words like cartel, commies, corruption and criminal when used to describe the BCS event are just plain silly. At its heart, the BCS is a group of schools collaboratively doing what is in the best interest of their students. And for the game.

This actually comes close to some truth-telling by Hancock. The BCS is a group of schools doing what is in the best interest of those schools.

Right now, the schools in conferences that automatically qualify for the BCS (AQ) have a tremendous advantage over the ones that don't (non-AQ), both in terms of money and prestige.

It's definitely in the best interest of the AQ schools to make sure they maintain that advantage, and that the non-AQ schools don't gain that advantage.

Why do you think TCU is going to play in the Big East, alongside such natural fits as West Virginia and Connecticut?

So it can be in an AQ conference, and be one of the haves in college football.

So spare me the "TCU isn't complaining about being left out this year" comments. Of course they're not—by joining an AQ conference like the Big East, they've bought into the system and are now a "have." They're not going to complain about an unfair system that they're about to take advantage of.

The bottom line is this: If your school is reaping the benefit of an unfair system, of course it's in your school's best interest to maintain that unfair advantage. But spare me the nonsense about it being in the game's best interest.

And, for goodness sake, what kind of corrupt cartel would create an arrangement where TCU can win the Rose Bowl? The Horned Frogs played in the Granddaddy of Them All solely BECAUSE of the BCS.

And they didn't get a chance to compete for a national title on the field as a reward for their undefeated season, as they would in every other organized sport, solely because of the BCS.

Oh, and Bill, you forgot to say "presented by Vizio" after your Rose Bowl reference. Expect a memo in the morning from your corporate masters—I'm sorry, I meant your sponsorship partners.

And Boise State was THIS close to playing in tonight's game. The BCS is fair, and this year -- more than ever -- proves it.

And if Boise State actually did play in the BCS Championship, then Oregon or Auburn would have been frozen out. And TCU would have gone to Las Vegas on December 22 instead of playing for all the Vizios in Pasadena.

Would the BCS have "gotten it right" then?

TCU won every game they played and didn't get to play for a national title. If Boise State would have beaten Nevada, then two teams would have won every game they played and would not get to compete for a national title.

Out of those four undefeated teams, two would have been selected based on subjective voting, like the Bulgarians voting for artistic interpretation in ice dancing. That's totally fair, right?

You know the numbers, but it is important to place them on the table once again: the top two teams met in bowl games eight times in 58 years before the BCS. Since then? 13 of 13 by BCS standards, and 10 of 13 by the media poll, including the last seven years in a row. Those facts are impossible to ignore.

We've discussed the "garbage in, garbage out" nature of the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the BCS rankings.

But it's nice of Hancock to remind us that there has been a lack of consensus in the short lifespan of the BCS, so much so that the AP disassociated itself from what it saw as a corrupt and indefensible system, and the coaches' poll was rigged to mandate the final No. 1 rated team would be the BCS champion.

That rigging of the coaches' poll, of course, was done in response to the split national title after the 2003-04 season. How "right" did the BCS get it that season?

Those facts also are impossible to ignore, Bill.

And please hear this: the BCS has sparked the rise of new competitors who have stormed into the upper level of college football over the past few years. Boise State, TCU, Hawaii, Central Florida, Oklahoma State, Connecticut, Oregon, Nevada, Cincinnati, Texas Tech, Louisville, Stanford and Wake Forest are just a few.

Interesting. Hancock cites, I think, the teams that have played in BCS games that you wouldn't think of otherwise (although why he includes Central Florida in that list escapes me, as the Golden Knights are still without a BCS appearance) as proof that the system works.

But lets take Cincinnati as a test case.

At the end of the 2009 season, the Bearcats went 12-0, and were frozen out of a chance to play for a national title in favor of 13-0 Alabama and 12-0 Texas.

After the season, but before their Sugar Bowl appearance, Cincinnati head coach Brian Kelly left to become head coach at Notre Dame. Cincinnati got drilled by Florida in Tim Tebow's last college game, and Cincinnati went 4-8 the following year.

If Cincinnati were getting ready for a playoff game, with a chance to win a national title as a result of their perfect season, would Kelly have left before the game? Heck, would he have left at all, knowing he had a program in Cincinnati that could compete for a national title?

Hard to say. But it's without question that a team like Cincinnati simply doesn't play on a level playing field with a team like Notre Dame.

Kelly's decision to leave the Bearcats in the lurch before the biggest game in school history was made at least in part because Kelly knew, under the BCS, he would have a chance to compete for a national title at Notre Dame.

He wouldn't at Cincinnati. 

As a result, Cincinnati was hamstrung by its coach departing weeks before the biggest game in school history, and Cincinnati was unable to build on its success.

So the structural inequity built into the framework of the BCS worked to ensure that a school like Cincinnati couldn't rise to the level of a school like Notre Dame. The system worked to make sure the haves protected their power, at the expense of the have-nots.

In other words, the BCS got it right yet again.

Oh, by the way, at the end of that 2009 season, both Boise State and TCU were undefeated, and yet again did not get a chance to play for a national title in the super-fair BCS system.

And then, in the wild party after the game, one group of athletes will hold the crystal football aloft. They will be celebrating for the sheer joy of reaching a lifetime goal.

While another group of athletes, who accomplished just as much and are just as deserving, won't even get the opportunity to celebrate that sheer joy, solely to protect the power and prestige of the current powers-that-be.

If that's fair, if that's in the best interest of the game of college football, if that's best for all the student-athletes who play the game, then I'm the queen of France.

Keep talking, Bill. College football fans have you figured out.

The fans of this great sport are on to your scam, and won't tolerate the injustice you are perpetrating. Congress is on to you, and your anti-trust cartel.

In other words, keep digging. Eventually, you'll get the hole deep enough to bury this entire BCS monstrosity and give us the playoff the fans, the athletes and the sport deserve.

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