Tom Dienhart Predicts Sooners in BCS Championship

[GreenSooner]

Tom Dienhart's latest Sporting News "Blog Fog" (http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaaf/news;_ylt=AnQbuakwCS6BGyBENNFRwXccvrYF?slug=blogfo gsendoutsearchpart&prov=tsn&type=lgns) starts badly...


1. Are you enjoying this "playoff"? That's what has been going on all season, people. And, it has been terrific. Admit it. Embrace it. Love it. March Madness is three weeks. This is three glorious months.
Well it's been glorious, alright. But it would have been more glorious with a playoff system at the end. And try telling unbeaten-but-not-#1 KU that every game is a playoff!

Of course Dienhart more or less admits this in his second point...


2. What's the $64,000 question? If Kansas finishes unbeaten -- and Oregon and LSU win out -- will the Jayhawks leap one to earn a spot in the BCS title game? Fascinating.
Gaaah! If there's any question whether or not an undefeated team from a BCS conference makes the BCS title game over any once defeated team from a BCS conference every game is NOT a playoff. I'm so friggin' sick of BCS apologists.

(takes deep breath)

But we're stuck with the BCS this year (and for the foreseeable future) and Dienhart's column picks up as it goes along...


9. Am I the only one who feels somehow, some way, Oklahoma is going to wind up in the BCS title game?
You most certainly are not, Tom. You may be an idiot about the BCS system, but you have good instincts about who'll end up on top!

And I gotta agree with this, too...


17. Give up 76 one week; score 73 the next? Way to go, Bill Callahan. But, you still can't keep your job.
:D

[rubyspirit]

Every game IS a playoff. Get use to it.

[oudivesherpa]

If the way we played against Baylor on D is any indication, things don't bode well for the Sooners against Tech Saturday. This game has trap written all over it. However, we should still be in the Big XII title game with a win over Aggie-Lite.

[GreenSooner]

Every game IS a playoff. Get use to it.
If KU isn't #1, then apparently none of their games were playoffs, 'cause they won them all. And the losses by anyone ranked ahead of them weren't playoffs, either.

I'll admit that there's a real argument lurking in the every-game-is-a-playoff notion. The real argument here is that individual regular season games count for more under the present system than they would under a playoff system. Unlike the every-game-is-a-playoff claim, this is actually true.

However, unlike every-game-is-a-playoff (which would be a potentially powerful argument if true), this real argument would require defenders of the present system to quantify how much less games would count.

To get down to brass tacks: it would be tragic if regular season football games were like regular season NBA games--or even like regular season college basketball games--in their importance. But if they were like regular season NFL games, it wouldn't be so bad. And since there are fewer regular season games and a much smaller percentage of teams make the playoffs, there's good reason to think they'd count a lot more than regular season NFL games.

But in fact, we don't have to speculate. We can look at the Football Championship Subdivision of Division I (i.e. what used to be called Division I-AA). Have regular season games lost their meaning for those teams? I don't think so. So few teams make the playoffs, that every game is still crucial.

Or to give another example, look at how much regular season games continue to count in seasons (like last year) in which OU is out of the running for a BCS championship, but still in the hunt for a Big XII championship.

Sorry to go on at such length, but I think an honest discussion about how much games count now, and how much they'd count under a playoff system, is a lot more interesting than the every-game-is-a-playoff soundbite.