(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

You know that old saying about the only sure things in life being taxes and death?  I think we need to add a third one because every year since its inception, the BCS has caused nothing but controversy.  Unfortunately for the sport, there has been so much off-field controversy in college football recently that instead of talking about how much the BCS sucks, we’re stuck talking about grand juries and “moral obligations,” which is not fun because that is some serious stuff that makes you want to throw up.  But it doesn’t erase the fact that BCS royally screwed another group of fine football teams from proving themselves worthy of hoisting that crystal football this year (the coolest trophy in sports, I think).

And all of this screwing over has now led to the rise of the superconference (awesome movie title).  What started with Nebraska flipping two birds to the state of Texas in summer 2010 has now snowballed into teams from all across the country throwing things like “tradition” and “geographic sense” to the wind in favor of some cold hard cash and a rousing round of million dollar musical chairs.

For those unfamiliar with the situation, here’s a quick rundown:

• Nebraska left the Big 12 for the Big 10, giving the Big 10 12 teams
• Colorado also left the Big 12 for the Pac 10, giving the Big 12 10 teams
• Utah left the Mountain West (MWC) for the Pac 10 to make the Pac 12
• The MWC said, “Fine, we’ll take the better BCS buster Boise State and then we’ll have them, TCU, and BYU!  We totally deserve an automatic bid over those losers from the Big East!”
• The Big East said, “Hey, TCU want an actual AQ bid AND a stupid easy schedule?  Also money?”  TCU said yes and joined the Big East.
• BYU said, “I was part of this conference before it was cool.  Now it’s so mainstream.  Later guys,” and became an “independent” school.
• Boise State showed up and said “WTF man?!  Now there are fewer teams in the league then when I signed on…I’m leaving.  Who wants me?”
• Meanwhile, Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State threatened to leave the Big 12 for the Pac 12 to make the Pac 16.  They didn’t.
• Texas A&M, upset for being dumped by the other Texas big boys told all her friends she didn’t want to go with those schools anyway because she was now dating the super-hot SEC and he was the “one” and didn’t care what happened to the Big 12 anymore (while eating a carton of ice cream and watching rom-coms).  The SEC denied this relationship for a year.
• Fast forward to 2011 and, in the north, Pitt and Syracuse dumped the Big East for the ACC
• Texas A&M joined the SEC leaving the Big 12 with 9 teams.
• Missouri said, “I know a sinking ship when I see one, later guys,” and joined the SEC as well…leaving the Big 12 with 8 teams (retro!).
• TCU said the same about the Big East and left before it ever joined to join the Big 12, 10, 9, 8, 9!
• West Virginia left the Big East for the Big Conference With A Number That Makes Little Sense Anymore (12) giving said conference 10 teams.
• The Big EAST adds BOISE STATE (not east), SAN DIEGO STATE (still not east), SMU, Houston (both in Texas so they’re east of San Diego, getting better), and Central Florida (yay!).

Not a popular accessory amongst Big East presidents

And all of that happened in about 20 months.

Honestly, this is becoming absurd and there has to be a better way.  If we’re going to get rid of the conferences as we know it, we might as well blow up the whole BCS system and start over.  Because, let’s be serious here, if people are going to complain about athletes not graduating or taking extra benefits on the side because they can’t afford things because they can’t get a job due to the time commitment, adding in 4 hour plane rides every week for football seems a little hypocritical.  So, let’s dump a system that is built for a privileged few with no hope for outsiders to make a dent for one that keeps the powerful happy but makes it possible for the minnows of the football world to rise up and get that pretty glass football.

I propose a new system based on the promotion and relegation idea used in European soccer leagues because that is the best way to:

• Make the games on the field matter for every school every week
• Give every school the opportunity to ACTUALLY compete for a national championship
• Decide the champion on the field by competition, not a computer

Stay with me, this could get kind of crazy:

First, we have a top division, the Premier League if you will.  This is a group of 20 schools that will be competing for the national championship for that year.  Why 20?  Well, it just so happens that the current system functions pretty much the same way; of the last nine BCS champs, only last season’s Auburn started the year outside the preseason top 20.  So pretty much before anyone plays a down, some writers and coaches have already decided who is going be able to play for the title.  My system does the same thing but rather than use someone’s opinion, it uses your previous season’s performance.  If you want to play in the big time, you have to earn it.  (Note: I know of one criticism you have already and I’ll address it later…sit tight.)

Twenty is also a good number because you split that into two groups of 10, aka. the optimal conference size for fairness and flexibility.  Why?  Because everyone can play everyone once (9 games) to effectively eliminate the strength of schedule issue AND, that still leaves room for some non-premiership games (in case your in-state rivals aren’t part of the party…like us and Tech), but those non-PL games don’t count towards the PL standings.  So here’s how this would look next year based on this year’s final results:

Look at that!  Who would not want to watch those matchups each week?  Pretty great, huh?  BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!  See the lines in there?  The top line represents the teams that get to play in the 8-team playoff for the national championship (even more awesome games) and teams below the bottom line get dropped for the following season (the order based on wins this year, just for this hypothetical).

So of the 20 teams that get to play, the six that fared the worst against the other top teams get dropped for some fresh blood.  What does that mean?  It means that, even with two losses, the playoffs aren’t out of reach for a team and, even if they are, those bottom teams are going to fight to the death to stay up.  But best of all, NO MORE OPINIONS!  If you don’t have the wins against the quality competition, you lose.  Good day, sir.

I can hear you saying, “but what about the 100 other teams out there?”  Well my friend, I’ve taken care of those too.  100 divided by five is (gasp!) 20!  My favorite number for this!  So, let’s move everyone else into the geographically based “conferences” and see what happens.  Spoiler alert: more brilliance.

Ready for this?  Same number of games as the top division (9 games against your group, 3 games outside that don’t count towards rankings but could count towards tie-breakers) with the number 1 team in both sides playing each other in a “conference championship” type game, winner getting promoted.  How’s that for a weekend of football?  Heck, you could even have another two games that weekend from the top division for the last playoff spot from each side.  AND almost every rivalry is kept intact since rivalries are typically held between schools that are close to each other.  I told you, brilliance.

Now, the math-savvy amongst the group will have noticed that there’s still one promotion spot left unclaimed.  What does that mean?  More drama!  See those bolded teams up there? (If you can’t, they’re Georgia Tech, West Virginia, Florida State, and Texas…go to the eye doctor.)  Those are the best 4 teams that didn’t get to play for their “conference” championship so they play in a two round playoff for the last promotion spot.  That way, if one division is stacked for some reason, they can still send two teams to the top flight.  This would be going on along side the National Title Playoffs, so there would be SO much entertaining football going on right about now, instead of really crappy bowls that no one cares about.

Speaking of the stupid pointless bowls, they’d get to stay!  Seriously.  Any team that doesn’t make either playoff and is over .500 would be eligible for a bowl.  They have no bearing on anything now and they wouldn’t in this setup either.  I really don’t get how this is so hard to fix for real people.

Time to hit at some criticisms:

What about all the teams in the middle?  They have no incentive to keep playing.

True, but what incentive do they have now?  Once you hit six wins but have 2-3 losses, you aren’t playing for much other than a bit more money in the bowl…which the players won’t receive anyway so I hardly think that influences their play, but I digress.  And even then, the geographically structured conferences ensures for some bad blood to come out, so who wouldn’t love to screw over their rival’s promotion chances?  I think it’s a non-issue because it’s a non-issue with the current system.  Next!

This is really complicated.

Not really.  Win, and you’re rewarded.  Lose, you’re punished.  If anything, compared the current setup, this is far more transparent.  No one knows how complicated the BCS is because no one knows the exact formula.  It’s a secret.  It could be rooms of supercomputers crunching line upon line of data…or it could be some kid on his Leapster spitting out these rankings, we don’t know (I think it’s the latter…that would be funny).

"Hahaha! You made a team that didn't win its division play for the national title?!" "I know! Let's think of more crazy things!"

What if a team is only really good for one year but they’re really really good that year? (ex. Auburn 2010)

Well, Auburn could have been really really good this year too because Newton forfeited his final year of eligibility to declare for the draft.  Had he not done that, they might have won it this year too.

Basically, college football is not college basketball.  You can’t pull a Calipari and go get three freshmen who are really good and suddenly dominate games.  Football requires so many players that a recruiting class of 5 blue chippers isn’t likely to take you to the top immediately; you need to wait for the returns.  Cam Newton was a little different and, frankly, very rare.  He wasn’t a freshman; he was a juco transfer, so he had substantial experience.  Guys like him don’t come around very often…and they come even less often as game-ready as he was.  That was a bit of a freak occurrence.

In short (because this is a long article), he didn’t make their defense better, their receivers faster, or their o-line stronger.  He was the final piece of their puzzle that was already in place and there may have been enough there to sneak into the PL for his year.

In reality though, my beautiful solution will never happen and that’s sad because all other college sports are getting totally marginalized just so the biggest schools make a few more million bucks from playing football.  Rivalries, the biggest asset college athletics has, are being thrown out the window for money that, realistically, these major universities don’t need.  As a fan who has gone through this conference expansion thing already and seen the effects, I can honestly say I don’t like it.  I miss my two hoops games a year against UNC, I miss laughing at Tech because they played in the Big East, and I miss conference names that actually made sense.  The madness needs to stop…that’s reserved for March only.

What I have here are a sort of power rankings for major conference teams as well as some notes and musings I’ve had after watching most of these teams play.  Basically, it’s a cheat sheet for those of you who have been too busy to watch up to this point and need to know who’s good and who isn’t.  The power rankings are done with no subjective information whatsoever; the only inputs are Points per Possession Differential (how many more points you score when you have the ball relative to your opponents) and Strength of Schedule, so it shows who is playing the best against the best competition right now.  Simple, right?  Here are the rankings including games on Jan. 22:

1. Ohio State  .7325
2. Pittsburgh  .6940
3. Kansas  .6920
4. Duke  .6844
5. Texas  .6795
6. Kentucky  .6727
7. Notre Dame  .6687
8. Vanderbilt  .6657
9. Villanova  .6643
10. Texas A&M  .6626
11. Purdue  .6624
12. Syracuse  .6592
13. Marquette  .6484
14. Connecticut  .6477
15. Washington  .6436
16. Florida  .6424
17. Wisconsin  .6392
18. North Carolina  .6389
19. Arizona  .6376
20. Baylor  .6361
21. Maryland  .6359
22. Cincinnati  .6350
23. West Virginia  .6350
24. Virginia Tech  .6230
25. Minnesota  .6217

Just for fun, here’s the Bottom 10 major conference teams (1 is the worst).

1. Auburn  .4607
2. Wake Forest  .4670
3. DePaul  .4845
4. Texas Tech  .4886
5. Arizona State  .4972
6. Oklahoma  .5045
7. LSU  .5112
8. Mississippi State  .5129
9. Oregon State  .5211
10. Oregon  .5228

Some notes:

After watching Maryland, FSU, and our guys play Duke over the last few weeks, I’d have to say I am not impressed with the Blue Devils.  Yes, they are up at No. 4 in the rankings but I feel like they are a very beatable team.  Much like last year, they lack athleticism and depth inside (Mason Plumblee has been atrocious since Kyrie Irving went down), which means they rely heavily on jump shots.  Granted, they may have four of the best shooters in the country (Dawkins, Curry, Smith, and Singler) but if two or more of them aren’t hitting one night, they’re in trouble.  Of course, I said the exact same thing last year and they went and won the National Championship, so what do I know?  And, if Irving comes back and plays this season, completely disregard the entire paragraph.  I never wrote it.

Up until their nail-biter with Illinois on Saturday, Ohio State was the top offensive team in the country and the seventh-best defensive team.  From what I’ve seen of them, they are a legit title contender and I feel like a team like that would give a team like Duke some serious problems.  Freshman Jared Sullinger is a man-child in the post but they also have the ability to just kill you from the outside if you try to clog the lane against him.  Their game against Purdue next week will be the game that decides the winner of the Big Ten regular season and should be a nasty defensive struggle (just like every other Big Ten game).

As Ohio State is to good, Wake Forest is to absolutely atrocious.  Talk about a major fall from grace.  Remember two years ago?  If you don’t, Wake was ranked number 1 in the nation for a stretch and earned a three-seed in the NCAA tournament (yes, I know they lost to Cleveland State but Wake was still really talented).  Now?  There’s a legitimate chance they could go 0-16 in the conference after performances like losing 74-39 at Georgia Tech last week.  And people were shocked when they fired Dino Gaudio?

Some more teams who were recently very very good and now are very very bad:

• Arizona State (No. 5 in the Bottom 10) – Finished second in the Pac-10 last year with 12 conference wins and two years ago, finished 19^th in the country.

• Oklahoma (No. 6) – Two years ago, they had some guy named Blake Griffin who won the player of the year, earned a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament, and made it to the Elite Eight.  And we were seriously thinking about hiring their coach, Jeff Caple.

• Texas Tech (No. 4) – Under Bobby Knight, these guys were respectable and normally in the Top 25.  Under his son, Pat, they’re residing in the basement of the Big 12.  Hopefully Bobby hasn’t broken anything important at ESPN watching that team.

Welcome back St. John’s!  The former NYC power school has finally awoken from a near 20-year slumber (Seriously, can you ever remember them being good?  Neither can I) and is poised to make some noise in a loaded Big East conference.  I feel like sports are always better when the historic, legendary teams are playing well…it’s more fun when you beat them that way rather than them just being bad.

As far as our beloved Hoos, I’ve come up with a term to describe our team: frustratingly competitive.  We are good enough to give anyone a game every night, but we don’t quite have enough talent and experience to win many of those.  Don’t get me wrong, to see our team be competitive every game is awesome and, two years ago, that’s all anyone at this university could ask for.  But it does stink to lose games when you’re up 10 to UNC and Duke…those would be nice wins.  And it hurts even more that Mike Scott isn’t even playing in these games (if he had played against UNC, I am positive we would have won).  Still, most teams in the conference are right at our level, which will make the games fun and competitive and, for the first time in four years, I am really excited about the direction of our basketball team.  Let’s go Hoos!

NC State

Last Season:

Overall: 20-16

ACC: 5-11

Postseason: Lost NIT Rd. 2

What they lost:

Almost nothing, to be honest.  Senior big man Dennis Horner graduated, but, other than that, the Wolfpack return four out of five starters and their top bench players.  They surprisingly brought back coach Sidney Lowe, who has failed to pull State out of the conference basement during his tenure, but his seat is still warm and if the team fails to improve this season, he won’t be back again.

What they gained:

Why is Lowe back?  Probably because of the last two recruiting classes.  Outside of Duke and UNC, these are probably the strongest classes in the conference.  Last year’s sharpshooter Scott Wood will be joined by swingmen Lorenzo Brown and CJ Leslie (ranked 56 and 12 respectively) and point guard Ryan Harrow (No. 22).  Brown was supposed to join the team last year, but his grades didn’t measure up and has since attended a prep school to fix that issue.  He was ranked in the top 20 of last year’s class, but as we’ve seen, rankings outside the top 10 tend to not predict success (coughTristanSpurlockcough!).

Summary:

Shockingly, the Wolfpack should have high expectations for this season.  In a conference riddled with rebuilding projects, State is set up to play pretty well with solid talent at both ends of the experience spectrum.  Leading scorer Tracy Smith returns and, with a general shortage of big men in the league this year, should continue to dominate in the post.  The Pack also (for once) have a great group of guards, which is critical for success in the ACC.  Based on how many other programs have stepped backward this season, a first round ACC Tournament bye is not out of the question for this team.

• Boston College
• Clemson
• Duke
• Florida State
• Georgia Tech
• Miami
• Maryland
• North Carolina
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech
• Wake Forest

Wake Forest

Last Season:

Overall: 20-11

ACC: 9-7

Postseason: Lost in NCAA Rd. 2 to Kentucky

What they lost:

A lot.  Seniors Ish Smith, Chas McFarland, and LD Williams all graduated, Tony Woods left the program, and Al-Farouq Aminu declared for the NBA draft leaving Wake with big holes all across their starting lineup and bench.  Smith was arguably the best point guard in the conference last season and with the departure of McFarland, Woods, and Aminu (all over 6′-9″), you could say that Wake’s “forest” has been cut down this season (I’ll be here all week, thank you). Head coach Dino Gaudio, who took over the team after the tragic death of Skip Prosser, was also relieved of his duties after two underachieving seasons in Winston-Salem.

What they gained:

Wake had four Rival’s Top 100 recruits enter the program this season with 6′-6″ forward Travis McKie being the best of the bunch.  These newbies will be thrown right into the fire as Wake, much like Virginia, has a pretty depleted roster following the turbulent offseason they had.  The new coach is former Colorado head man Jeff Bzdelik who had a less than stellar record with the Buffalos from 2007-2010.  He led them to only 36 wins in four seasons (good for a .383 winning percentage) and the ACC is historically tougher than the Big 12, so this should be interesting.

Summary:

In a league where it seems everyone is rebuilding, Wake might have the most work to do.  Losing four of five starters in the offseason puts them in a bind, especially since so much of their offense last season was based on Ish Smith’s drives to the hoop.  That headache is now gone for their opponents as it’s now time for new blood to carry the Deacons.  It will be interesting to see how the new coach and players adapt to life in the ACC, but I can’t see them finishing any higher than eighth this season.

• Boston College
• Clemson
• Duke
• Florida State
• Georgia Tech
• Miami
• Maryland
• North Carolina
• NC State
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech

Boston College

Last Season:

ACC: 6-10

Overall: 15-16

Postseason: None

What they lost:

After going backwards every year since they joined the ACC, BC fired coach Al Skinner this offseason, which wasn’t that big of a surprise.  Al had stopped winning games and was seriously lacking in the recruiting department over the past 3 years, leaving BC in a situation with zero incoming players for 09-10.  His firing, however, led to the transfer of star forward Rakim Sanders and incoming freshman point guard Brady Heslip.  Sanders would have been a senior this season and had been a difficult matchup for most teams to handle throughout his career and Heslip was poised to compete for a starting spot.  BC also lost two other commitments, leaving them (again) with no incoming players.

What they gained:

Hope was renewed for the program, however, with the hire of the hottest name in coaching, former Cornell coach Steve Donahue.  Donahue has proven his ability to take lesser players and make them better (see Cornell’s NCAA tournament run last year), but the ACC is not the Ivy League.  He did manage to swing two of his recruits over to the Eagles (sharpshooter Danny Rubin and point guard Gabriel Moton), but neither were projected to play in a big time conference.

Summary:

If you look up “transition year” in the sports dictionary, I’m almost positive you’d see a picture of the 2010-11 BC Eagles.  With only two freshmen on the roster and no sophomores, this is an experienced team that hasn’t experienced much winning.  It will be interesting to see what that means in terms of wins this campaign, but BC fans need to be ready for a rough year or two.

• Clemson
• Duke
• Florida State
• Georgia Tech
• Miami
• Maryland
• North Carolina
• NC State
• Virginia
• Virginia Tech
• Wake Forest

ACC Scores

Florida St. 34 at Virginia 14

#16 Miami 30 at Clemson 21

Virginia Tech 41 at #23 NCST 30

East Carolina 17 at North Carolina 42

Duke 16 at Maryland 21

Georgia Tech 24 at Wake Forest 20

Notre Dame 31 at Boston College 13

ACC Standings

Atlantic

1. Florida State 2-0 (4-1)
2. Maryland 1-0 (4-1)
3. NC State 1-1 (4-1)
4. Wake Forest 1-2 (2-3)
5. Boston College 0-1 (2-2)
6. Clemson 0-1 (2-2)

Coastal

1. Virginia Tech 2-0 (3-2)
2. Miami 1-0 (3-1)
3. Georgia Tech 2-1 (3-2)
4. North Carolina 0-1 (2-2)
5. Virginia 0-1 (2-2)
6. Duke 0-2 (1-4)

Top 25 Scores

#7 Florida 6 at #1 Alabama 31

#2 Ohio State 24 at Illinois 13

#3 Boise St. 59 at New Mex. St. 0

#9 Stanford 31 at #4 Oregon 52

#5 TCU 27 at Colorado St. 0

#21 Texas 20 at #8 Oklahoma 28

LA-Monroe 3 at #10 Auburn 52

#11 Wisconsin 24 at #24 Michigan St. 34

Tennessee 14 at #12 LSU 16

#16 Miami 30 at Clemson 21

#22 Penn St. 3 at #17 Iowa 24

Washington 32 at #18 USC 31

#19 Michigan 42 at Indiana 35

Virginia Tech 41 at #23 NCST 30

#25 Nevada 44 at UNLV 26

If the Heisman Trophy were handed out tomorrow, the smart money would have to be on Michigan’s Denard Robinson taking home the hardware.  The guy has been a one-man wrecking crew and is almost single handedly saving Rich Rodriguez’s job/reputation with his ridiculous numbers.  How ridiculous?  Here are few things to chew on:

He has accounted for 1419 yards in 3 full games plus 9 minutes of another (he got hurt in the first quarter).  How impressive is that?  Here’s a list of teams that have fewer yards than Robinson: Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Virginia, Clemson, Miami (FL), Texas Tech, and Oregon State plus several others.

Courtesy of cleveland.com

If he continues at his current rate of production, he will have amassed more yards by himself than these 2009 teams: Ohio State, Michigan, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, North Carolina, Boston College, LSU, and Virginia (again).

In the game against Notre Dame, he accounted for 502 total yards of offense.  502 yards.  Think about that.  A good day for a lot of teams is 400 and he topped it himself.

For the three games before he got hurt, he was averaging 410 yards per game, a truly gaudy amount that any team in the country would love to have on their offense.

But how does that compare to the NCAA record books for yards per game averages in a season?  Thankfully, you don’t need to wonder anymore because I have too much time on my hands and found out for you.  So, here’s the Top 10 Yards per Game Averages for a Division I Season:

Note: Division I includes both FBS and FCS schools.

10. 405.2, Steve McNair, Alcorn St. 1992

9. 416.4, Case Keenum, Houston 2009

8. 418.5, Ty Detmer, BYU 1990

7. 422.5, Colt Brennan, Hawaii 2006

6. 423.7, Andre Ware, Houston 1989

5. 431.8, Graham Harrell, Texas Tech 2007

4. 457.2, Willie Totten, Miss. Valley 1984

3. 459.7, BJ Symons, Texas Tech 2003

2. 474.6, Dave Klingler, Houston 1990

1. 527.2, Steve McNair, Alcorn St. 1994