BCS rules?

[bulls96go]

over ncaa...NOT!

This is my annual BCS-is-better column

By Matt Hayes - SportingNews

Matt Hayes

SportingNews.com

OK, everyone happy about their fun little NCAA Tournament? Good, but it's no better than the BCS.

In fact, it's worse.

Twenty bucks to the first person who can rattle off all 31 Division I conferences without using the Internet. You don't count, DeCourcy.

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Seriously, why are some of these teams even playing Division I basketball? Yet when the biggest event of the season (the national "playoff") rolls around, we've got Eastern Kentucky, Belmont, Wright State -- do I really need to continue? -- with a chance to play for it all because, well, they're so darn cute.

Meanwhile, Syracuse goes 10-6 in the toughest conference in the nation and is relegated to the NIT -- college basketball's version of Shreveport. And don't give me that garbage argument that Syracuse lost to a little guy in the regular season so that must prove something.

It proves a team can get hot for one game. Talk to me when you get hot 10 times in the Big East, Drexel.

College basketball has become some sick payback for all of college football's misgivings. The little guy gets hosed in college football, so, by God, the big guy is getting his in hoops.

People get all bloated and boisterous every fall about the Big East with its automatic BCS berth or when major conferences get two teams in BCS bowls. We plead for a national "playoff" because it's the only way to determine a "true" champion.

Let me explain the truth about the basketball tournament: There are 65 teams in the "playoff" because more teams equals more games, which translates to more television revenue. You don't really think the field was expanded years ago from 48 teams because the NCAA suddenly thought the little guys deserved a shot, do you?

What kind of national "playoff" rewards a team (Davidson) that didn't post one of its 29 wins against a school with an RPI ranking better than 105? Of course, Davidson did actually beat one other NCAA Tournament team: the mighty Blue Devils of Central Connecticut State -- who rebounded from a 4-9 start and rolled through the Northeast Conference, which earned them a first-round seal clubbing from No. 1 seed Ohio State.

Are you really that hard up to watch Ohio State play Middle Tennessee in the first round of a college football national "playoff"? Just watch the first two weeks of the season; it's the same thing.

Look, George Mason was fun last year. Just like Boise State was fun in the Fiesta Bowl. It's a rarity, not reality.

But somehow, we ridicule college football's postseason yet revel in the glory that is the basketball tournament. They're one in the same, people: inherently awkward systems devised to make money.

Only one is worse than the other: the one that acts like a "playoff."

Updated on Thursday, Mar 22, 2007 11:27 am EDT

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