BCS a bust once again

The college football season is over, and folks down in Baton Rouge are likely still celebrating more than a day after embarrassing Ohio State. After watching Les Miles take the most talented team in the country and do everything in his power to prevent the Tigers from winning a national championship during the regular season, The Hat looked like a coach anyone would be proud to have on their sideline Monday night.
The 2007 college football season was the most unpredictable anyone can remember, and it’s only fitting that the Bowl Championship Series had possibly its worst showing since it first marred the college football landscape in 1998. The Rose Bowl stunk. Sugar Bowl was rotten. Fiesta Bowl was a bust. Orange Bowl was watchable, even though Kansas — despite winning — didn’t deserve to be there.
The “championship” game only proved what most of us already knew:
• Ohio State is overrated. The Buckeyes were rewarded by the BCS for playing in a weak Big 10 Conference and for rolling through an even softer non-conference schedule.
• The SEC is better than the Big 10. OSU faced real adversity twice this season — against Illinois and LSU — and both times the Buckeyes crumbled. LSU was pushed to its limit almost every week during SEC action. The Tigers need late-game heroics to beat Florida, Auburn and Alabama. Twice they were taken to triple overtime. Do you really think a 10-0 first quarter deficit Monday night had the Tigers worried?
• The BCS doesn’t work, and FBC conferences need a playoff system. University of Georgia president Michael Adams, at the risk of looking like a sore loser, came out Monday advocating an eight-team playoff. His is only the first domino, and many more will need to fall before something changes.

• I don’t care if Roger Clemens used steroids, and, frankly, I don’t care if he’s lying about it now. Professional baseball over the past 20 years will forever be known as the Steroid Era. Everyone who played, whether they used performance-enhancing drugs or not, will have that shadow cast over their legacy. What bothers me is the old-school baseball writers who are now playing judge, jury and executioner with players’ legacies without looking in the mirror. If they had been doing their job as journalists and reporters, steroid use in baseball would have been exposed years ago. With the unique clubhouse access available to them, baseball’s writers either knew about it and said nothing, or were grossly negligent if they were unaware. At the very least, they heard the rumors and are just as guilty as the team executives that turned a blind eye.

• Speaking of bitter old men, I never have, and probably never will, understand baseball Hall of Fame voters. What did Goose Gossage do during the past 12 months to make him HOF worthy? After eight years of not having what it takes, suddenly Goose is good enough?

• Big-time Division I football is the only sport where it’s acceptable for people to argue: “they’re not even the best team in the conference, so they don’t deserve to play for the national title? Why not? Basketball allows every single conference champion, as well as with more than 30 others teams who didn’t finish first in their league, play for the championship. Along the way, March Madness has become the greatest sporting event in America. The College World Series, along with its regional and super regional rounds, provides a similar format that is just as exciting for college baseball followers.
Missouri, West Virginia, USC and Georgia all have better football teams than Ohio State this season, as did Kansas, Virginia Tech and Oklahoma. Throw in LSU, and that sounds like a pretty great — and simple — playoff.