The “Bowl” “Championship” “Series” is dead. It will be mourned by exactly nobody, save maybe Big East fans who miss having a free seat on the starship because Miami was good in the early 1990s. Everything worked out about as well as could be expected: 4 teams only, no automatic berth for conference champions, and absolutely no role for coaches or their assistants aside from what they can do on the field.
Four is the way to go. People will yell for eight so the poor Big East and Mountain West can have a free-roll, and then they’ll cry for sixteen because the Sun Belt and Conference USA champions somehow deserve the same crack at the title as the Big Ten or PAC-12 champions, and everyone will get orange slices and a participation ribbon. To hell with that. Schedule up, schedule hard, and see if you make the cut. In fact, having no automatic berth for winning the conference – and not enough seats to accommodate all the former BCS auto-qualifiers – will increase the pressure to separate from the rest of the pack. God willing, that means an end to I-AA opponents and extra credit for going out and facing significant foes from other leagues.
Four is also good because it means that two of the former BCS bowls will be free to make their own deals. Hopefully this means an end to 5th-ranked PAC-12 teams being sent to the Holiday Bowl so Pitt can get their ass pounded out. More top-10 matchups on January 1, fewer sad-sack mismatches because some barely-top-25 team won their nubbins league.
See, the BCS was a misnomer in every respect. “Bowl” because eventually it created its own floating title game separate from the bowls so more teams could get a bite of the pie. “Series” because nobody played more than one game. And “Championship” because it only made a matchup of a notional 1-2 and used its other four bowl berths to create matchups hobbled by the Rose Bowl’s devotion to the Big Ten and the insistence that winning an eight team basketball conference was as worthy as running the table in the SEC.
No more. When was the last time there was a legit #5 team contending for the national championship? Never. (You shut up, 1977 Notre Dame, you got a gift.) If you’re not in the top 4, you’re not really deserving of a title shot. Maybe now some of these big time bowls can mean something again.
Make no mistake: if you love college football, today is as big a win as could be had without blowing everything up and going to 1989 rules again. And 2014 will arrive just in time for Vanderbilt to meet Cal in the first round in Pasadena…