This article speaks to something a poster was saying last week and to what Roy has been saying for 3 weeks.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-boise110709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
It basically says Boise St has called every good team in the country offering to show up and play any time anywhere, without asking for a return trip to Idaho, but every school in the country is afraid to play them. He's specifically asking for 2011.
So if they won't play them, in 2011 they should automatically be ranked #1 in the preseason, right? I mean if you're afraid of Boise St, it's because you think they're better, right?
And I guess Oregon should be ranked #2 since they're the only ones that will put themselves on the line. Don't expect USC to line up to play Boise St.
No, they shouldn't automatically be ranked #1. Boise State faces a Catch-22. They play in a below average non-BCS conference and they also play in a system where teams are becoming more reluctant to schedule tough non-conference opponents because of the BCS implications. For example, playing in the SEC alone amounts to playing two or three "make or break" games a year. Why make life harder by also scheduling a tough non-BCS team? Its about bowl payouts, not fearing opponents. Playing a tough non-conference schedule on top of your conference schedule could mean quite the decrease in bowl revenue coming your way.
Once again, this has nothing about what's going on, on the field. It has everything to do with economics.
Actually Dons, that's not true about the revenue. Conferences share their revenue. Check out my post from earlier:
I have two best friends since childhood. One is a Sports Information Director at an ACC school. The other is an Assistant Athletic Director at a Big 12 school. We were inseparable as kids and when they can get time after the bowls and in the early summer, they come home and we talk shop, shop for them, incessantly over beers at the local tavern or on the links. This BCS conversation is one we talk about ALL THE TIME. The simple fact is this, there isn't a person associated in athletics at a Divsion 1 playing football university in America that doesn't want a playoff system.
Oh, in public they say what they have to say or what they feel will get them in the least amount of trouble, but behind the scenes, there isn't a coach, athletic direct, sports information director or player at a top 40 school that doesn't want a playoff system.
But what the athletes and athletic personnel want and what the deans, presidents, and higher ups that are the power brokers at the university, what the people who run the bowls and parades and festivities associated with the bowls and what the networks want are completely different things. Too many extremely high paying yearly jobs, too much university revenue, too much money is invested in the current structure that getting the people who have the power to elicit change will never happen because there's no guarantee for those people that the monet stream will continue if everything is changed.
Don't forget how the conference money structure works for bowls. If a team from a conference makes a bowl the payout for that bowl does not go directly to the team. It goes into a fund that then is divided among all the teams in the conference.
Take the SEC for instance. They are guaranteed the Sugar bowl for the champ if the champ isn't in the National championship game. They will most likely also get an at large BCS team as well this year. They also have guaranteed births to the Music City Bowl, the Independence Bowl, the Chick-Fil-A Bowl, the Outback Bowl, the Capital One bowl, the PapaJohns.com Bowl, the Cotton Bowl and the Liberty Bowl. But even if they don't get an at large BCS berth they still have 8 guaranteed slots every year. Look at the money they get:
Sugar Bowl $17,000,000
Music City Bowl $1,6000,000
Independence Bowl $1,100,000
Chick-Fil-A Bowl $2,400,000
Outback Bowl $3,000,000
Capital One Bowl $4,250,000
PapaJohns.com Bowl $300,000
Cotton Bowl $3,000,000
Liberty Bowl $1,500,000
So without getting and at large BCS berth the SEC conference with 12 teams is guaranteed to split up, at a minimum, $34.15 million every year. Now take into consideration that in the 11 year BCS history the SEC has gotten an at large bid 6 time and probably will again this year. So 60% of the time the SEC is making around about $15,000,000 more or a total, due to bowls of about $50 million or more than $4 million per school. whether they go to a bowl or not.
No way the SEC university presidents decide to shut off that money stream just to properly crown a champion. And it's the same in the ACC, Big 10, Big East, Big 12 and Pac 10.
You see, the teams in power conferences not wanting to schedule a Boise State has nothing to do with bowl money revenue. All that money is shared in larger power conferences. But it does have everything to do with a couple of other things:
1.) Reciprocation of having to travel to Boise to play a game where the travel costs can get excessive.
2.) The wear and tear of the players themselves who would suffer trying to win a national title if a team scheduled three out of conference foes like Houston, Boise State and another power conference team. The competition in the power conferences is usually so tough that teams need to schedule weaker foes for easy victories.
3.) The perception of BSU being a weak team and having a loss to them look like a bad loss. The advantages of beating a BSU as an out of conference foe just does not outweigh the disadvantages of losing to a BSU in the fickle minds of some of the obviously power conference biased voters. The BCS is great and all but the main part of it still mainly depends upon getting votes in most of the different polls and averaging it all out. Many voters look at a win over a BSU as a supposed foregone conclusion that should have happened to a power conference team and a loss as a really bad upset. In this important manner, it just doesn't pay to schedule them.
