Non-AQ teams like Boise State are running toward a bright future, or at least away from a crappy past.
The conventional wisdom in the college football world is that the BCS is systematically keeping the little guy down, preventing any school outside the six automatically-qualifying conferences from playing for the national championship. A cursory look at the final BCS standings over the last 12 years bears that out. Not only has a non-AQ (shorthand for non-automatic qualifier) school never played for the championship, but none had ever been ranked higher than sixth until this year.
And yet I’m here to tell you that the BCS has not only helped non-AQ schools, but that it’s probably the best thing that could have happened to them.
I’ll give you a second to wrap your head around that.
Skeptical? I don’t blame you. After all, most of what we hear about the BCS is how unfair it is, how it’s biased toward glamorous, traditional powerhouses, and about how it screws the little guy out of a chance to win a championship.
It sure does. Isn’t it great?
If there’s no BCS to keep Tulane and Marshall out of a big-time bowl game in 1998 and 1999, would anybody have talked about them at all those years? (Granted, we don’t talk about them much today. Quick, try to name either of their team names.)
Without a BCS system that relegated #6 Utah to playing #20 Pittsburgh in the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, does anyone talk about how they were chiseled out of a chance to play for a championship?
Without a BCS system that did the same thing to an undefeated Boise State team in 2006, do we ever get to see one of the sport’s greatest upsets ever against Oklahoma?
The list goes on. Every time a non-AQ team gets the shaft – and it seems to be happening every year lately – we hear more about the team than we ever would have normally. Being denied a chance to play for the national title might be the best thing that could have happened to Utah, Boise State, and TCU.
Sure, playing for the championship would have been exciting, but being kept on the outside means more media coverage, which keeps you in voters’ minds, which makes you…a traditional school.
Think about that for a moment.
Those three schools have been in the final BCS standings more than any other non-AQ team. Boise State has as many appearances as Michigan. TCU has more appearances than Alabama. Both BYU and Utah have as many appearances as Auburn.
After a while, these teams start to make appearances in the BCS standings purely on reputation.
You see it all the time with established teams. Oklahoma clung to a spot in the top 25 this year long after they had been exposed as a mediocre team. USC finished 24th this year despite four losses, three of which came in the last five weeks.
And now there’s evidence some of the unprivileged schools are getting the same treatment.
Consider Utah. Despite an underwhelming 9-3 season, they still finished 23rd. Their best win this season was a 23-16 win over Air Force. In overtime.
Yet when pollsters submit their votes, I’d be surprised if they’re not still remembering the Utes’ 31-17 thrashing of Alabama in last year’s Sugar Bowl.
Boise State gets the same treatment. Despite only one quality win (Oregon), and several close shaves against sub-par competition (Tulsa, Louisiana Tech, and UC Davis), they’ve been a top-10 team all year. You think voters aren’t still remembering the 2006 Fiesta Bowl?
As more and more non-AQ schools make their way into BCS bowls, voters are also inclined to think more kindly of their non-AQ brethren.
Take a look at BYU this year. They opened with an impressive win over Oklahoma, but stumbled against a weak Florida State team and didn’t have another quality win until edging Utah in overtime on the last week of the season.
Their final BCS ranking? 14th.
The total number of non-AQ teams appearing in the final BCS standings has been steadily on the rise, too. Since 2005, at least one more non-AQ team appeared in the final BCS standings than the year before. It would have remained constant this year (5 in 2008, 4 in 2009) if Central Michigan could have made the jump from 26th to 25th over Wisconsin, but alas.
Don’t get me wrong. As an alum of a mid-major, I hate the BCS. It frustrates me to see deserving schools kept from having a fair shot at the championship each year.
But looking at history, I can’t help but think it’s been good for us overall. We may not have a crystal football yet, but there’s one thing we’ve earned that we didn’t have five short years ago.
Respect.
(By the way, it’s the Tulane Green Wave and the Marshall Thundering Herd.)
Green Wave and Mustangs, if I’m not mistaken. But I could be.
I think you are… it’s definitely the Thundering Herd (as in http://herdzone.cstv.com/).
Which, by the way, is one of the sweetest nicknames in all of collegiate sports.
Ah, I should have saved my comment till after I read the whole thing.
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I agree with you Sam, I think the BCS has been good for the non-AQs. I dont think that Utah would have gotten anymore recruits by being the national champs than they did just by being the Sugar Bowl champs who never got a shot at being the national champs. The money (correct me if I am wrong, I just dont want to do the research right now) between the NC game and the Sugar Bowl are the same, so I dont think that not being in the NC game had any affect. Plus as we have seen now, it has opened the doors for other non-AQs.
The Mustangs are Southern Methodist, actually.
Rob, you’re right about the title game payoff. Exactly the same, and as you’ve said, Utah gained far more than money by being shunted out of the chance to play for the championship. I’ll be surprised if we don’t see serious contenders from the non-AQ ranks in the next five years.
To add a little more, while I dont think there there was a team in the nation that could have beaten Utah had they gone to the NC game, I dont know that they could have made it all the way through a playoff system. I feel just the same as Coach Pattersen at TCU. A playoff would be a much more difficult system for mid-majors, and would actually be a negative thing for them. In my opinion, I think the BCS, as it was originally intended, was a good system. Even still, I think the only things that need to change are the AQ conferences need to be changed, and the money distributed needs to be the same across the board. I dont like the fact that the AQ conferences get 17 million, while the lowly non-AQ’s only get 9 million, but all the conferences. If they did away with those two things, I think the system would be great. For me as a Utah fan, I dont need the crystal football to know that my Utes were the best team in the nation. I would be willing to bet that most of the Horned Frog fans feel the same way this year.
I’m going to chime and agree here too… I’m surprised more people haven’t made a bigger deal out of Coach Patterson’s comments along those lines. Both Boise State’s upset of Oklahoma a few years back and Utah’s upset of Alabama were big, big deals for the non-AQ community, but it’s likely that neither of those teams would have survived a playoff. Those games may have represented the best possible situations for them.
But then again, March Madness is a single-elimination tournament and we don’t mind. The teams that make the Final Four are generally the ones expected to do so, and we don’t worry that overachieving teams from smaller programs get left out—because it’s a tournament, it’s a contest and not a charity, and everything is decided on the court.
This is a tough line to ride, the benefits/faults of the BCS. The deeper I dig, the less decided I am on a solution.