It's Bitter, Not Bittersweet

I know the BCS is always complete and utter shit, but it still rankles that Illinois and Kansas get BCS berths while Mizzou is stuck in a total crapola non-BCS Cotton Bowl with unranked(!) Arkansas. It is small consolation that the game is a New Years Day game that will feature the two best players in college football this year. It is a ridiculously boring matchup and Missouri deserved better.

It especially sucks that Kansas gets rewarded for their special-Olympics style schedule (although one could say the same about Ohio State as well.) It says something when the number one team in the nation can lose its conference title game to the team that ends the season at #4 in the BCS, and the former #1 drops entirely out of the BCS series matchups.

It says the entire system is a joke and Ohio State and LSU aren't really playing for dick.

UPDATE:

This is from Burwell at the PD:

Of course it doesn’t make sense. You know it, I know it, even the doofuses who continue to perpetrate this idiotic Bowl Championship Series system have to know just how fatally flawed and hopelessly messed up their multi-million dollar scam is.

So Sunday night was just one more bit of annoying confirmation of how defective the BCS is.

From the broad national perspective, to the narrower parochial one, I truly hate it with all my heart. But since sports is very much like politics -- everything is local -- let’s deal with how Mizzou got robbed Sunday night by the BCS and its convoluted computers.

Missouri finished its finest season in the history of the program with an 11-2 record, won the Big 12 North, knocked off both arch rivals in Kansas and Illinois, and the Tigers finished with a No. 6 ranking in the final BCS standings.

Logic says the Tigers had to get a BCS bowl bid, right?

So why are they sitting on the outside of the BCS with an invitation to the still prestigious (but non BCS) Cotton Bowl, while five other schools that ranked lower in the BCS standings -- including the 8th-ranked Jayhawks and 13th-ranked Illini -- received bids to the more preferred BCS bowls?

...

By the time the Fox network BCS bowl selection show began at 7 p.m., Rucker and his teammates had already left the building. They couldn’t bear to watch it. They had been instructed to take the high road and go with the company line that they’re “excited” to be Cotton Bowl bound.

But Rucker, the senior who has seen Missouri football grow from inconsequential to important, couldn’t play the game. In the course of 48 turbulent hours, he’d watched his team go from No. 1 in the country with a legitimate shot at a national championship bid, to disappointed and disgusted outsiders with their noses pressed to the glass watching the BCS dance cards being handed out.

Someone asked if this obvious slight was further proof of how badly college football’s top division needs a playoff system to decide its national champions and perhaps prevent a situation like this where Mizzou was unjustly left on the outside looking in.

“I don’t know if you need a playoff system to see that it doesn’t make sense that one team (Illinois) lost three games and lost to you, and you only lost two games, and they’re going to a BCS game and you’re not,” said Rucker with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t think we need a playoff system to understand that, do we?”

You could see the disappointment in their faces as the players got the official word and most of them quietly left the alumni center without saying a word. “I have a bunch of players who have a bunch of frowns,” said Pinkel.

Of course they have frowns. They were screwed over and left to play in a game they can gain absolutely nothing by winning. And trust me...the Tigers will not show up ready to play, and why should they? What are you going to tell them? That they are gonna be rewarded for their effort? They already know that is bullshit.