BCS Defends BCS!

"I really think the BCS is good for college football. We have tremendous amount of interest in our regular season - more so than in any other sport. I ran the Final Four for 13 years and we just don't have this kind of passion in the regular season. And the BCS has moved college football from regional to national. The SEC fans are now very interested in the Pac-10. Before the BCS, that interest was there but not at the level it is today. College football is more popular than ever and we believe how our postseason is handled is a big factor in that. When you consider a change, the single biggest thing we have to think about is what would it do to the regular season. That's the great unknown and there would be unintended consequences to any change, with out a doubt. This is the crown jewel and it's too risky to just tinker with it. I think the commissioners are on the right track in being very deliberate about change. We don't know if this is perfect, so let's not tinker with it until we're sure we know how it's going to be better."

This quote is from an interview with Bill Hancock, the ONLY BCS employee/administrator. It argues the "regular season is exciting" theory of pro-BCS advocacy. I've basically addressed this in a post below. It should be pointed out how idiotic his point about basketball is. 1) basketball regular season games are inherently less exciting than football's since they occur every night. 2) he is arguing against playoffs in football by using an example of a sport that has the MOST exciting postseason in sports, March Madness. 3) Is he really suggesting that it would be really cool if college basketball dropped March Madness and selected 2 teams to play in a BCS championship game at the end of the season? Really!?!? He also brings up "unintended consequences." This is a classic argument used by neo-conservatives in the 1970s (not so much when they argued for the Iraqi invasion!). What you get is the worst kind of non-action, or incremental action, which both are capable of producing terrible consequences, intended or not. Also, what does he mean about SEC interest in the PAC-10? Have we cared about the PAC-10 this year anyway? Yes, we have. When? When Oregon St had a shot to win the PAC-10. In a playoff format with conference winners, the same exact thing would have happened, except in even more quantities. We would have been paying attention to Oregon-Oregon St to see if Oregon St would have made the playoffs. Does he really think a playoff would make college football popularity crumble and force it into some kind of quixotic, regional interest-type thing? This is pathetic.