I've lost my mind Part 1: Exclusion

Resolved: That there should no longer be an NCAA I-A Football National Championship.

Yes, its come to this. I'm actually advocating that we do away with the national championship for the biggest college sport in the nation.

Now technically, I'm being stupid and redundant. That's because technically there IS no such thing as the 1-A Football National Championship. The NCAA does not sanction a championship for this division, which is incredibly ironic given that this is the biggest NCAA sport by far in terms of popularity, participants and (most importantly) money.

No, what we have is a so called "mythical" national championship. Actually we have several of these MNC's, but really only two have ever really been important: the AP and the BCS, which was formerly the UPI. Often they agree, sometimes they "split". Yet these so called Mythical Championships are the most agonized over prizes in all of college sports.

I don't make this argument lightly. Its taken a lot of thought and reflection to get to this opinion, and its not rock solid, but for now I think that the current system isn't good enough.

Every year we hear it, about how the BCS sucks and the national championship is bogus and how we must have a playoff to really decide things, just like every other NCAA sport and even the lower divisions of football have. For years I've resisted jumping on this bandwagon, but my time has come.

There are 119 football teams in Division 1-A (I will NOT call it the "Bowl Subdivision"). For all these teams there is a single national championship to compete over. This is not odd, as most NCAA sports have hundreds of teams per division pitted against each other for the grand prize. The difference is that those divisions there actually is a playoff for the title, and at least a theoretical chance that every team has a chance to get into that playoff if they qualify.

In Division 1 football this is not the case. Of those 119 teams, I can say with 99.9999% certainty, at the start of the season, that 63 of those teams have no chance of even playing for the championship. These are teams which are not members of the 6 BCS conferences. Granted, most of them probably aren't good enough to win the national championship. But its wrong that even if they could assemble enough talent they would not be given a shot.

This morning I was watching ESPN College Gameday, and the analysts were discussing BYU, currently undefeated and ranked # 8 in the polls. The question arose that if BYU were to go undefeated and all the BCS teams were to have at least 1 loss, should BYU be considered for inclusion as one of the two teams in the National Championship Game. Instantly there was an emphatic "no" from all the analysts. They almost seemed insulted by the idea. How dare some non-BCS upstart even be considered to play in the big game?

The argument they made had a bit of merit but it also easily dismissed. Basically, Corso argued that a 1 loss SEC Champion should get preference over an undefeated BYU team. Ok, maybe this is true. But remember people, there are TWO spots in the national championship game. That means there's plenty of room for both that 1 loss SEC team and BYU.

The flawed logic here isn't as important as the underlying reality which was revealed: that, barring some really weird circumstances, over half the teams in Division 1-A will never be given the time of day when it comes to selecting the national champion contenders. In my mind, this invalidates our supposed national championship as a farce.

Now, I concede that most of those teams probably couldn't hold their own with the big powerhouses on the field. I'm not advocating socialism or an "everyone gets a trophy" mentality. All I'm saying is that when you exclude over half the supposedly eligible field from the discussion before the first snap of the year, then the concept that this is a real championship is bogus. And when certain schools know that they have no chance of begin invited to the party, doesn't that give an unfair edge in recruiting the best players to those schools in the "in schools"? Of course it does. Take away that unfair barrier to entry and maybe we would see a few more non-BCS teams able to recruit enough to compete with the big boys.

There is more to this crazy argument swirling around in my crazy head. Please tune in later for Part 2 (and maybe 3 if I feel like it!).