Idiots Write About Sports

During the ESPN telecast of tonight’s Cal-Southern Miss contest, analyst Bob Davie spent a great deal of time — usually when the Bears were struggling to put away the Golden Eagles — stating and restating that this was California’s one chance to make an impression on voters in the Associated Press and coaches’ polls. With the SEC Championship concluded and Oklahoma’s pasting of Colorado well in hand, the Cal-Southern Miss match-up was the only game on national TV that meant anything, Davie argued. And besides, he continued, this was probably the only time that many voters in both polls were going to see Cal in action.
This is the same Bob Davie, by the way, who earlier this week had argued that the best solution to college football’s BCS mess was to have every Division I coach vote on who belonged in the National Championship game. Or, to put it another way, have the national championship participants determined by the same people that Davie concedes were too busy to watch the No. 4-ranked team in the nation until the second half of the very last game in the season.
Think I found a fundamental flaw in your plan there, coach.
I’d love to provide a link to the Davie’s full argument, but after allowing it to appear on the site for a day, ESPN stuck it behind its registration wall where the nuts and bolts of Davie’s self-described “simple plan” is available only to ESPN Insider subscribers. And since I don’t opt to use my hard-earned dollars to fund ESPN’s mediocrity (that’s unfair — ESPN would have to work much harder to rise to the level of mediocre), I can only direct you to the first three paragraphs of the Davie article.
I can, however, provide a few reasons for why depending solely on Division I coaches to vote on the title game participants would be even worse than the current BCS set-up, as difficult as that may be to imagine.

• As already established, football coaches are just a tad bit busy on Saturday afternoons and may not be inclined to pay attention to games not involving themselves or, if they’re especially attentive, conference rivals.


• How many times have you heard the coach of your favorite program after a particularly gruesome loss say some variation of “That’s the best team we’ve played all year” when said team is 8-3 and on a collision course with the Music City Bowl? Do you really want those keen analytical powers working to determine who the top two teams in the country are?


• Since all the schools in a conference share in the filthy lucre dished out by the BCS, it seems like a coach has a couple of million reasons to cast his vote for a school in his conference over a possibly more worthy contender from the other side of the country. I mean, if you’re a voter in the coaches’ poll from a Big 12 school, why on earth aren’t you placing Texas ahead of California on your ballot this week, if it means a couple of extra million for your program?


• Above all, Davie’s argument is steeped in the “only those of us who’ve ever played or coached the game can truly appreciate what constitutes a champion” school of thought that makes most sports analysis so worthless these days.

Chris Dufrense of the Los Angeles Times does a much better job of tearing Davie’s argument to ribbons:

Davie is a tremendous ESPN analyst o much better at breaking down action than he was at whipping [Notre Dame] into national contention o yet his idea of turning the BCS over to the coaches is akin to turning a henhouse over to the foxes.
Davie wants to add more voting coaches to the gaggle that last year had USC at No. 1 until the Trojans defeated Michigan in the Rose Bowl, after which the coaches awarded their share of the national championship to Louisiana State.
These are the same voting coaches who recently voted, 32-29, not to make their final ballots public this year.
And no wonder, given that last week, California lost points in the coaches’ poll to Texas after the Bears beat Stanford by 35 points and the Longhorns spent the weekend feeding hay to Bevo.
These are the same coaches who, in 1997, had Michigan No. 1 until it had the gall to beat Washington State in the Rose Bowl.
Let the coaches decide?
Even tossing aside all the lost logic, Davie fails to mention that the Associated Press poll is independent of the coaches’ and is not going away, so what controversy has Davie solved?

And that is the last thing I hope to write about the BCS, at least until Cal’s inevitable screwing tomorrow.