It took the help of two overturned touchdowns in the last minute, but the University of Wisconsin lost to Northwestern 13-7 last week and bid adieu to any freak, long-shot national title chances that might have still flickered.
Although, in reality, for the Badgers that ship sailed on Oct. 3. On that Saturday they lost 10-6 to Iowa. It was the second loss of the season for Wisconsin, which also lost at Alabama in the season-opener.
One road loss to Alabama doesn’t exempt you from the NCAA Division I postseason micro-tourney, but two losses of any kind do.
There is no room for a two-loss team – or a fifth team of any kind – in the Bowl Championship Series’ present, lacking state.
The BCS has been a tepid answer to the popular call for a Division I playoff system in line with one used at every other level of college, and in line with every other team sport that follows a regular season with a title-deciding postseason.
After decades of stonewalling and foot-dragging, NCAA Division I postseason football in 1998 finally moved away from its long outmoded practice of voting for a national champion at the end of the regular season and bowl games.
For the first time, it was agreed, the people would get what they want and the national championship at long last would be decided on the field.
Only, the “playoff” that they conceived was a two-team deal, with the two finalists decided on by committee. Never mind if there were more than a half-dozen other teams of comparable merit. A dubious playoff system was as far as they would go – at least until widespread criticism forced the NCAA to expand the Division I tournament in 2012.
Which brings us to today – with a four-team postseason, an only slightly better version of the ‘Plus-one format,” as the one-game championship was known.
Who gets invited to the members-only soiree this year? Is it Clemson, Alabama, Iowa and Notre Dame? Or does Michigan State now get to leapfrog to the front because it beat Ohio State? Whichever four teams are settled on, there will be the usual lot of qualified teams on the outside looking in. There isn’t much of a talent gulf separating the BCS top 10.
In the name of thoroughness in determining a champion for its football season, the NCAA needs to expand the Division I tournament field again, to a level where it resembles an actual tournament.
Division III football has a 32-team playoff; Division II has a 24-team playoff; the NAIA has a 16-team tournament; and the Football Championship Subdivision (Division 1-AA) has a 24-team tournament. The kind of sudden-death excitement and interest that these tournaments generate would be exponentially on display in Division I if they ever decided to do likewise.
Why, then, do they not? Check out some of this year’s bowl games.
There is the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl, the San Diego Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl, Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl, the NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl, the Military Bowl presented by Northop Grumman and the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl, for starters.
Massive corporate sponsor funding underwrites the bowl games, of which there are 30 this year. The NCAA is in no hurry to upset the golden apple cart that is the present postseason bowl system.
Expanding the playoff field to four teams was a move in the right direction, but it wasn’t enough. You shouldn’t be able to announce the tournament field and Final Four on the same day. Not when you have 56 other schools playing in what boils down to a glorified nonconference game.
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