The Debriefing: Did Hawaii Belong in the BCS? Not Really, But Sure, Why Not?

The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.

The Warriors Deserved to Be There ... as Much as Anyone Else, Anyway

Hawaii spent a season putting up unfathomable numbers against incapable opponents, and when suddenly facing with a team that's actually ranked among the top 50 (or, in this case, top 5), Georgia stuck an apple in their mouth, then glazed and roasted them while tourists danced about in grass skirts.

And now, in light of the pounding that Hawaii took in the Sugar Bowl last night, the popular question to ask is if they deserved to there at all. To that, I would answer, "It's the BCS. What does 'deserve' have to do with anything?"

(Also on Today's List: I miss the old way of doing January 1st ... A lot of these bowl games seem like low-quality carbon copies of one another ... that hockey game seemed like a big hit, so obviously, the NHL shouldn't do it again ... and Big Red was robbed in the Mascot of the Year competition...)

Let's not pretend that the BCS is some promised land for great college football teams, and that a deserving squad can actually earn their way in. That's giving the BCS too much credit. As it stands, the BCS consists of a group of teams that meet some arbitrarily and subjectively-decided criteria, and if at all possible, also promise to provide some financial game to the respective organizations hosting the BCS games.

So, did Hawaii "deserve" to be there? Did their résumé really indicate that they belonged? Well, yeah, why the hell not? It's not like this is a meritocracy we're dealing with ... the qualifications for admission into the BCS aren't based on anything rational.

It's like asking if a man with a mole on his right shoulder belongs in the sauna at a Turkish bath house, or if a man in exceedingly tight jean shorts belongs backstage at a Daughtry concert. One doesn't have much to do with the other ... if the dude is there, you can conclude that he belongs there.

So yeah, it's true that Georgia's a superior football team to Hawaii, but I don't know what that has to do with Hawaii not deserving to be there. It's not like they're the first team to be throttled in a bowl game ... two of the last seven Fiesta Bowls have featured Notre Dame getting slapped around, but that's not going to stop anyone from inviting them again at the earliest opportunity ... Ohio State was pantsed in the national championship game last year, but they're back again this year.

Why treat Hawaii any differently than any other team that's found themselves overmatched in a bowl game? That's the kind of system we have ... good teams like Missouri get left out, and not-quite-as-good teams like Hawaii get to watch Uga on the sidelines icing his balls because of the friction burn he's got from savagely humping Colt Brennan's face all night long. It's what we have. We live with it.

Maybe Hawaii's not in the same class as the best teams in the nation, but what are you going to do about it? Say that teams with weak strength-of-schedule ratings can't get into the BCS? West Virginia (60th), USC (61st), Oklahoma (66th), Ohio State (75th), and Kansas (106th) will be very disappointed to hear that. Want to say that teams that aren't in major conferences can't get into the BCS? Boise State would not have shared your opinion last year.

Hawaii did deserve to be there ... they just happened to get their Hawaiian asses whooped. There will be other teams from non-BCS conferences to go 11-0 against subpar competition, and some of them will win their BCS games like Boise State, and some of them will lose their BCS games like Hawaii.

No particular result will indicate that anyone did or didn't deserve anything. "Deserve" is the last thing that the BCS can prove.

But At Least Hawaii Is Not Alone in Not Being Very Good ...

Speaking of bowl games, you know what I've had just about enough of? Bowl games.

This is not quality football we're watching ... and really, why would it be? These teams are rustier than Rue McClanahan's vajayjay. You can't expect to give a team a month off, and have them come out and execute well ... you're going to have an increase in penalties, an increase in turnovers, and a decrease in excellence.

In the 23 bowl games played thus far, we're averaging more than four turnovers per game. Only 6 of the 23 bowls have had 2 or fewer turnovers, and 11 have had 5 or more. The Cotton bowl maxed out at 8 yesterday, while the Sugar and Champs Sports each featured 7, and the Holiday, Sun, and Music City each had 6.

NFL teams like the Patriots and the Colts worry about coming out rusty when they get the first week off in the playoffs ... and 18-20 year-olds are expected to play their best when they have four weeks off? When there's really not a whole lot on the line?

Say a team does maintain the same level of focus that they had during the regular season, all through finals, all through the holidays, and through all of this downtime, which would not be easy ... what's their reward? They get to say that they're the Music City bowl champions? Five years from now, is that going to feel all that different from not being the Music City bowl champions?

A lot of these games feel so similar. There are exceptions, obviously, and the teams with the most to play for seem to be the most likely to play better football ... but the high-turnover, high-points phenomenon seems to happen a lot.

Because of the time off, teams will have two things when they return to the field: a propensity for mistakes, and some gadget plays and/or new offensive wrinkles for which their opponents won't be ready. This leads to a lot of high-turnover, high-scoring games ... the most we can hope for is that it will be close at the end, in which case we can call it a "great" game.

January 1st Isn't As Cool As It Used to Be ...

I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but I'm about to make it three consecutive posts that aren't aren't exactly glowing in their attitude towards college football.

This particular complaint isn't that big of a deal ... and I'm not sure the old way was actually better, or I'm just looking back at something fondly just for the sake of doing so. But I do miss the old school January 1st ... where every major bowl game was crammed into one day, with a handful of others, and football was on every network, all day long.

I'm talking about multiple games on constantly, from about 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., and a damn parade or two to boot. More importantly than that, though, it was a day in which society deemed it perfectly acceptable for a man to spend all day doing nothing but eating, drinking, scratching himself, and indulging in a bacchanalian orgy of college football.

It's not the same anymore. You know how much entertaining football was played between the hours of 4:30 p.m. and midnight yesterday? None. On January 1st! All the good football was done by 4:30. The Rose Bowl had the stage to itself, and the Sugar Bowl had the stage to itself, and they were both maulings. Total mismatches.

Under the old system, it seemed like you could count on some kind of quality game being on at all times. Maybe it was the Gator, maybe it was the Peach, maybe it with the Cotton, maybe it was the Rose ... most of the time, there was something decent.

I get the reasoning for it ... spread the games out, each game gets an audience to itself, more people watch, more ads can be sold, more exposure can be gained for each school ... I get it. And on paper, it seems like a good idea to give the fans an opportunity to watch as many games as they can.

In practice, though, I don't know if it's as much fun ... if everything's on at once, you can sort through the riff-raff, find the best of what's happening. I don't know if it's worth sacrificing one day of guaranteed football nirvana in exchange for a whole bunch of days where you might have enjoyable football and you might not.

For the Scrapbook ...

I really think the NBA ought to give some consideration to playing outdoors in January in Buffalo, too.

The Outdoor Hockey Thing Seemed Like a Good Idea to Me ...

There were four NHL games on yesterday. I can tell you who won exactly one of them.

That one, of course, was the NHL's Winter Classic, played outdoors in Buffalo's Ralph Wilson stadium in a snowstorm. I can't tell you what being outdoors meant for the actual quality of the hockey, however ... there were over 70,000 people there to watch it, it'll get better American television ratings than any other NHL regular season game, and a lot of non-hockey fans took notice, myself being one of them.

These are good things for the NHL, right? Is there a downside?

There is, apparently, if you look hard enough ... like Scott Burnside at ESPN.com, who does not want this to become an annual thing. Obviously, the man knows more hockey than I ever will, but I have a hard time seeing where he's coming from with this. His major complaints are that the quality of play suffered because it was often difficult to move the puck, and that because the quality of the ice was poor, the players risked getting hurt.

By the time the shootout took place, the ice was a mess; players were barely able to see the puck, let alone control it. Ruff said he thought players were going to overskate the puck during the shootout because so much snow had accumulated by the end of regulation and the five-minute overtime.

Sabres goalie Ryan Miller said he didn't mind the delays and tried to take advantage of the breaks to look at the stands and soak up the atmosphere. Still, he admitted the playing conditions weren't ideal.

"For me, it was a little weird at first," he said. "Pucks were coming out of little snow banks, and they hit a crossbar early where I had no idea [a player] could get it up out of that kind of area."

At one point during the game, Buffalo defenseman Henrik Tallinder appeared to stumble over a hole in the ice. Luckily, he didn't hurt himself, but what if he had?

I don't know ... what if he had? I guess it would be like a guy slipping on a muddy surface in a soccer game, or a player twisting his knee on artificial turf in a football game. Sometimes, people get hurt.

You heard so much about this game harkening back to the roots of the sport, and how players grew up skating on frozen ponds, blah blah blah ... were they worried about poor ice conditions back then, as kids? You either do things the old-fashioned way, or you don't, and if you do, you take the good with the bad.

What the NHL did yesterday was fun. It was a spectacle, it looked cool on TV, and it brought the game some attention. If the downside is that passes took longer to get to their target and Henrk Tallinder stumbled over a hole in the ice, I think that's a worthwhile trade-off for the league.

Guy Jumps Far on Motorcycle

This happened on New Years Eve, live on ESPN ... and you can tell it was a big deal because ESPN had Mark Schlereth there to break down all the action with his extensive motorcycle jumping experience. And you can tell that the event was very hip and extreme because Mark Schlereth was wearing a snazzy sweater instead of the lame old suit-and-tie. Those are for squares, not radical people who like watching motorcycles jump.

I think the man set a new world record for Driving a Motorcycle Really Fast Up a Ramp, and Then Letting It Fly Through the Air ... he got 322 feet, but he wanted 360. There's no shame in that ... I think we can all agree that 322 feet is very, very extreme. I think it would help if he tied giant helium balloons to his bike, affixed some wings, or attempted it on the moon, but that may be against official Driving a Motorcycle Really Fast Up a Ramp, and Then Letting It Fly Through the Air regulations.

Yesterday's MVP

Zippy. That's Zippy to your right, and he/she is the Capital One Mascot of the Year. I believe Zippy earned this title by a vote, and not by doing something awesome, like, I don't know ... dropping some roofies into Youngstown State's Gatorade, or murdering another mascot with a foam finger.

Congratulations to Zippy anyway ... he/she is furry and adorable, if not all that interesting an interview. Zippy wouldn't be my first choice, but the marsupial certainly beats out the date rapist on the University of Virginia sidelines, or the tree-hugging hippie at Montana.

If it was up to me, though, the top two contenders every year would be Syracuse's Otto the Orange, and Western Kentucky's Big Red. I'm especially fond of Big Red ... for no other reason than it looks like someone at Western Kentucky was trying to come up with a cute mascot, struggling a little bit, and eventually just said, "Ah, screw it, I'm making a big blob and giving him a giant mouth" and went to bed.

Yesterday's Sad Sack

The profession of getting punched in the head. Choi Yoi-sam won a WBO intercontinental flyweight boxing match on Christmas Day. Yesterday, he was declared legally brain dead.

The guy won the fight ... he was knocked down in the 12th, but got up, kept fighting, and won on points. He collapsed after the fight and slipped into a coma. He never made it out.

It's just a sick thing to think about ... one, the tragedy of a 33-year-old man losing his life, and secondly, that a man, any man, could be beaten in the head to the point that it was literally seconds away from putting him in a coma ... and that he'd get up and keep fighting. I don't even want to try to imagine what he must have been feeling before he went into the coma.

He's donating his organs, God bless him, and will be declared dead after they're removed.

For Those Who Admire the Female Form ...

Sorry, No Photos

The Evening's Agenda

Deserving Of Your Full Attention ...

8:15, FOX. College Football. Fiesta Bowl. Oklahoma vs. West Virginia. I'm going to be a total rebel and not eat Tostitos or any other Frito-Lay's product while watching this game.

Other Stuff ...

7:00, ESPN2. College Basketball. Rutgers @ South Florida.
7:00, VS. NHL. Thrashers @ Hurricanes.
7:00, ESPNU. College Basketball. Lafayette @ Pittsburgh.
8:00, NFL Network. NFL Replay. Jaguars @ Steelers.
8:00, ESPN. College Basketball. Kent State @ North Carolina.
9:00, ESPN2. College Basketball. Penn State @ Northwestern.
9:00, ESPNU. Women's College Basketball. Tennessee @ DePaul.
10:30, NFL Network. NFL Replay. Chargers @ Titans.