Responce to Dan Shanoff
In the 12/02/2005 edition of the Daily Quicky, Dan Shanoff decided to display roughly the same level of unrestrained glee as he did the Monday after Wake was bumped by WVU in last year's tournament.
"The BCS has won," he snots, "It's not even worth having a BCS debate because there IS no debate: The system is working perfectly... The BCS haters are left with totally manufactured arguments about meaningless bowls..."
Well, let me, a BCS hater, come back with a responce. Every past year, when there has been a problem with the BCS, you have talked about how horrible and broken the system is. And now...somehow...it's a perfect system working without any flaws. But here's the rub: any of the past BCS systems would have gotten this year "right." That's because this year is easy. There are two undefeated teams in teh entire nation. There are no mid level undefeateds that are going to be on the outside of the BCS looking in. There's no third major conference undefeated that will have to settle for a "meaningless bowl," as you put it. There isn't the problem of only one undefeated team, and deciding which one-loss team is most worthy of getting that extra spot.
If you would get down off your high horse for one damn moment (something that I know is going to severly hurt your reputation, since your high horse seems to be your gimmick) you would have realized this. Here's your problem: you are mistaking the circumstances with the process. With the current circumstances, any system that relies on a process any more sophisticated than a chicken pecking at a list of team names would have been "working perfectly" this year.
So, congratulations. You're right. The system works perfectly. And I'll remind you about this next year when we've got another BCS dilemma, and you're bitching about how broken the system is.
Can you say "tentative stadium deal"?
Both sides of the stadium debate have finally realized they need to bend a little bit, and some actual compromise is going on, which has lead to some agreements on key terms in the stadium lease deal. There's still some progress that needs to be made, but there is a hope that the lease could go before the council by the end of the week.
And for the first time, that doesn't just seem like blather.
I mean, how many times have we heard a major step will happen within the next week? Probably since we first got the team. A little natural pessimism is thus understandable, but this does feel like what could be the catalyst for a series of announcements. Once there's a lease, there will be an owner. Once there's an owner, there will be a more solid idea of who the front office will be (Theo?).
Our 2006 season might still be a loss, we're still behind the times this off season, but the one thing that we're getting is draft picks, as we currently have three picks in the first round of the next amateur draft. Considering one of the biggest issues we've got right now is out farm clubs, it might be time to start building up again.
So. I'm not sure exactly what will come of this, but I can't help but be at least a little happy this morning to wake up to the news.
Three more ACC thoughts
1) Back to the WFU/FSU comparrisons, guess which school got more first-team football all americans? Did you say FSU? Oooooh, sorry. WFU got one, FSU got skunked. Congrats to punter Ryan Plackemeier. Wonder what it says about our program that our punter is the best player on the team. Though he did lead the nation in 60+ yard punts, has a college career average over 45, and will likely be the first punter to get drafted this year.
ACC accounts for 8 of the 25 spots on the list. Not too shabby.
2) ACC Big-10 challenge. ACC is still undefeated, going 6-5 this year, and now having won all 7 playings of this made-for-TV contest. It's even more impressive to note that the two ACC expansion teams went 0-2, so ACC Classic had a 6-3 record.
3) The first even ACC football championship game is this weekend. Last post I expressed displeasure that FSU is getting a shot, in spite of having a worse overall record than BC, and being unranked. Then I considered. BC played one of the weakest OOC schedules that I've seen, with the toughest contest being against Ball State. By saying that they deserved the spot in the championship, even though FSU beat them on the field, I basically wanted to reward them for lining up Army, BYU, and Ball State.
Fact is that, probably, no one in the Atlantic Division necessarily deserves a shot to kill VT's BCS hopes. Hopefully what should happen is that the Hokies go 2-0 in their short ACC history.
