BCS media guide: I got mine!
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Remember that scene in ‘The Jerk’ when Steve Martin gets so excited when the new phone book arrives?
Well, I got my annual jollies Thursday when my mailman delievered this year’s 2008-2009 Bowl Championships Series media guide.
You can access the BCS guide online but there’s nothing like holding the thin, spiral-bound book in your bare hands. This year’s guide is as brilliantly blue as Boise State’s field. If Mao can have his little Red Book, I’ll can have my Little Blue.
The BCS guide won’t leave my side until this year’s two BCS title-game participants have been decimal-point decided in December.
This year’s guide is 88 pages long and contains the rules, regulations and bylaws of the BCS.
A flip through the pages is either like getting lost in a great, sweeping American novel--or reading the owners’ manual on your Chevy Impala. Who could forget the final standings of 2001, when Nebraska nipped Colorado for the No.2 spot by .05, with number Oregon finishing No. 4 despite finishing No.2 in both polls.
Relive with delight the season of 2003 in which USC finished No.1 in both polls but No. 3 in
the BCS standings, or the season of 2004, when the squabble between No. 4 Texas and No. 5 Cal for the Rose Bowl prompted the Associated Press into pulling out after issuing the BCS a cease and desist order.
Only in the BCS media guide can you learn the intricate details of how a non-BCS school qualifies for one of the major bowl games ...
If you get tired of reading Hemingway, or Dickens, open to page 12 and read ‘History of the BCS.’
Learn on page 5 about the automatic qualification status requirements:
Section 1, B, reveals that that a team from a conference without automatic qualification status receives a bid if ‘such team is ranked in the top 16 of the final BCS Standings and its ranking in the final BCS Standings is higher than that of a champion of a conference that has an annual automatic berth in one of the BCS bowls.’
If only our tax codes could be written with such clarity.
You learn in the BCS media guide that Notre Dame, for no stated reason, has favored-program BCS qualifiyng status. It receives an automatic berth if it finishes in the top 8 of the standings, whereas other schools outside the 6 BCS conferences need to finish in the top-12.
Shoot, that sounds fair. For the record, Notre Dame went 3-9 last year and just missed out.
So there you have it. Get your copies while they last. I hear they’re selling faster than Harry Potter...So the on-line version may be your best bet.
The only downside in receiving my BCS guide this year is that I mostly cover UCLA or USC. What has the BCS got to do with them?
-- Chris Dufresne
