Shenanigans Concerns about the BCS

Author: Alex Garlick

No matter how loud the debate becomes regarding Matthew Biette's threat to cancel midnight breakfast, it seems to fall on deaf ears. The Campus' editorial board can chip in its two cents and the SGA can organize a lunch with Biette, but the student body is taking the apathetic route away from responsibility. To be frank, the dishes are not coming in. I cannot say I am surprised, either. For better or for worse, the student body is not responding to Biette's cry of financial hardship or The Campus' moral plea.

Biette had a chart at lunch last Friday claiming that $25,000 worth of dishware walked out of the dining halls in September. That is a lot of money and, quite frankly, a waste, but it is also about what one student pays for one semester. Therefore, it is swept under the proverbial rug. Furthermore, any cry of financial pain is hard to take seriously when the news regarding the progress of the $500 million dollar fundraiser is on the front page of the web site. A pattern has developed regarding student reaction, or lack of reaction, to monetary issues. The seemingly annual 4 to 6 percent bump in tuition has become as predictable as the changing of the seasons, yet the student body receives it with less agitation than is mustered up every week by "The Devil Wears Patagonia."

None of this is news. Therefore, you must be asking where this talk of silverware, cups and bowls is going. I alert you to a parallel situation in the world of college athletics, the Bowl Championship Series. The BCS has more in common with the "Proctor Predicament" than just bowls. It also involves oranges, sugar, apathy and tons of money.

Now Division I college football is not as popular a topic on The Campus opinions page as, say, organic food, but hear me out. The purpose of the system is to pit the best two teams in the country against each other in a championship game after a series of marquee games. It has worked a few times in the past, but this year there is a problem: no one knows who the best two teams are. This is why there has to be a playoff system. It could be so simple: a six-team playoff with the top two getting byes. This way there would be the same number of games, and the "student-athletes" could be back in the classroom in time for their rigorous spring classes.

One of the pros to this system is that it would only make the voters and computers decipher the second and third place teams instead of figuring out whom the sixth or seventh best teams are, and with less serious consequences. In addition, it would solve the problem of a team that does not win its regular season conference playing for the national championship over the conference champ. That is like naming someone who does not have the best G.P.A. in the English department the class valedictorian or electing a President who did not receive the most votes.

No one will solve the "Proctor Predicament" or the BCS anytime soon, for the same reasons. First, the masses are content the way things are, even though there is a logical, mutually beneficial solution. Next, money compounds this apathy. Our students do not care about wasting it, while the big football schools are happy to sit back and count it. So next week, instead of discussing exciting college football playoff games over a delicious midnight breakfast, students will be in a perpetual search for legitimacy of the sports, glasses for their drinks, and breakfast to crave their late night hunger.

Alex Garlick '08.5 is a Political Science and Economics major from Needham, Mass.