BCS=BS

The timing is perfect. Just as the Eisenberg Sports College Football Championship (The ECF) knocks Ohio State out, The BCS pulls them back in.

One of the founding principles of the ECF is that there is just no way an overtime win at home should count as much as winning at home in regulation. It is the feeling here that any team that is of national championship caliber should be able to protect it's own field, and shouldn't need an extra period to do it. The Ohio State Buckeyes have lost one of the three (only three!) road games they have played so far this year, and have won two games in OT at home, back in September to NC State, and this past weekend to Purdue. Under the ECF Rules, an OT win at home counts as a Half-Acceptable Loss, so with two of those plus the Acceptable Loss on the road, that's two Acceptable Losses, which is unacceptable, which means Sayonara Buckeyes.

Of course, the BCS Blunder shouldn't matter. The Buckeyes open as 7-point underdogs in Ann Arbor this weekend, and I suspect that the Blue will dispose of them quickly. But if Ohio State should win, and screw USC out of it's Sugar Bowl birth, there's some consolation for you Pete Carroll, and all you Trojans fans:

You're chances of winning an ECF title improve if you don't go to the Sugar Bowl.

USC has already accomplished the killer ECF requirement. You must, at some point in the season, defeat a Top Ten team. The Trojans took care of that right away, clobbering the Auburn Tigers way back at the start of the season. It is not USC's fault if they don't get to play Oklahoma. If they go undefeated the rest of the way, they're an ECF Champion.

The same goes for TCU. The Horned Frogs would have won a share of the ECF last year except they couldn't get a game against a Top Ten Team. This year they are in the exact same position, except that the football Gods seem destined to put them in a BCS game, giving them their golden opportunity.

Understand this (to borrow a phrase from Peter Gammons). Who the ECF Champions are is in no way meant to be my opinion of who the best team in college football is. Any fan with any sense knows that the best team is Oklahoma. The point of the ECF is that unless there's is a tournament there is no way to determine absolutely who the best team is. The ECF tries to set the standards extremely high, so if at the end of the season a team still qualifies for the ECF Championship, we can say with all honesty that this team has done nothing, NOTHING, during the course of the season that would make us think that they couldn't win a tournament. That's the definition of an ECF Champion.

So good luck Oklahoma, USC, and TCU. You may all be Champions here.

ECF Rules

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