I swear, this is NOT a sports blog...

...but I have to comment on the waning moments of the college football season. College football is the one thing in life that makes me consistently feel young(er) again. It was a mere 11 years ago since I first stepped onto campus in Austin, so the discussion can be gerrymandered toward how I'm getting older and the college athletes stay the same age. So, there. I haven't broken from the blog theme (WARNING: we now join the link party, already in progress).

However, this year has been one for distinct comment of and about my beloved Longhorns. Early in the season, one of my colleagues from the Texas Exes Corpus Christi chapter, Ron Lowe, claimed that the burnt orange and white would either be 12-0 or 6-6. As far as the spring game was concerned, the team looked either very Jekyll or very Hyde. It was a fair enough prediction for a prognosticator such as Mr. Lowe.

Ah, but how the season has played out...it has been one for the books with Colt McCoy breaking school records left and right in front of the guy that claimed the previous records. The Red River Shootout (I know, I know...shootout and cocktail party are not PC, so we must homogenize it with Rivalry and "game formerly known as the cocktail party") came and went with a very entertaining outcome putting the 'Horns at number one (with a big target on it's back) for three consecutive weeks. And with all the victories and all the achievements, eight seconds in the West Texas plains changed it all. Texas Tech was the sweetheart of the Big XII South for about thirteen and a half days when it was realized Mike Leech's group doesn't know how to carry a big game via bus. Not only was that apparent during the OU game, but also this year's edition of the Pick Your Corporate Sponsor Cotton Bowl.

So, what happens? All hell breaks loose, naturally. Even though the 45-35 lobbying during the "Jorvorskie Lane ate my other sign" game, the human polls had the Sooners ahead while the Bowl Championship Series computers had UT up over the bitter rivals. The Sooners won in Stillwater at Bedlam, and everything got reversed. Computers loved OU while the human polls state the case for Texas. So, with Tech barely getting by road powerhouse Baylor, OU and UT winning out, there was a three-way tie for the Big XII South. Since the Big XII never saw this coming and never thought in the twelve and a half years of existence, they created no internal contingency for a fourth-factor tie-breaking rule. So, what do they do? They use the most flammable tool in all of sports to determine who gets to beat the hell out of Missouri. It was like asking a Catholic priest to babysit a young boy (ouch, even that one hurt a little bit...but seriously, "Doubt" is a fantastic movie).

So, now we have Monday night. Ohio State gets their annual pass to make a payday, and the Longhorns prep for a big money bowl for the third time in five years. And we have the BCS to thank for that. Thursday night, the nation, and Longhorn fans begrudgingly, will be forced to watch another OU game. And we have the Big XII and the BCS to thank for that. But, how did we get here? I know it took only one loss in early November for Texas to reroute their travel from Miami to Glendale. But how did we get to the point where President-Elect (hurry up and be president, already) Obama is making the BCS a talking point? I will tell you how...we are a bunch of dirty, dirty capitalists. We should curtailed this garbage about two decades ago.

The last time the Buck-EYES and the Horns hooked up, it got all sorts of crazy.

The bowl system was the loosely associated compilation of games that determined, in no hard and fast way but merely by the a couple of arbitrary polls, which team was the best in the nation. It started with the Rose Bowl and expanded in a regional pattern taking care of the geographically-capable teams they could assign. For example, the Cotton Bowl, back in the day, featured the Southwest Conference (SWC) champion versus either the Southeast Conference (SEC) and/or the modern-day Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). But, people started to complain. With the human polls and multiple games, the co-champions started popping up. Then the arguments to the co-champions followed. Then the bowl shortcomings were argued. And this was all in an effort to save schools (which, generations ago, had their budgets attached to academic budgets) a big chunk of money.

In 1995, enter the Bowl Alliance. That worked okay, but then you had Pac-10 and Big Ten teams that were actually competitive, and that screwed up efforts as well. It did create co-champions, which brings the same argument before the Alliance about face.

At the same time, you had the corporate sponsor attached to the bowl name, i.e. the "title sponsor" for the game. A decade ago, it was the USF&G Sugar Bowl. It was the Florida Citrus Orange Bowl. It was the Sunkist Fiesta Bowl (lots of citrus lobbyists for the bowls ten years ago). It was the Rose Bowl Game (the Rose Bowl committee was a company within itself, so, they said thanks - but no thanks to the title sponsor).

Now, college sports is it's own cash cow. From Texas Monthly in November, the University of Texas, by itself, has become the archetype for college programs. Now untethered by academics and their shortened budgets, UT is on pace to reach a $126.8 million budget in fiscal 2009. Tandem that with the profitability of the Big XII budget, the huge money-grab that is the BCS title games plus the advertising that goes with it, then you have greedy bastards that now have the money to travel, but would rather protect the financial bottom line to build 100,000 capacity stadiums and new jerseys for the field hockey team.

It's inequity at it's finest. You want better colleges and better academics and better facilities and better faculty. But The University's biggest money maker is in a vaccum. The second highest-paid staffer at UT is Mack Brown. Now, that's what I call priorities. But I digress.

The argument falls short when you a) separate the athletic from academic in forms of budgets, expenses and donations (yeah, the Longhorn Foundation's sole purposes is to make UT the biggest dog in the yard, with generous contributions from viewers like you) and b) preservation of the bowls assist with making the focus on the student-athlete. There has never been a bigger oxymoron in the professionalization of college sports, especially football.

We have done this to ourselves. All Texas fans are complicit in the creation of this monster. Thirteen years ago, UT and the SWC did not have to succumb and dissolve. Granted, a present-day SWC would look like the ACC, but with that one move of resistance, the Alliance would have never been successful and the Rose Bowl wouldn't have a title sponsor that is funneling money from a $800 billion "bailout". If leadership would have been more prophetic (definitely unlike Dan Beebe and the Big XII "tiebreaker" debacle), the playoff system would have been installed with no outside meandering arguments.

We have done this to ourselves. College football ratings, according to ratings amassed from 2007, the average uptick in regular season viewing is up by 4% with the bowls averaging about 9%. If we hate the BCS so much for what it does to the competition level and the end-result, then why keep watching a bad product? I quit watching professional wrestling because it was fake. As Texas fans, if we complain so much about the BCS, why support it?

We have done this to ourselves. On a collateral level, all the sponsors have been soaking up the airtime with translated profits. AT&T has banked ever since it captured the Rose Bowl (as a "presented by" sponsor) and the Cotton Bowl. And let's not forget the Tortilla Chip Bowl all my cohorts will be watching on Monday. Yeah, they aren't hurting either.

I know I am spreading a ton of anarchy here for just a college football season that was one interception away from shutting everyone up (including the computers). It was going to be 12-0 or 6-6. But this is what we paid for. Every time we buy a collegiate-licensed Longhorn shirt, we are part of the capitalist problem, not the efficient solution. Now, we can't quit the BCS cold turkey. In 2005, they did get it right, even though Matt Leinart would disagree. But if there is no action the leadership of the conferences or the schools or the BCS precipitates toward a playoff, we cannot complain. I would love to be Utopian and say that we can achieve a true playoff with a grass-roots movement, but we will still watch the game, watch SportsCenter after the game (because ESPN is totally complicit in this as well) and buy that bag of chips to dip our queso.

UT lost to Tech. OU won out. UT drew Ohio State. OU has a shot at the title. We can lament all we want as 'Horns fans. But can we finally stop complaining and start realizing that the system is broken and nothing can fix it other than common sense? Plus, I don't want to be bothered while the game is on. So pipe down, will you? I will only need four hours, in between six-thirty and ten-thirty. Then we can email Barak Obama with our proposal.

My Three Things:
1) I think I can hold off on any champagne consumption for the next twelve months, right ladies?















2) "Benjamin Button" made me cry. Shut up.
3) There is absolutely nothing wrong with going to a party that is packed with a ton of very strong personalities. It actually makes for a very entertaining time. It helps to know how to hit the Pause button and allow for the conversational left turn to happen.

Merry New Year, everyone. Hook 'em, Horns. Boomer-Sooner-Fuckyou. And again, I assure you, this is not a sports blog. Talk later.