We Sports Fans have a working agreement with our sports. As long as they are fun to watch, provide us with the opportunity to choose and root for our favorites, and culminate in a compelling chase for a championship, we’re pretty happy campers.

Otherwise…there’s a disturbance in the Force.

In college football, that disturbance is the Bowl Championship Series, which takes a perfectly good sport and turns it into a three-month popularity contest followed by a bunch of exhibition games.

This doesn’t work for me. Per the pact described above, I am all but constitutionally guaranteed a playoff system which determines the champion of college football on the field instead of a conference room. And I’m not alone in my thoughts here.

Football is king among spectator sports in America. An absolute eyeball-generating machine, with the advertising and sponsorship money surrounding it running well into the billions. The Super Bowl is the most watched television broadcast each year – nothing else comes close. And regular season college football is right behind the NFL in terms of ratings, attendance and general popularity.

So why is it that each year the BCS National Championship game trails every other major sport’s championship in terms of ratings? Could it be that not quite everybody is on board with its legitimacy? Ever wonder why the NCAA hasn’t even put up a fight to have its name on this thing, even though they are college football’s official governing body?

Certainly I understand that this is 100% about money. The BCS is run by an iron-clad coalition of the “Haves” and the “Have Mores” and these schools are not of a mind to give back that 3,499^th ivory back-scratcher. But here’s the unfathomable part – they could get their grubby paws on even more money if they instituted a play-off.

Consider this. Even though I consume dozens of hours of college football each season, I haven’t watched a BCS National Championship Game in years – a spirited game of lawn darts is more compelling to me. But! If the game was the culmination of a play-off, I wouldn’t think of missing it. In fact, with gun to head and the choice of watching either the Super Bowl or a legitimate college football title game it would be no contest – I’d take the college game any day. I’d even trade the Super Bowl for the two national semi-final games.

I humbly submit that the Real College Football Playoffs would surpass even NCAA March Madness in terms of popularity, ratings and – here’s the key – rights fees, sponsorships and advertising revenues.

It’s the ultimate Win/Win. Sports fans get to watch a gripping drama unfold each fall, AND the rich would get even richer! That second part is the primary reason my mind can’t wrap itself around why this doesn’t happen.

So in sum – anything that can serve to embarrass the BCS is not just a good thing to me. It’s the right thing. As a practicing Sports Fan, each year I passionately cling to the hope that the egg on the collective faces of the BCS cognoscenti at year-end is as thick and runny as it can possibly be. That’s what, for me, college football has sadly been reduced to.   

And that is why I made the pilgrimage to FedEx Field on Labor Day night. I was there to see the most important college football game of the season. For Boise State holds the carton of eggs.

Not in the history of the current system has a team had more potential to spotlight the inequity in which the BCS traffics. In fact, the conditions exist for a Perfect Storm. If Boise State, with all but one starter back from last year’s undefeated team can:

1)      Travel across the country and post a dominating win on national television against a highly-ranked BCS conference team; and

2)      Beat pre-season Top 25 team Oregon State in Week 3; and

3)      Run the table once again in their own Western Athletic Conference…

…there could be no conceivable defense for excluding them from the mega-money National Championship game.

Other than of course, that Boise State would then have to be paid like a National Championship team, which the BCS has studiously avoided thus far. That money would have to come directly out of the pockets of the six glamour conferences that have reserved the bulk of the windfall from that game for themselves. And that will never do.

But!…Should all aspects of the three-point plan laid out above come to fruition and Boise State is once again left with their noses pressed against the Championship Game window… well, as Ricky Ricardo might say to the BCS, “You’ve got some splainin’ to do”.

That is why a wide grin was plastered on my face when the first quarter of the game between Boise State and Virginia Tech ended with the Broncos leading 17-0. And it wasn’t even that close. Boise State had held the Hokies to negative cumulative yards, while scoring each time it touched the ball.

My fiendishly clever plan was coming to fruition.

To their credit, the 65,000 or so Virginia Tech fans in the house had managed to take the full punch in the nose that had been the first quarter and survive it. They were a resilient bunch, and many of them actually believed that they would come back to win this game. They were passionate. They were also well-lubricated, and thus a little delusional. But their faith was rewarded.

For whatever reason, the ferocity with which Boise State ruled the first quarter melted away. They started giving up yardage in big chunks, especially through the air. And once the Hokie passing game had been established, it opened up the line for their running game.

Boise State had their foot planted firmly on Virginia Tech’s – and by extension all of college football’s – chest. And never got around to pressing down.

As you would expect from the season opener for each team, it was a sloppy game, which got messier as it progressed. And Boise State’s messes became more frequent and more impactful. Fumbles. Dropped passes. A missed field goal from gimme range. A blocked extra point try. Dumb penalties at the worst possible times. All of these combined with Tech’s sudden discovery of an offense to enable the Hokies to take a 30-26 lead late into the game.

Sure, the Broncos managed a dramatic touchdown drive at the final hour to snatch a 33-30 win, but the damage had already been done.

Look at it this way. Boise State won the first quarter and the last 1 ½ minutes of the game, beating Virginia Tech 24-0. But in the nearly three quarters of the game that intervened, they were outscored 30-9. By a good, but not great team. And the next week, when Virginia Tech lost at home to James Madison, a team from a lower division, it all but sealed the deal.

In the grand scheme of things, this Boise State win will be tarnished enough such that during the course of the season it will melt away in significance. The Broncos will most likely finish undefeated. Again. And once again they will be sent to play in the most invisible bowl game that the BCS can conjure for them. And each member school of the BCS’s Super Six conferences will receive their regular shipment of ivory backscratchers.

And come January, I will once again be in search of a closet to clean out instead of watching the exhibition game ostensibly played to determine the “national champion”.

Sigh.