Northern Illinois Orange Bowl BCS Buster – College Football

Why the Northern Illinois Huskies did deserve their Orange Bowl berth over the power teams, despite the final score?

Hooray for the BCS Busters!

On Tuesday night the Florida State Seminoles felled the Northern Illinois Huskies 31-10 in the Orange Bowl. The margin of victory thus fueled the fire of the BCS apologist blowhards who claimed that Northern Illinois had no business playing in a BCS game over so-called more deserving teams, despite keeping the first half a respectably close 14-3.

I call BS. Or B[C]S. The Huskies absolutely deserved their Orange Bowl berth. And here is why:

1. The rules of the BCS say so: It is not as if some outside power stepped in and said that Northern Illinois land a BCS berth over another team. Not an obscure technicality, not cheating. Whatever your opinion of the BCS and the bizarre system of math that only college football uses to determine the BCS rankings, that is the process in place, and that process says Northern Illinois won the right to play in a BCS game.
2. The BCS is an inherently unfair system: The BCS was designed to award and protect the interests–particularly, money interests–of certain powerful, rich schools and conferences at the expense of all the others. Determining a national champion, especially a true national champion, is secondary at best; the best teams playing in BCS bowls has never been the system’s goal. As such, the BCS was designed to be an unfair. Even f the Northern Illinois Huskies did indeed win their BCS berth over a truly “better” team–which would be an unfair situation if the BCS actually cared about showcasing the best schools (please note, I do not knock the Huskies; I believe they are a very good football team)–well, that is exactly how the BCS is intended to work.
3. Northern Illinois is exactly the type of team the BCS was supposed to exclude: The built-in unfairness of the BCS in favor of the power schools and conferences is structured to shut the non-AQ conference schools out as much as pseudo-mathematically possible–no matter how good those squads may be, even if potentially the best in the nation. In other words, the Huskies, along with every other non-AQ team, must overcome additional hurdles to land a BCS game. So the Huskies truly had to earn their berth in overcoming the biases of the system.

   As for those complaining about the “unfairness” of Northern Illinois in the Orange Bowl, they must be completely disingenuous to defend the unfairness of BCS-berth awarding the 99.99% of the time when such inequities favor the BCS conferences–but, after all, that is the very nature of the BCS, isn’t it?

   Speaking of some of those supposedly deserving teams in the BCS games, the #3 Florida Gators were soundly defeated 33-23 by #21 Louisville in a game that was not nearly as close as the final score would indicate (a couple late scores closed the gap of an otherwise walloping) and the #5 Kansas State Wildcats were crushed by #4 Oregon 35-17. So even the margin of victory claim should not even be offered as proof against Northern Illinois.

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