BCS Insanity

The BCS Championship Game was tonight.
Oregon should have been my favored school - if my team can't go at least support the team from the same conference right? - but they did not look as fast and snappy as they did during the season.
Not to say I like Auburn better - that knee to the face deal by Eric Smith was not cool - because I can't really get behind any of the SEC teams, except maybe Alabama - that's for you Elizabeth - so it was less than enthralling to watch.
At least until the last few seconds. What is that about football? Screwing around - entire scoreless quarters - until the last 45 seconds and suddenly everything is so serious and important. Maybe part of that is the announcers. They become really intense in the last minutes of the game.
Oregon: 19
Auburn: 22
This whole post season thing has been a little bitter knowing my team couldn't go to any bowl game this year - or next - no matter how well we played. I have been asked about the BCS sanctions - stemming from some players on the football and basketball teams taking money and/or houses as compensation from agents while still in school - against USC and as usual my opinion has a couple of sides.
The sanctions are the following:

1. The aforementioned ban on any post season games for two years.
2. The loss of ten athletic scholarships a year for three years to make a total of thirty.
3. Forfeit of the 2004-5 season including the reversal of the championship win of that season.
4. Four years probation, which means the BCS will be observing the program to see how it's going.
5. There were rumors that The Heisman Committee would ask for their trophy back but they never did.

On the one hand I think there definitely needed to be a fine/penalty/sanction handed out. College ball is college ball, a place for amateurs and it shouldn't behave like a professional league. (Let's ignore for the moment that gifts are given to many players at a lot of universities, including the SEC.) Theoretically, these athletes are there to get an education and their abilities on the playing field enable them to pay for that education. It's only a means to an end.
On the other hand I'm not sure what the BCS administration expect to gain by instituting the punishments the way they did. The athletes being punished are the ones who weren't even in high school when this all went down. The scholarships are being taken from players who might not get to go to college and they haven't done anything wrong.
On the other hand what can the BCS do to a guy who's already graduated and making buckets of money on a professional team? Their best option for making an example of a school who allows the rules to be bent and broken is to hand out a fine and limit scholarships so the school will not chance this sort of thing happening again.
On the other hand, does everything have to be rescinded completely? Why not just add an asterisk at the bottom of the page like they do when an athlete takes steroids and breaks a record. It's not like taking the money/house changed their ability to play the game. And what about all the other players on the field who didn't break the rules? They should still be able to claim a perfect season and a national championship title.
I hope these sanctions will do what they are supposed to do and remind the college players and their coaches that it is just a game, and game that is allowing them to get one of the best educations available in the country and to follow the rules. So we don't have to do this again in a few years.


This is me and I'm mostly over it. Mostly.