Congratulations Longhorns!

The big game is in the record books, and Vince Young has led Mack Brown's University of Texas Longhorns to victory. It was a great game, and a vindication of the much-maligned BCS system, which this year managed to pair up the only two undefeated conference winners in their annual championship. As a Big 12 fan, I couldn't be happier with the Texas win. It is also a perfect opportunity to grind my BCS axe without the appearance of "sour grapes."

College football wasn't organized to determine a national champion. Regional conferences were formed because athletic programs couldn't afford to travel long distances to games. Schedules were arranged to determine conference winners. With the advent of lucrative TV contracts, gigantic stadiums, and fans willing and able to spend a small fortune on tickets, there has been a role-reversal. The football team now supports the university -- at least in terms of revenue.

As college football grew in popularity, everybody wanted to get a piece of the pie. First the Rose Bowl (1902) and all the post-season bowls that followed. Then the AP got into the act with their silly "beauty contest" poll in 1936. Nobody took the idea of a bunch of sports writers voting on football ratings seriously, but it helped to sell papers. In 1992 the Bowl Coalition was formed, after figuring out a way to include the existing conferences, polls, and bowls while still carving out a slice for themselves.

In 1998, the Rose Bowl came on board, and the Bowl Coalition was renamed the Bowl Alliance. Next year there'll be one more game, after the four existing BCS bowls, which will "fix" the system which left the undefeated 2004 Auburn Tigers and Utah Utes out of the running, and just incidentally make a lot of money for the organizers. Now nobody will ever claim they "should have been number one" again, right? Dream on.

As long as teams play primarily within their own conferences, there will always be room for disagreement. Conferences just aren't equal nor do they retain the same relative strengths from year to year. Unless somebody figures out a way to include (i.e. pay off) the conferences to increase inter-conference scheduling in some sort of year-long tournament, the mythical national college football championship will remain elusive.

Of course, such a system would have its detractors, and arguments against it. Apparently the need to declare a national champion is based as much as anything else on the need for a point of reference for the disappointed majority of fans who will swear they were robbed. But that's just speculation. The 2006 Longhorns are the real deal, and they have the trophy to prove it!