Fans should ignore flawed bowl system

It's ugly -- again.

Yes, the wonderful BCS buffet the geniuses at College Football Inc. will unveil this evening is going to be wildly unsatisfying -- again.

You know the drill by heart. We go through a season watching all of the so-called mega-teams stumble in one place or another. Before long, there's no consensus about who should be declared the national champion.

But they pair up two teams anyway based on subjective logic (oxymoron) and computer algorithms. We all scream bloody hell and the geniuses at CFI (who know better than us, of course) tell us this is what we prefer and like lemmings we follow along over the cliffs of postseason discontent.

Thank you sirs, may we have another.

Well here's an idea. Let's NOT follow them over that cliff. Let's not support this bowl system. Let's not give them anymore ammunition to tell us that we like college football more than ever the way it is so they can justify not changing anything.

What I'm suggesting is don't even look at it. Don't go to the games. Don't tune your television in. Don't even scan the Internet to check up on live scoring.

Watch something else on television. Read a book. Save that cash you planned to spend on a bowl trip to Nashville or Shreveport and take the family to the beach or skiing or splurge on a ping-pong table. Whatever you want. Just don't watch any of the bowl or BCS title games.

You see, we are to blame for all this BC-mess as much as the idiot commissioners of the Big Ten and Pac-10 conferences. We're to blame as much as the bloated chairman of the Outback Bowl who gets paid more than $350,000 a year. We're to blame because we sit back and take it instead of backing up our whines with the one power we have -- to not care.

I understand that once again I'm tilting at windmills. It is impossible to get the American public to unite on anything from global warming to whether or not the incoming president is a clandestine Muslim. So massive staged boycotts are generally doomed to fail before they start.

That said, here's three steps that if enough of us take can at least send a message that we don't like being ignored. Con-sidering the current economic malaise, this will be good on the family budget as well as for the common college football good:

1. Don't attend any bowl games. Go ahead and buy one ticket in order to help your favorite team fulfill its bowl allotment so that your school won't be punished down the road when a sensible system gets installed. But don't go and don't use it. Let the TV cameras try to avoid showing the empty seats. Spend your money on something for the holidays that will help stimulate the economy where you live.

2. Don't contribute to the TV ratings. Of course you can watch your own team play, but go to a local bar with like-minded friends and watch there to dilute the ratings. And set your home television DVR to record all shows opposite the bowl games on competing networks -- especially the BCS bowls and title game.

3. Send thank you notes supporting a future playoff. Draft a short, polite note signed by every member of your family with a simple statement of displeasure and send it to BCS commissioner John Swofford, the president of ABC/ESPN, the commissioner of your favorite conference and the president of your favorite school. Here's some simple text to get started.

Dear so-and-so. I love college football and support my school's program. But I will not support the current bowl system in person or on television until a sensible limited playoff system is put in place. Thanks for your consideration.

Really, it's not that hard. Do you really want to watch the Metro Conference reunion of Cincinnati and Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl that badly? That four hours could be spent much more productively playing with your children or sleeping. Multiply those four hours by the 34 bowl games and you just saved 17 work days from your life.

You're welcome.

The only way change is going to happen if we hit them were it hurts -- in the wallets. Let's give the sponsors a reason to trim their budgets in the future by questioning whether they are getting anything in return for their BCS investment.

Clearly the geniuses at College Football Inc. don't respond to embarrassment when year after year a new fiasco prompts them to soldier on with their stupid BCS system. Last year was a disaster with more two-loss teams in the BCS games than one-loss teams, but they shot down a band-aid plus-one proposal nonetheless and signed a new deal with ESPN through 2014.

This year the mess grows as a playoff case can be made for a handful of major-conference teams plus two undefeated smaller programs (Utah and Boise State), one of which will likely get dismissed out of hand so that the power conferences can make sure another BCS season doesn't go by without Ohio State in the mix.

And just imagine if Southeastern Conference champion Florida inexplicably gets stiffed by computer bias so we can have a rematch of Oklahoma-Texas.

So don't let another BC-mess roll by in front of your eyes.

As the great Otter suggested in standing up to the Faber College establishment in Animal House , "I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."

And we're just the guys to do it.

Reach Scott Michaux at (706) 823-3219 or scott.michaux@augustachronicle.com.