Somber Is The Price We Pay: Christianity, Ethics, And The Response To All Things Bin Laden

The first thing that must be said in this essay is simple: I'm a coward.

I'm a coward because I don't have the guts to be as good as Jesus of Nazareth. I'm a coward because I don't have the moral courage of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, or Dorothy Day, my main role models as a person of faith and as someone who knows that human beings are not meant to kill each other. I'm a coward for not going as far as the best souls who have ever guided us when they were robed in human flesh and feelings.

I'm a coward. Let that reality - and it is a reality - frame the rest of this essay and how it is processed on moral and ethical levels.

It's been quite a week for Americans, as we wrestle with the reality and aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's death. Everything about this seminal moment in world history - and it is a seminal moment, even if you believe that Bin Laden was no longer the same threat he was in 2001 - has generated necessary discussions about the human condition. Questions of how we conduct policy, how we deal with mass-murderers, how we treat inconvenient kinds of lives in manifestly threatening situations are daunting enough. The Bin Laden death has forced us to go even deeper, though: How should we react to the death of a person who committed supremely evil and vile acts? How should we speak of a person who didn't just end roughly 3,000 lives in horrifying fashion, but shattered the hundreds of thousands of lives connected to the unfortunate souls who worked in the upper reaches of the Twin Towers on that September 11 morning? Nearly 10 full years after 9/11, how should we react - it's a necessary question because it's a matter of heart and soul, the stuff of life at its deepest, truest core, the stuff by which people of faith align their lives and - for the nonbeliever - the internal energy that shapes the society we live in. Maybe the first 24 hours after Osama's death painted a picture in which emotions were too raw and the catharsis was too fresh. Now, though, a full four days after Sunday's "where-were-you-when-you-heard?" moment, we should be able to wrestle with these tensions in earnest so that we can be our best selves and show as much to the world when our inner fiber is tested on a grand scale.

The most basic thing to say about the nation's response to Bin Laden's death - and your own response, whatever it was - is that we all draw a line somewhere. As we swim through life, millions of little experiences over many decades come together to form a larger moral canvas, a fully-laid-out, whole-cloth expression of everything we believe to be good, true, necessary, and paramount in our lives. Decades of encounters, perceived in our own unique way and weighed against the stories we hear from others around us, create a larger flow of life and frame way we've come to understand the great truths of existence.

There is a finite point I wish to make about all of this, but before getting to that point, one must ask questions on the path to deeper understanding of oneself as a person. We all draw lines in different places, but before talking about those lines, let's at least make sure we're considering all the angles when we start drawing:

Where do you draw the line on war, on special ops, on drones, and on aiding rebel groups or ruling governments in foreign countries? What are the criteria that should (or do, or must) guide these actions?

What is a reasonable cost of war or select missions to take out specific individuals such as Osama Bin Laden? What's the cost in lives that's reasonable? The cost in money? The cost in emotional strain, the divorces of military families, the mental health of soldiers, the spiritual consequence of being given a professional/military assignment to kill another human being? These questions are not asked in a partisan manner, but in a coldly dispassionate and analytical way. Costs are not just monetary; some things in life ARE worth the great holistic cost. The point is to make sure that we account for the full cost of actions; that's the only way in which we can confidently say that some things are worth doing in any circumstance.

Continuing the questions that must be asked this week: How many other people are there like Bin Laden who should be taken out? What guides that specific kind of decision?

Should these kinds of missions ever be undertaken at all (i.e., should we consider pacifism or not)?

Can torture or extreme methods of attempted coercion (i.e., waterboarding) ever be condoned in an attempt to gain information?

When something like the killing of Osama Bin Laden is successfully carried out, how should it then be seen - as an achievement, a grim but necessary duty, a satisfying triumph over evil, or as another distinct reality not expressed in the three previous options?

Should photos of the dead person (Bin Laden) be posted? What criteria should guide the posting of the photos? How should we view the photos themselves and the decision of whether to post them or not?

These questions are not meant to steer you to one way of being or one course of action, but to merely get all of us to make sure that we all draw our own lines based on highly-developed and fully fleshed-out criteria.

Whether you're a liberal or a conservative or a libertarian; an anti-war advocate or a strong believer in the need for an interventionist foreign policy; a supporter of soft power or hard power; or, lastly, a supporter of defense spending or defense cuts, these are the kinds of questions that have to be wrestled with. Human beings can, do and always will possess different ways of viewing a given issue, but what's unallowable is to arrive at views without a clear, coherent and layered ethical architecture, a finely-developed framework created by decades of living, decades of wrestling with life's most difficult challenges on a soul level or - for the nonbeliever - a deeply internal level of heart and mind. Arriving at a viewpoint through careful work doesn't guarantee correctness or accuracy, but views gained without much forethought do indeed guarantee chaos before too long.

It should be clear that the process of asking so many questions (and they're just a few of the many queries that could be presented to anyone grappling with the moral and ethical dilemmas posed by "Osama Week") is designed to achieve one simple thing: The formation of well-developed criteria for the moral and ethical lines we draw in our lives, lines that - when taken to the policy level and adopted by leaders - form the stance of the United States Government in front of its people and the larger world beyond its borders.

With that having been established, this essay now moves to the person whose life and teachings are supposed to hold primacy for a great many Americans: Jesus of Nazareth.

Cast aside the longstanding debates about whether America is a “Christian nation” by charter and, in a different vein, if America is Christian or secular on a cultural level. What is still beyond dispute is that of religious adherents in America, most profess to be Christian by a wide margin. Moreover, it’s also beyond dispute that some general adherence to Christian religious faith is seen as a general asset in presidential and national American politics. Of course, Jeremiah Wright proved to be thorny for Barack Obama, but that drama from the 2008 campaign was more a matter of casting a cloud over the perceived legitimacy of Obama’s Christianity. It was not an instance in which perceived authentic Christianity was suddenly a weakness.

The point is plain: Being Christian is seen as important in America’s political arena, even though there are large blocks of voters on the Left who are passionately, enduringly atheist, agnostic, secularist, or a combination thereof. Because Christian identity owns such centrality and primacy in our nation’s national life (not necessarily its culture at large, but certainly in politics writ large), it is therefore relevant and necessary to constantly keep the life, example and teachings of Jesus in prominent public view.

Theology is its own sticky wicket, and there are many debates about the divinity of Jesus that will never die (the word choice is not intentional, by the way). However, what’s great about the life of Jesus is that – while immensely layered, paradoxical and mysterious on some levels – he left behind some decidedly unambiguous statements and examples on matters of life and death.

“Those who live by the sword shall also perish by it” – this, mind you, just hours before he would die at the hands of Roman imperial power.

“Turn the other cheek” – no, not a statement of completely passive submission to violence at the hands of another person, but a very intentional and genuinely nonviolent way of aggressively resisting oppression and mistreatment.

“Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you” – this is Jesus’s most difficult teaching by far, but it is a core part of the human Jesus’s message and therefore something every Christian person has to grapple with. It certainly can’t be exempted from the Christian call.

To be clear, “loving one’s enemies” does not mean approving of their actions. Similarly, forgiveness does not mean immediately, reflexively extending absolution or consolation to an evildoer. The repentance of the evildoer and a mutual acknowledgment of the hurt caused by one party to the other are parts of necessary forgiveness. Nevertheless, the call does remain to love the other person, no matter how unattractive or evil that person might in fact be. Jesus sets the bar very high; it’s why he’s Jesus, the only sinless person who ever lived, despite inhabiting the same human flesh and the same biological impulses all of us have.

Realizing the clarity and completeness of Jesus’s identity as an exemplar of vigorous and aggressive nonviolent resistance to the oppression he endured on Good Friday, we – especially those of us who claim the mantle of Christian faith but also those who view Jesus as a great teacher or role model on a solely human level – must at least attempt to square our lives with the life of Jesus. This is when an event such as the killing of Osama Bin Laden brings us in touch with very difficult and messy realities of human life in a context of mass civilization, not the primitive hunter-gatherer societies of prehistoric times when finely-crafted systems of governance had not yet emerged.

Once human beings developed and grew to their present levels of cognitive and moral awareness, we – as a species - generated moral codes, laws, and various standards for the regulation of peaceable behavior on a massive scale. What Jesus did and taught offers an imposing challenge to the fragile balance of human life in cities and clustered communities. What is under discussion in “Osama Week” is nothing less than a revisiting of all that it means to exist as a global community of almost (now) seven billion persons, on our way to 8, 9, and 10 billion in the very near future. Just how are we to act – and think, and feel, and outwardly emote – on a planet with multiple hundreds of countries, dozens of different races, and an accordingly vast range of languages and lifestyles? This is what it means to be human, and on these bewildering questions, Jesus established his own clear standard.

Because Jesus sets the bar so high, we must then realize – and this is part of why I am indeed a profound moral coward – is that almost all of us fall short when comparing ourselves to the carpenter’s son from Nazareth.

The difficult thing to realize about the Jesus Standard and the human standard – including Matt Zemek’s standard – is that on a planet with billions of people and many bad actors, the ideal of complete nonviolence is almost impossible to realistically uphold. Let’s play along with this hypothetical: If an attacker broke into Jesus’s home today, Jesus would aggressively pursue active nonviolent resistance. He would project complete serenity in bearing and appearance but demonstrate moral authority and emotional control of the entire situation. He would express empathy with his attacker yet shed light on the smallness and weakness of what the attacker was doing. The man who exposed Pontius Pilate’s doublespeak and moral cowardice while not insulting the Roman governor would take a similar tack with a would-be assailant. The exact words would be unique to the situation, but the fundamental approach would not waver… not from the one who was supremely righteous (righteous in a human sense; believers would add a divine layer of spiritual truth to Jesus, but again, even for the nonbeliever, Jesus offers the ultimate standard of human conduct in these earthly bodies of ours) but yet did not resist his death with a show of physical force.

In response to the example and teachings of Jesus, I can only say that I fall short of them. I can only say that any attempt to do violence against another human being falls short of the Jesus Standard. Yet, I do intellectually embrace a way of being that falls short of the Jesus Standard; it’s the gap between pure teaching and realpolitik, between the vision Jesus had for humanity and the realism of living in the midst of a complicated world.

I cannot deny or run away from this: When defending oneself in a house or defending one’s country against a mass-murderer who constantly loomed as a terrorist threat, I can’t say that I’m a full-on pacifist. I can’t. That’s what makes me a moral coward. It’s where I choose to draw the line in my outlook on the world and how to conduct myself as an individual citizen. It’s also where I draw the line in my view of what the United States can and can’t do. Nevertheless, it puts me below the Jesus Standard; it leaves me short of Jesus’s teachings in full.

Where do I draw the line on the questions raised above? Jesus would want me to view every single killing of another person as deficient; at least, that’s true if I take the passion and crucifixion narratives at face value (which, as a Christian, I darn well should). However, I fall short of the Jesus Standard when I say that there are a few people who should be killed. Hitler was one, Bin Laden another, Joe Stalin another, Saddam Hussein another, Pol Pot another. Unrepentant mass murderers who – moreover – are not likely to be replaced by anything or anyone worse than them are the people on this planet (there are only a select few of them) whose deaths would generally benefit their local populations and/or people in other lands who live under the threat of terrorism or death by violent means.

On a matter that’s somewhat (but not completely) related to the killing of terrorists, I oppose the death penalty but believe, as an example, that Jeffery Dahmer was an exception, a person who – without repentance – needed to be put to death because of his…. uhhh… his choice in meats. I hold that there are a few occasions in which it is necessary to do something that fails to meet the Jesus Standard of moral and ethical conduct. These kinds of actions – and the realities attached to them – are called “necessary evils.” They are, in short, the kinds of actions that reflect the gap between the ideal Jesus Standard and, on the other hand, Life In A Complicated, Messy, Violent And Difficult Mass Society On Planet Earth. A helpful way of illustrating this concept is that conservatives are much more pronounced in making divisions between the Jesus Standard and Life In A Complicated World – that’s not wrong or immoral or unethical or anything of the sort; I’m merely saying that’s where conservatives generally draw their lines. My line – like the lines of other generally antiwar liberals – is drawn with a much greater internal insistence on the primacy of nonviolence, even if I know that 100 percent nonviolence is not quite attainable.

I realize there are many other questions and standards to be raised on these issues: For instance, just how does one assess a “mass murderer unlikely to be replaced by anyone worse?” Does the number of people murdered matter, or is the focus on the savagery of the deaths caused hold a greater degree of primacy? How does one determine that a person is “unlikely to be replaced by anyone worse?” That’s the detail work we all must do in surveying various situations and making tough ethical and moral choices. The point is that we should wrestle with these things far more deeply than we do; the other point is that Jesus, fully human (whether or not you believe that he is divine), has left us with his own clear way of handling these kinds of problems.

We now arrive at the final portion of this essay, in which – having presented the questions we must wrestle with and then laying down the Jesus Standard – I will attempt to establish the one point I want all of you to retain in some form or fashion: When necessary evils are involved – and Osama Week is nothing if not an extended drama in which we are all forced to confront necessary evils – what we feel is as important as what we do (and what we approve of doing).

Here’s the basic explanation/unpacking of that statement:

When choosing between a clear moral good and a clear moral evil, it is only the act that matters, at least in an immediate sense. Jesus, in fact, taught the Apostles about the person who said he would not do the right thing but then went out and did it, balanced against the person who said he would do the right thing but then failed to actually do it. When a given moral or ethical choice is clear and not that difficult, we can feel torn-up and conflicted inside, battered and buffeted by desires to have an affair or punch an irritating stranger in the face. We can feel hurt, horny or restless. That’s okay, because on that level, feelings are undeniable and unavoidable. We all feel the surge of blood in our veins at times, the desire to gain revenge or satisfy a bodily craving. As long as we don’t act on those urges, we’re morally and ethically fine.

When necessary evils enter the picture, that’s when things get very complicated very quickly.

When killing someone with a weapon… or having an abortion for anything less than the threat to your own life as a biological mother… or divorcing a spouse… or telling a bald-faced lie on a matter of appreciable significance, or something of like nature, one is participating in a necessary evil. The person doing so is not evil as a result, but the person is part of a larger reality of evil. It’s not an evil act for a scared young woman to have an abortion out of fear that she can’t support her child (conservatives might disagree, and I would understand why; however, that’s another discussion for another day…), but the reality of a nascent womb-held life being ended? That’s an evil reality. (Would that we could distinguish between evilness inside human persons and evil realities; evil is a reality or condition more than a characteristic of individuals. People who sincerely try to do good often contribute to evil; this doesn’t make the person evil, but it magnifies the presence of evil in the world.)

Accordingly, when pondering what to do – and what official U.S. Government policy should be – on the matters of extrajudicial killings, torture (waterboarding in particular), the waging of war, and the posting of photos (among many other things), we need to realize that one of our core responsibilities is to make sure that while participating in a necessarily evil reality, we do not become the evil we claim to oppose and despise. Osama Bin Laden was an evil man, not just a person who sincerely tried to do good but wound up adding to the evil of (and in) the world as it is. That’s precisely why I felt he needed to be killed. However, the fact that I supported his killing puts a profound moral weight at my feet, and this is what connects feelings with actions.

Why does it matter how we Americans felt – and how we emoted – in the aftermath of the announcement of Osama’s death? It matters because we participated in a necessary evil. We, the United States, participated in which an act that would be unquestionably immoral if done to a 9-year-old girl on a street corner, but attained a certain measure of morality because the person was instead Osama Bin Laden, mastermind/funder of the 9/11 attacks. That mixture of situational morality but underlying immorality (at least relative to the Jesus Standard) is a classically necessary evil.

Tough stuff, yes? Here’s the kicker: Because it’s difficult, and because it falls short of the Jesus Standard, such an action needs to complemented by a very specific emotional and spiritual response in order for its most moral dimensions to be magnified while allowing its least moral dimensions to recede in size and influence.

To illustrate this point, I bring you Dietrich Bonhoeffer. As you might know, Bonhoeffer was a Christian minister who actively resisted Hitler. There is still debate about the specific details of his involvements in anti-Hitler activity, but Bonhoeffer’s words – presented here – illustrate the proper, honorable, noble, moral, and ethical way to handle the realm of necessary evils, of actions that are deemed to be necessary for the planet while falling undeniably short of the Jesus Standard. Read the above link for a fuller unpacking of Bonhoeffer’s views, but they boil down to this: When performing or participating in a necessary evil, one should not be exultant or regard one’s actions as the height of morality. The words of the just-beatified Pope John Paul II give ballast to Bonhoeffer’s position and stance: “War is always a defeat for humanity.” War might be necessary – it helped Karol Wojtyla’s native Poland for a time, and World War II, though not supported by everyone (Dorothy Day, one of my spiritual heroes, protested it), did stop the spread of Nazism – but its reality in itself is never a positive for humanity. World War II’s undeniable success on a fundamental level does not obscure and must not be allowed to obscure the fact that a broken world is what gave rise to it. The failure for humanity is not that a bloody war stopped Hitler; it’s that Hitler was able to gain enough of a global foothold in 1938 and 1939 that he and Mussolini (and Hirohito) became such large-scale threats to other nations and continents.

The point is plain: War, even when necessary, is part of the evil of reality. Participating in war or doing war-like things is not the summit of Christian virtue – Jesus submitted to death rather than lash out at his oppressors with physical force and violence – so when Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about killing Hitler, he did not ascribe supreme morality to his intentions. We might not match the Jesus Standard, so the price we pay – the price which Bonhoeffer insisted on paying – was, at the very least, not being joyful in the process of participating in a necessary evil.

We don’t get to gloat. We don’t get to cheer. Not when falling short of the Jesus Standard as we make the necessary calculation that We Live In A Complicated, Messy And Broken World.

We can kill a select few people, yes, but we don’t get to regard such actions as the height of morality or virtue. Not when a necessary evil is involved.

We can say that Osama Bin Laden’s death is a net-plus for the planet, as President Barack Obama basically did in his Sunday night address, but no, we don’t get to regard the event as an achievement, a sign of something to be PROUD of, as Obama then did with these words:

Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.

The cause of securing our country is not complete.  But tonight, we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to.

Those words strongly suggest – if not outrightly indicate - the kind of occasion that is worth celebrating, like a space shuttle launch or the attainment of some new frontier, some higher vista, of human accomplishment. No, when one participates in a necessary evil, that language is not allowed. Falling short of the Jesus Standard – in the best of the moral tradition affirmed by Bonhoeffer – can be viewed as necessary when life becomes wrenchingly complicated and messy, but it cannot be viewed as party-time or an occasion for joy.

You might think that we should kill even more people than Osama or just a literal handful of people; I can respect that view even though I would disagree with it.

You might think that torture should be allowed if it can deliver high-value targets or information. I understand that view, even though I would even more vigorously disagree with it.

You might – heck, you almost certainly do – draw your line of morality and ethics in a place different from mine. There’s nothing wrong or problematic about that. We’re different, each and every one of us, and while we strive for consistency in the application of our principles, we will always make certain exceptions here and there. The disagreements between conservatives and liberals or – as has been shown during Osama Week and on matters of national security – between pro-Obama and anti-Obama factions are nothing other than a product of the fact that people draw lines and locate points of emphasis in different places. That’s fine, and that will always be the case. However, regardless of where you stand on these and any other issues (foreign or domestic) that involve necessary evils, it is incumbent upon you – upon all of us – to realize that we must be somber, sober and distinctly non-celebratory as we participate in, support or react to such actions.
Somber is the price we pay for doing necessary things that are part of the evil of reality. That’s what it means to be a human person who wrestles with matters of morality and ethics, especially from a Christian standpoint and especially as a citizen who has to think through the implications of his actions, positions, AND personal emotional responses to events. That’s the one thing I want to leave you with.

Now, a brief postscript on the above point as I conclude this essay:

Why does this matter, beyond any reasons that have already been stated?

It matters because if a nation – a larger community of people represented by its government and, most centrally, President Obama - is truly sober and somber in response to the killing of Osama Bin Laden or another person with a similarly blood-stained record, the rest of the world takes notice. Not the fervent anti-Americans, but most of the world. That stuff matters in terms of national security and creating a better balance of life on this planet.

It matters because if our leaders – who do have to participate in necessary evils – regarded their actions with the moral temperance and seriousness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, they would, first of all, commit far fewer atrocities because of a dogged insistence on not creating any more evil-in-reality than absolutely necessary. If one claims to view war as something that should only be used as a last resort, or if one similarly claims that torture is allowable in a few select circumstances, one is accordingly forced to create standards for the use of each of those necessary evils and, as a result, ensure that they are viewed as tactics/measures that need to be carefully limited so as to not produce any more evil than necessary.

Therefore, if one displays happiness or overt satisfaction in the aftermath of sanctioning war or torture (which, solely for the sake of argument, MIGHT be deemed acceptable under certain circumstances in the eyes of some persons), one is expressing – not just within one’s being but to the outside world as well – an enjoyment of such actions which is not consistent with a desire to limit their use/frequency/prevalence to the fullest possible extent. There’s a reason we get upset when we see other people in other nations cheering a given death. There’s a reason why select targeted killings aren’t viewed as moral progress by other antiwar advocates: The killings for which the U.S. Government is responsible are more than select; they’re more than just the three or five or seven people (no more than 10 on the planet if we applied a strict standard) who might deserve “mass-murderer-take-him-out-now” status.

If our society – and the leaders our society produces – possessed a Bonhoeffer-based acknowledgment of the impoverished nature of necessary evils in comparison with the Jesus Standard, we would not allow necessary evils to spill into unnecessary (and therefore morally unacceptable) evils. If we, like Bonhoeffer, acknowledged that even necessary actions will fall short of the Jesus Standard and therefore should not be viewed as the summit of virtue, we – as a collective society – could release the photo of a dead Osama Bin Laden knowing that said release was not an act of “spiking the football” or “holding up a trophy” but, in complete contrast, an act of owning our necessary evil and grimly accepting the cost of our action: the killing – necessary, but unfortunate – of another human being.

Somber is the price we pay. Sober is the nature of the cost when necessary evils are involved. No, this is not concern-trollism or thought-policing or emotional nannying.

This is the stuff of life at its deepest core, of human grappling at its most complicated spiritual and emotional centers.

As a Christian, I end by wishing that the peace of the Crucified And Nonviolent Christ be with you all.

Sincerely,

Matt Zemek

Verily and Undeniably A Moral Coward Who Falls Short Of The Jesus Standard By Miles

Unfiltered BCS (Partial) Championship Game Analysis

My story on last night's BCS (half-) title game was truncated by editorial forces. Here is the full and unabridged edition of the story I initially filed for publication. TCU and the official record (on officiating in particular) deserve to be honored, too...



BCS CHAMPIONSHIP GAME ANALYSIS

Where to begin after a confounding, cluttered, clamorous, controversial, crowning confrontation that wasn’t decided until the very last play? When a game this big is shrouded in several shades of gray, the layers of reality need to be peeled back, one by one. Certain statements in one area of analysis or endeavor should not be viewed as spilling over into other topics. With that short preamble out of the way, let’s dissect the 2011 BCS National Championship Game:

The first thing that needs to be said is that in a bottom-line assessment of the superior team, Auburn deserved such a distinction more than Oregon. Sure, the margin was close, but the Tigers carried the play for most of the night. Moreover, even though the Big Ten replay booth clearly blew the late run on the part of Auburn running back Michael Dyer, it also needs to be said that Auburn drove the ball the length of the field and lent at least some legitimacy to its winning tally. It’s also worth noting that Auburn was able to beat Oregon and that vaunted Chip Kelly spread option attack despite a less-than-imposing performance from Heisman Trophy winner Cameron Newton. An extensive survey of this 60-minute mind-bender indicates that Auburn accomplished more of what it set out to do. Auburn stuffed Oregon twice inside the 3, surrendering only three points instead of 14. That alone speaks volumes about the immensity of the Tigers’ effort. They fought like champions.

The second thing that needs to be said is that while the SEC earned another win in the BCS title game, the Pac-10 – finally given a chance to compete with the SEC in a BCS bowl game – didn’t back down. It’s not a knock against Auburn or the SEC, ladies and gentlemen; it’s simply a recognition of the fact – and it is a fact – that on a night when Oregon’s calling card struggled so profoundly, the Ducks still stayed in the ring, traded punches, and made Auburn take a full 60 minutes to land the decisive blow. As Auburn continued to stuff Oregon’s spread option in the second half – drive after drive after drive – the majority opinion was that the Tigers and Mr. Newton were on the verge of blowing the game wide open. It was just about to happen here, it was just about to happen there, it was just about to happen everywhere. Newton stood on the precipice of a kill shot. The Tigers and their bigger, beefier front lines were this close to registering a knockout punch.

Only they didn’t.

If you had told Chip Kelly before kickoff that his defense would allow 20 points, he’d have taken that scenario in a heartbeat. Yes, the Pac-10 was not as deep this season as it has been in the past, but emerging from this bowl season, it’s quite clear that both Oregon and Stanford could carry their lunch pail with the best of them. The Ducks and the Cardinal were both anything but soft. Yes, Oregon made a bunch of mental errors, but UO’s defense never folded the tent despite ample opportunities to do so.

This razor-close game between the Pac-10 and the SEC, in the first BCS bowl between the two conferences (in 57 total games over the past 13 years), only magnifies the great unanswered question of college football over the past decade: What if USC had been able to play LSU (2003 and 2007), Auburn (2004), and Florida (2006, 2008) in BCS bowls and/or plus-one-type settings? It’s a crime – a small one, but a crime nevertheless for the diehard college football fan – that USC never got to test itself against the best teams from the best conference in the country. It’s a shame, too, that Auburn and Stanford never got to play. Ditto for LSU and Oregon, Arkansas and Stanford, or Alabama and Oregon. Any upper-tier bowl that either has an expiring contract or a tenuous contract should negotiate to put a top-three SEC team against a top-three Pac-10 team on the field. Bowl tie-ins are bad on a general level, but if there’s one conference matchup the nation needs to see on a more regular basis, it’s clear: The SEC and Pac-10 need to put their best teams against each other.

A third important point is that this result evens the historical record and compensates for past injustices done to Auburn. The Tigers and their fans deserve their moment of victory; one should be particularly cognizant of the past 30 years of college football history, in which the Tigers got shafted at the end of two separate seasons, not just one. Teenagers and early twenty-somethings are aware of Auburn’s unjust fate after the 2004 campaign. However, older college football fans and observers also remember that Auburn was jobbed in the 1983 season as well. The Miami Hurricanes, in the old “poll and bowl” system, climbed from the bottom of the top five past No. 3 Auburn and into the No. 1 spot following their 1984 Orange Bowl win over Nebraska. Auburn, at No. 3, beat Michigan in the Sugar Bowl but got leapfrogged. At the very least, Auburn should have shared the 1983 national title with the conqueror of Nebraska. Miami, after all, did get to play the Huskers on its home field in South Florida. It’s too cheap and convenient to say that this championship makes up for both 1983 and 2004, but one can say that it evens the scales rather than making them even more imbalanced.

Issue number four: mental mistakes – they acquire such profound importance in national championship games, which is why the Weekly Affirmation has always frowned upon overly specific and layered pregame analysis of these kinds of contests. Yes, the truth of the following statement is obvious, but if the obvious truth is still the biggest and most important truth, it needs to be put front and center: The biggest key to each and every BCS national title game is the ability to avoid major mental errors. Avoiding a Mark Bradley muffed punt, or a Reggie Bush lateral, or a Brian Robiskie dropped touchdown pass is the highest priority for the teams who dive into a pool of raging hormones and overflowing adrenaline. The pent-up excitement surrounding the BCS championship game – which builds over more than five weeks and is cranked to unholy levels by the mass-media Wurlitzer – generates such intense emotions that it’s hard for title-game participants to play polished and precise football out of the gate.

Florida produced the last complete performance by one team in a BCS title game when it demolished Ohio State in January of 2007. The last great half of a BCS championship showcase was the second half of the 2006 Rose Bowl. These games rarely match the hype; they rarely witness peak execution by the competing offenses. Teams that avoid the bigger mistakes in the more meaningful moments are the teams that win. Auburn made plenty of gaffes and goofs on Monday night, but Oregon’s miscues were magnified even more.

Sure, Cam Newton overthrew wide-open receivers on post patterns. Yes, Newton’s late fumble enabled Oregon to tie the game at 19-all. Undoubtedly, Auburn receivers dropped a number of balls while coach Gene Chizik’s defense committed multiple personal foul penalties. Yet, for all the ways in which Auburn impeded its own progress, Oregon engaged in a greater act of sustained self-sabotage. Darron Thomas failed to run for a first down on the second play from scrimmage, and after that body-snatched episode, he continued to make baffling decisions that killed his team. Thomas failed to make the proper read near the goal line on Oregon’s first foray inside the Auburn 3. Thomas should have handed off to LaMichael James but instead kept the ball and ate a seven-yard loss thanks to Nick Fairley, AU’s team MVP for the night. Thomas later wasted a timeout in the final minutes of regulation… a timeout that would have enabled Oregon to perhaps get the ball back with 45 seconds left instead of seeing Auburn drain the clock to the very end of the fourth quarter.

Aside from Thomas, Oregon’s illegal-motion penalty – which negated a nine-yard gain on a shovel pass right after the Ducks stopped Auburn on the 1 – arguably served as the game’s most influential turning point in the latter stages of the second quarter. Auburn had just taken 16 plays to march down the field. Oregon, at that precise moment, needed to hold onto the ball and keep its defense fresh. When the illegal-motion penalty pinned UO inside its own 1 and denied the Ducks a second-and-one situation, Auburn’s defense pounced on a chance to register a safety. After that sequence, the Tigers controlled the line of scrimmage and displayed more stamina than their Pac-10 opponent. Oregon’s illegal-motion penalty reminds us that all five-yard penalties are not created equal. Some mistakes are more significant and consequential than others, and Oregon made the kinds of mistakes that were harder to withstand. It’s hardly surprising that those blunders were more mental than physical.

BCS championship pressure forced a lot of mistakes from both sides, but Oregon displayed even more unsteadiness between the ears.

As this overview of the 2011 BCS National Championship Game continues, a thorough and accurate account of the night’s events in Glendale would not be complete without riffs on the officiating and the college football rulebook, a sorry text that needs to be radically revised in the coming months. First, a word about the officiating.

There’s a reason why it’s important for college football writers to watch the non-championship BCS bowls: By keeping tabs on the sport, one can be exposed to small but telling details that crop up in the heat of battle. In the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4, an Ohio State runner was pronounced down because his wrist hit the ground. The rule, mind you, is a bad rule, but it was a rule nevertheless: An open palm, by itself, does not produce a dead ball. However, when the wrist (the beginning of the arm) touches the turf, we learned in the Sugar Bowl – if we didn’t know it already – that a ballcarrier is down. Precisely because the memory of the Sugar Bowl was fresh, there was no question – NONE WHATSOEVER! – that Auburn’s Michael Dyer was down (his wrist, not his knee, was the salient body part) near midfield on his bizarre but game-changing run in the final minutes of regulation time. It is a scandal – nothing less – that the replay booth did not overturn the ruling on the field (namely, that Dyer was never down).

Auburn did deserve a win more than Oregon did, but on an even more fundamental and granular level, it can also be said that the Ducks were deprived of an honest chance to prevent the Tigers from getting into field goal range. At the very least, Oregon was denied an opportunity to make Auburn kick a long and appreciably challenging field goal. The officiating in this game was a disgrace, and it helped decide the game instead of the young men who spilled their guts on the low-quality grass of University of Phoenix Stadium.

Next, about the rulebook: One more time, the FBS college football rulebook reminded us why it needs to be changed before the start of the 2011 season. If you’ve been reading along throughout the bowl season, you’ve seen several rules that, as currently written, either reward deficient football or punish good play. The latest entry? Try the principles of the rulebook that led to an incomplete-pass ruling on Cliff Harris’s first-quarter “non-interception” of Cameron Newton. The rules, with their emphasis on the “process of a catch,” forced the officials and the replay reviewer to conclude that Harris did not adequately possess the ball all the way through his tumble to the ground. Never mind the fact that Harris’s hands were fully wrapped around the pigskin for the entire play; because the ball moved around in Harris’s hands, the rulebook said, “incomplete.” In real football, Cliff Harris or anyone else who made a play like that should be credited with an interception. The football rulebook said otherwise. The football rules committee has to revise that interpretation and several other sections of the laws governing this sport on the field. The act of making a legal catch has been hyper-legislated to the point of absurdity. Simplify what it means to make a legal catch – PLEASE?!

Last but certainly not least, I don’t have an Associated Press ballot. If I did, though, the only ethical and responsible thing to do, since we don’t have a plus-one on Saturday, Jan. 22 at 8:15 p.m. ET in the Rose Bowl, would be to split said ballot between Auburn and TCU. Last year, my “ballot” split the title between Boise State and Alabama. In 2009, my would-be ballot was split between Florida and Utah. It’s a crying shame that TCU and Auburn won’t get to meet. College football is a beautiful, captivating and endlessly rich sport to chronicle. It’s too bad that this special part of American culture cannot crown an honest and undisputed national champion.

Congratulations again to the Auburn Tigers and their fans. Just be sure to throw in a pat on the back to the gallant yet beaten Oregon Ducks. Also don’t forget to salute the co-national champion TCU Horned Frogs.

CFN Archive: When The Cam Newton Story First Broke

To put to rest any notions of a purposeful anti-Auburn animus in my analysis and commentary, here's what I wrote on Nov. 4, 2010, when the Cam Newton story first broke:


"We knew that this season would continue to be wild, but not like this.


Obviously, a lot of investigating is going to take place in the coming weeks, with numerous twists and turns before the NCAA arrives at some sort of finish line. What can be said in the immediate aftermath of this breaking story is that the NCAA emperor is still without clothes.


Sure, there will be questions raised about whether Auburn’s wins against South Carolina and LSU will be vacated, which might have some sort of effect on how the 2010 SEC standings are formally recognized. Naturally, this episode – coming on the heels of Reggie Bush’s surrendered 2005 Heisman Trophy yet before Heisman ballots are sent out on November 15 – will make the political (not football-based, but political) likelihood of a Newton victory rather small, or at least much smaller than previously thought. And, of course, Auburn’s ability to compete in the BCS National Championship Game has been thrown into question, especially if the NCAA makes an unfavorable ruling in the time between the SEC Championship Game and January 10, 2011. There are all sorts of political and procedural minefields to be navigated in the coming weeks, and it’s far too premature to comment on any of those distinct yet interconnected dramas.


What can be said about L’Affaire Newton is that the notion of amateurism – which the NCAA continues to stubbornly hide behind – is being exposed even more as the sham it has been for a long time. Reggie Bush blew up the notion of pure and wholesome amateur athletics. Josh Luchs – in his still-recent admissions to George Dohrmann of Sports Illustrated (remember that?) – provided a veil-lifting look inside an entire industry and an established way of life among sports agents. Luchs took the individual story offered by Bush and turned it into an indictment of the sprawling athletic-industrial complex, a monstrously pervasive and all-consuming entity that makes a mockery of college sports’ pathetic attempts at maintaining the purity of uncompensated competition.


Let’s put this story in its proper perspective: Cameron Newton should be able to make the money that’s being generated by sales of his No. 2 Auburn jerseys. Newton is generating substantial sums of cash for Auburn by carrying this team to on-field success and prominence. In a truly market-based society that rewards the ability to create an attractive product people will pay for, Newton and other successful college athletes should be able to see a substantial percentage (if not all) of the income they generate. Instead, the NCAA tries to preserve the outdated and patently false notion that a scholarship is an appropriate level of compensation, along with the similarly absurd idea that jersey sales should not accrue to the bank account of the athlete who makes cash registers pop at sporting-goods stores and university bookstores.


It’s a waste of time and energy for a false, nonexistent and unattainable amateurism to be pursued and promoted – thereby forcing shady business dealings among agents, runners and (in North Carolina’s case) assistant coaches into the shadows – when college sports could be conducting these processes in the open, with sunlight and accountability flooding the landscape.


Yes, this is a bombshell development with potential real-world implications for the college football season, especially the national-title race and the Heisman competition. However, the big story is that the NCAA’s combination of hypocrisy and wrongheadedness is more apparent than ever before, with the business of collegiate athletics continuing to operate under the table instead of in a place where everyone can see it and – even more importantly – not regard it as a problem."

Instant Analysis: Oklahoma-Oklahoma State

One very long month ago, the Oklahoma Sooners were found flailing and floundering in Columbia, Missouri. The Crimson and Cream, who were shaky even in September, had not ironed out their problems or addressed their deficiencies. Landry Jones – a man whom OU blogger Allen Kinney has called “the Les Miles of quarterbacks,” a very apt description – proved to be utterly unreliable away from his home base in Norman. Coordinator Brent Venables watched in horror as his 11-man gang got blown away in the second half by Missouri’s offensive front. The Sooners were frail and flimsy, and when they lost another road game at Texas A&M early in November, this proud program felt itself clinging to nothing more than a thin rail of hope on the edge of Big 12 South title contention. The calls and cries were loud and familiar: “Big Game Bob has lost it; he’s no longer worthy of the name.”


Actually, Bob Stoops’s credentials and quality have been under fire for some time now. The cutthroat nature of the BCS system and the corrosive, negative attitudes it perpetuates have led the general public to regard Stoops as something of an underachiever. Losing in BCS bowls has come to be seen as a sin whose dimensions greatly exceed the virtues of winning a division or conference championship. Failures in January have led a considerable segment of the college football community to regard Stoops as something less than superb from January through November. This is at once both easy to understand and impossible to fathom. Of course one is aware of the reasons for such attitudes, but on a purely rational level, they make no sense. At any rate, those very same attitudes existed heading into Saturday night’s latest parade of wackiness known as the Bedlam Series. Two years after a 61-41 win on a late-November Saturday night in Stillwater, the OU crew did the deed again by a 47-41 score (slackers!).


How did Oklahoma pull through? Jones made several horrible decisions and throws in the first two and a half quarters, but he mastered the moment and torched Oklahoma State’s secondary for two home-run touchdowns that put his team in the win column. On the other side of the ball, it’s true that Oklahoma State did score 41 points, but the Cowboys notched only 27 of those points on offense (seven came on defense and seven more on special teams, with still more points being set up by OU miscues). Venables wasn’t vexed by OSU offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen; the Cowboys involved their running backs a lot more on their first drive after halftime to score a touchdown on the Sooners’ defense, but after that march, the Pokes’ only other offensive touchdown came when OU played a prevent defense as the owner of a two-score lead with under five minutes left in regulation. The Sooners’ road-game credentials didn’t deserve to be trusted just because of one good game against Baylor, but in Boone Pickens Stadium, Bob Stoops had his team ready to play at its best.


And so, the narrative is a familiar one – not just in a Bedlam battle routinely won by the Sooners, but in the Big 12 South as a whole. Stoops arrived in Norman in 1999 and has now completed 12 seasons in the division. With a virtually-assured advantage in the forthcoming BCS standings, OU should win a three-team tiebreaker with Texas A&M and Oklahoma State, thereby earning the distinction of division champion for yet another year. When the matter becomes official on Sunday night, Stoops will claim his eighth division title in the past 11 seasons, thereby giving him a chance to snag a seventh Big 12 crown since he was brought aboard to lift Oklahoma out of its 1990s doldrums.


On the same day that North Carolina State coach Tom O’Brien failed – again – to win a division championship, Stoops reaffirmed his own ability to close the door, to steer his team to the winner’s circle. Pete Carroll is no longer around in the college game, but two other men matched the former USC coach in terms of owning their conferences with remarkable annual consistency. One of those men achieved a piece of the Big Ten title on Saturday: Jim Tressel of Ohio State. The other man is none other than Bob Stoops. All the man does is win. Moreover, he wins after enduring thick clouds of adversity in the earlier stages of a season. Oklahoma lost to Oregon and Texas in 2006 yet climbed the mountain and won at Oklahoma State to nail down the Big 12 South. OU lost to Texas in 2008 but never relented in its attempt to gain higher ground. The Sooners won at Oklahoma State to win the South yet again.


Now, here we are in 2010. Two ugly road losses have been overcome. Two months of growing pains were transformed into lasting lessons that bore fruit in the chill of late November. Bob Stoops is a division champion, and he’ll contest the final Big 12 title tilt against OU’s classic rival, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Gee – seems like old times.


Big Game Bob has lost it? When? When did that ever happen? There’s another conference championship waiting to be decided, and once again, five Big 12 South schools will watch Oklahoma take the field against a Big 12 North foe. Seems as though Stoops knows exactly what he’s doing… and that he hasn’t lost the mustard on his coaching fastball by any stretch.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL AT WRIGLEY: Lost In The Vines

An Essay by Kevin Grandfield

Originally written November 20, 2010 (postgame)

LINK TO PHOTO SPREAD PRODUCED BY MR. GRANDFIELD

Wrigley Field is a beautiful sports venue. But I never go there. The hometown Chicago Cubs are always a disappointment. So, being a longtime Northwestern fan and new season-ticket holder, I jumped at the chance to go to the Northwestern-Illinois football game in the "Friendly Confines." Yet, the event turned out to be almost as disappointing as a Cubs game. Maybe it was because this Sunday's full moon is a rare type of "blue moon," but the experience was disorienting to the point of infringing on the enjoyment.

The planets began to align against this game as early as last week. When NU quarterback Dan Persa went out for the season with a ruptured Achilles tendon, you could begin to sense that it was not going to be the same NU team playing at Wrigley.

In fact, it almost seemed like the same game – the one we call football - would not be played at Wrigley. At the eleventh hour, the Big Ten ruled that all offensive drives would head toward the west end zone to avoid the dangerous brick wall immediately behind the east end zone (otherwise known as the right-field warning track in summertime). The conference said that the wall was not the required six feet from the end line; event organizers claimed it was two feet. Having seen it myself, I can tell you: The wall was inches away from the back of the end zone in some places. They had the plans drawn up for a year; how could they not see that earlier? But of course, the Big Ten Conference with eleven teams would also be the conference that brought you the 18-inch Stonehenge.

So the teams said all the right things about adjusting, the fans grumbled as their tickets on one 30-yard line turned to tickets on both 70–yard lines, and the game went on as planned.

ESPN even decided to base GameDay here, which was nice but no less disorienting than other things about the event. Normally, the traveling road show would never come to a game between two teams whose seasons had been so bipolar that you couldn't tell whether they were overachieving or underachieving. Both Illinois and Northwestern had first-year quarterbacks and roared off to unexpectedly strong starts (after Illinois's annual defeat at Missouri's hands). Then Illinois's defense went bye-bye for the last two games, and NU learned that it could stay undefeated by only playing the first halves of games.

However, the venue was apparently deemed special enough to trump these shaky teams. Wrigley is a place that draws sellout crowds to see the worst baseball franchise in history, so people would naturally fill it for the novelty of hosting its first college football game since DePaul beat St. Louis here in 1938.

A fair-sized crowd did show up, but it didn’t seem as big as I had been led to expect. El cars were crowded on the ride to the park (one girl said "clown car" as ours unloaded), but everyone got on. There are rush hours when you can't get in the first train that comes. There was a lot more space in the streets around Wrigley and more bars than the none (how’s that for a whopping number?) that exist in the immediate proximity of Ryan Field on the NU campus, so maybe the crowd was dispersed and hidden.

A see-through plastic tent had been set up along the length of Sheffield Avenue behind the right field bleachers, deemed "Wildcat Way." Once inside you were part of an extended python of humans that slithered north, the only direction possible. Halfway up was a beer vendor on one side, and a door leading out on the other side for a restroom break or – if you needed it – a claustrophobia break. All the way at the far end was a stage where the band played and various dignitaries were paraded across.

Obviously, there was a mostly pro-NU crowd on Wildcat Way, but on the streets the fans were fairly evenly mixed, and some were exactly – and literally - mixed. Somebody was selling hats with a purple "N" on one side and an orange "I" on the other, and I saw several of those. One man had a shirt (or had painted on his body, I couldn’t tell) that was half-purple and half-orange. Left to right, it read "Northwestinois."

One thing that was disorienting but welcome was how well the fans got along. Unlike the seething rage of the Iowa and Michigan State fans at home games I attended this year, the Illinois and NU fans merely chanted their own school's cheers. I suppose there are friends from the same high schools in this area who ended up at opposite schools (or even households) with relatives who went to each.

Our season tickets at Ryan Field are right behind a couple who have a daughter in NU's band and a daughter in Illinois's band. The woman in that couple is also Evan Watkins's cousin. Therefore, another disorienting and disappointing thing unique to me was that we would not be able to sit behind her when Evan got his big break.

Instead, we sat in the third-base end zone seats (this was and is the only game where you could describe a seat that way). This was the side where all scoring would occur. We were far up in the second tier of the lower level of seats, so the ceiling above us obscured the scoreboard, but we had a clear view of the field. TV monitors were set up so we could see the broadcast, which was delayed about five seconds. We had mostly NU fans around us, though there were some Illinois fans, and again both sets of people were very civil to each other. However, that just reinforced that this was not as intense a rivalry or as important a game as other contests played in less fantastic venues. It also might be a sign of how little a threat each program is to other programs in the Big Ten. To top it off: After playing for years for the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk, both teams were now playing for the more politically correct "Land of Lincoln Trophy," a bronzed stovepipe hat like the one Lincoln wore.

Then, with the preludes finally over, the game began. Wrigley's locker rooms, especially the visitor's room, are notoriously small, dank and distant, as they wind through many concrete tunnels. I wondered if we should check down there for pods. It was as though NU's defense didn’t even show up. In three plays, Illinois and Chief Leshoure-iwek covered 66 yards to score a touchdown.

On the ensuing possession, Watkins fumbled away the ball on a third-down dropback. NU quarterbacks make a name for themselves in NOT turning over the ball. Persa had one of the lowest numbers of interceptions in the nation before going down last week, as did Mike Kafka last year (before the Outback Bowl game against Auburn). Evan's fumble, therefore, was unusual enough. But then the refs and both teams walked to the other end of the field. That was the first application of the eleventh-hour rule, and a buzz went through the audience trying to figure out what was going on. Because it happened on a turnover first (as opposed to a punt), it only added to the mystery swirling around the old ballyard.

Illinois drove for another touchdown in only six plays and was up 14-0 before we could even get used to the fact that we went to a baseball field and a football game broke out. But wait - Eddie McGee of Illinois thought that NU safety Brian Peters was one of his receivers. The benign McGee, courtesy of a hand-delivered pick-six, gave Peters immortality as the first and last man to score a touchdown in the east right-field end zone at Wrigley.

After Northwestern's "Iron Sieve" defense held enough (or Illinois's offense self-destructed enough) that the Illini only produced a field goal after recovering Adonis Smith's fumble, Mike Trumpy - a stocky, bruising running back - tore 80 yards past the speedy Illinois secondary for a touchdown.

By this point, my head was swirling as much as the lake winds around the park. The two teams traded moments of ineptitude until the score was tied with only a minute to go until the half. But a minute was enough. Illinois marched down through NU’s "Red Sea" defense and got a field goal to re-seize momentum it would never relinquish.

At halftime, I joined many people in walking around the stadium soaking in the atmosphere—or just trying to make sense of it all. Everyone had that look of people pinching themselves to make sure they were not dreaming. The sun had set and the fact that we were now in a lit stadium after watching only one half of football in daylight was also disconcerting, especially for an NU season ticket holder like myself because almost ALL of NU's starts are 11 o'clock kickoffs.

That setting sun also cooled everything off. Most fans had marveled that the weather could be a lot worse on the third Saturday of November in Chicago. It was sunny and mid-40s in the afternoon, but by the middle of the third quarter, when Illinois had the game firmly in hand, the temperatures had dropped significantly and the lake winds were fierce. Our seats were in a middle tier that sloped away from the field and had a roof over our heads supporting the upper deck. It acted like an air spoiler on the back of a car and channeled the wind through our section. I'd put the wind chill in the teens. The crowd began to thin visibly by the start of the fourth quarter.

The game and event limped to their conclusion, and all of the expectations for the possibilities of the game had turned into realities that seemed hard to fathom as everyone trickled out of the stadium. Did the crowd feel as excited about the event as the media did? Did we just watch a game where both teams went the same direction? Did the loser and winner respectively beat Iowa and lose to Minnesota just last week? Will NU find ways to succeed with Watkins, and (or?) will Persa come back just as strong next year? Is Illinois really on its way back to prominence? Did we just see the last college football game ever played in Wrigley Field?

For the answers to these questions and more (say it with me Cub fans) … "Wait til next year."

Weekly Affirmation Archive: Guest Columnist Jarod Daily

Part I: Bowl Game Architecture: Ways To Reshape The Process


Raising the Level of Second-Tier Bowl Games


By Jarod Daily, Guest Columnist – Special to CFN


Find and follow Mr. Daily on Twitter: twitter.com/jadaily



The doling out of BCS berths isn't the only place where college football could use a little flexibility. Years ago, all of the other bowl games locked themselves into static agreements that on occasion led to stagnant matchups between mediocre teams from automatic-qualifying conferences, while great teams from non-autobid conferences — and sometimes excellent teams from some of the less-respected members of the AQs — had to settle for second- or third-tier postseason bowl matchups against vastly inferior opponents. In a few cases, this has led to an inflated postseason record because all of a conference's teams played against consistently overmatched opponents rather than teams of equal quality (see the Big East and Mountain West bowl records over the past half-decade).



After the five BCS games, a handful of other bowl games are rich in prestige, history, respect, payout, game date, and usually the quality of both teams. The Cotton, Capital One, Outback, Gator, Chick-Fil-A and Holiday bowls definitely fall into this category, and the Alamo Bowl seems to have made some power plays aimed at moving into that respectable second tier of bowl games. Also, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that the Sun Bowl, with its history (as old as the Orange and Sugar bowls, and older than all others but the Rose, including the Cotton) ought to be considered at that level too, if only it could secure better matchups a bit more often.



But every year, one or more of that handful of bowls gets a stinker of a game. Now, with high choices out of the SEC and the Big Ten, the Capital One Bowl shouldn't have that problem, but the Jan. 1, 2010, edition of the game was a pretty ugly affair between LSU and Penn State. And let's not forget — though we may want to — the Dec. 31, 2008 Sun Bowl between Oregon State and Pittsburgh, a 3-0 snoozer won by the Beavers. The previous Sun Bowl wasn't much better; Oregon trampled South Florida 56-21.



The problem is that these bowls have extended contracts, with few or no exceptions, involving conferences that can vastly fluctuate in quality from year to year. If there's an 11-1 or 12-0 team from the WAC, Mountain West, Conference USA, MAC or Sun Belt that doesn't get in the BCS — and it looks rather likely that the loser of the Boise State-Nevada and TCU-Utah games, and perhaps also the winner of the latter, will fall into this category this year — those teams are locked into lower-tier bowls with low payouts against inferior opponents before Christmas. Meanwhile, the Outback Bowl is able to get a 7-5 SEC team into its January 1 spotlight against a 10-2 Big Ten team. Why can't we see some deals like this: Let’s say that TCU is 11-1 or better and ranked in the top 15. The Cotton Bowl can invite the Horned Frogs instead of either a Big 12 or SEC team (provided that no 10-win team is available from one of those conferences)? Or maybe, as an option, one could put a Boise State, Nevada or BYU that qualifies into the Sun or Holiday? Similarly, could we place a strong C-USA champ into one of the East Coast bowls like the Outback, Chick-Fil-A or Gator?



There's actually a pretty simple way to solve this: partially imitating the very same BCS system that makes us argue so much throughout the season. It's time to group some of the second- (and third-) tier bowls by quality, prestige, and other measures, and ensure that good teams play other good teams in good bowl games. One should focus on that second tier of bowls listed above (Capital One, Outback, Gator, Cotton, Chick-Fil-A, Sun, Holiday, Alamo), but ideally we might be able to set up several tiers with the same concept. Take those eight bowls (the exact configuration would certainly be up for discussion), give them each an "anchor" conference (or perhaps two choices for an anchor; for example, the Capital One could pick either a Big Ten or an SEC team as its anchor team when it comes time to extend bowl bids, or the Cotton could go with the Big 12 or the SEC, so it can have dibs on Arkansas as an old Southwest Conference team) and leave the other berth in each game as an at-large spot. Then stipulate that at-large bids should generally be extended to ranked teams with 10 or 11 wins before they go to any 8- or 9-win teams from the AQ conferences.


We can call this system the Bowl Alliance... er, Bowl Coalition... um, well, we'll have to work on the name. But like those BCS predecessors, it would be a pretty loose grouping. Payouts would not be pooled; the process would have fairly simple and pretty fluid selection rules; and bowls would simply be encouraged to promote the best possible games, while being contractually obligated to not leave the very best teams, regardless of conference affiliation, to play grossly inferior opponents, creating poor matchups for fans, viewers, and sponsors.



This way, we might see something like Stanford-Nevada in this year's Holiday Bowl, TCU-Texas in the Cotton Bowl, or Utah-Arizona in the Sun Bowl. You can't say there aren't plenty of people out there who want to see some of those matchups. Also, this system would allow a 9-3 or 10-2 Notre Dame (or the Big East runner-up) a better game than the Champs Sports Bowl.



This would also ensure we don't get a stinker like Nevada-Central Michigan in the Humanitarian Bowl or TCU-Arizona State in the Las Vegas Bowl. It would help some of those next-to-the-top-tier bowl games avoid being obligated to pick 7-5 teams just because that's all a conference has left. Looking into the crystal ball, it's tough to see the SEC — if it gets two BCS berths — having enough really good teams to fill its bids for the Chick-Fil-A, Capital One, Outback, Cotton and Gator bowls without turning to at least one 7-5 team (Auburn played in last year's Outback Bowl at 7-5 and won an instant classic over 8-4 Northwestern). None of these bowls would be stuck with a 7-5 team under this system.



Anyway, it's just a thought, one that could improve the quality of each bowl game and boost ratings. Actually, it's just one of several potential solutions. Bottom line: The rigidity of college football extends to all facets and corners of the sport, and it really keeps this American cultural treasure from surpassing even its current levels of greatness.