My pal Chris started a blog over the weekend - I’ve been bugging him to do so for quite a while. I’ve know Chris for several years – he used to be an officer in a company that I helped migrate over to .NET. The company got sold, but Chris hasn’t blogged what he does now so I’m not going to spoil the surprise (hint – he did blog about automatic external defibrillators).

So far, Chris is doing a lot of ranting – his favorite pub in Edmonton (which I’ve been to), Amazon Theater, and reselling livestrong bracelets. Personally, I think it’s funny that Chris can build a wearyellow livestrong flair for his blog template, but he hasn’t built an XML flair that points to his syndication feed.

Chop busting aside, I’m glad to see Chris posting. When I first met Chris, I was transitioning from consultant to technical sales, and I’ve learned a bunch from Chris about how business works that has come in very handy now that I work with architects. Chris, can’t wait to see more from you. But when are you coming to Seattle for a visit?

A year ago, I was pointing out how badly messed up the BCS computer system was, denying the unanimous #1 ranked team in the land a shot at the national championship game. This year, USC has gone wire to wire ranked #1 and will face the #2 Oklahoma Sooners for the national championship. Fight On!

Of course, there are those pointing out the fact that #3 Auburn went undefeated creates an “unprecedented headache for the BCS“. Excuse me? What a bunch of crap. The BCS is supposed to make sure there’s a unified national champion – something it failed to do last year I might point out  - by having the top two teams play each other. USC and Oklahoma have been #1 and #2 all year, and they’re playing each other. Sure, it sucks to be Auburn, go undefeated and still come up third. But there’s no question who the top two teams are – they’ve been the same all year.

I’m sure this will revive the yearly “BCS sucks, we need a playoff” talk. Quick memo to playoff people: any college football playoff system is going to screw someone. For example, a 4 team playoff this year (using the BCS rankings) would have been USC, Oklahoma, Auburn and Texas, screwing unanimous #4 ranked Cal. An 8 team playoff would add Cal, Utah, Georgia and Va Tech, but screw Louisville who’s ranked at least 8th in both polls. Even a 16 team playoff – which is virtually infeasible – would screw unanimous #16 ranked Wisconsin. So let’s not pretend this issue will go away by playing more games.

Do I think the BCS works well now? No, even though USC didn’t get screwed this year (not exactly a ringing endorsement). Personally, I think BCS computer system should only be used when the polls don’t agree. There’s just no objective way to measure the relative records of teams that don’t play the same teams. Thus, leave it in the hands of the humans, and use the computers to break ties when they happen. It would have given us a USC vs. LSU championship last year and still had a USC vs. OU championship this year.