I keep hearing that this is a new paradigm of parity, and I'd love to believe that, but I don't know that I'm quite ready. After all, as fun as the last month has been, we're just talking about four weeks here. In the first four weeks of the season the top 25 went 78-19, a .196 winning percentage for their foes, too low for my definition of competitiveness. Even counting that epoch-signaling Appalachian State win over Michigan, the top 10 went 35-4 in the first four weeks.
So maybe college football's a whole new ballgame and maybe this has just been a flukey month. Remember "the year of the no-hitter" in baseball? There were nine no-hitters in 1990. I remember all sorts of speculation about what this phenomenon meant, but ultimately all it meant was that 1990 was a flukey year for no-hitters. I worry that this year is nothing more than a flukey year for upsets in college football.
Not that a flukey year for upsets can't be just as much fun as a year that signals a paradigm shift toward parity, at least in the short term. I'm just saying I'll believe the paradigm shift business when it lasts for more than four weeks. More than a year or two, in fact.
And not to drag an old dead horse out into the yard for flogging, but if this new parity is real, what does it mean for the Bowl Championship Series? As absurd as the BCS system of declaring the Championship Game contestants by fiat in a college football landscape where a half-dozen or so teams separate themselves as elite, it's beyond pointless in a wide-open world, where anyone can beat anyone.
It's one thing to say to a very good Boise State or Tulane or whoever it is some year: You've had a nice season, but you can't seriously think you can compete with the big boys of the BCS conferences for the national championship.
Putting aside that last year's Fiesta Bowl put that sentiment in its place, how can you get away with excluding the smaller-conference power -- this year it's Hawaii -- from a competition whose big selling point is that it's now wide open?
If anybody can beat anybody, which is what I keep hearing, then let's let everybody play for the championship. I've always thought the BCS would collapse under the weight of its own stupidity in time, but if this new parity is real, that collapse is right around the corner.
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com or visit his Facebook page.
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