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(H/T: Winfield)
How crazy has this year's NCAA basketball tournament been? Crazy enough that if it were football, the Hokies would be in the Final Four along with Oklahoma State, Air Force and Northern Illinois, according to the Wall Street Journal:
The results don't exactly look like must-see TV. In one football final-four game, Northern Illinois (Butler's equivalent) would meet Air Force (our VCU doppelganger). In the other game, Kentucky's stand-in, Oklahoma State, would take on Connecticut's correlate, Virginia Tech.
The WSJ reseeded this year's NCAA bracket according to the final BCS rankings. If the theoretical football field of 64 played out like this year's basketball tournament, the Hokies would be heading to Houston thanks to wins over Southern Miss, West Virginia (yay!), Arkansas and Mississippi State.
The story is mainly a conversation starter and to drive home the point that this year's Final Four wasn't expected, as if we needed to be reminded of that. But I think it makes an unintended point. The tournament, especially one this size, works for basketball. It wouldn't work for football. Just because the tourney is great doesn't mean it should be applied to every sport. No one thinks the NFL should go to best-of-seven because it works for the NHL.
The BCS has it's flaws, but right now it's the best system we have for determining a champion in college football. It wouldn't work for basketball and wouldn't be nearly as fun. The same way a large-scale tournament format wouldn't automatically be great for football just because of the drama we've seen the last two weeks in hoops.