For some fans, the BCS Championship game is a non-starter

Nathan Roholt of Fishduck.com expresses the sentiment of a lot of fans regarding tonight's BCS Championship matchup between Auburn and Florida State at Rose Bowl.

Mastermind of offensive wizardry and last-minute miracles: Gus Malzahn may be a good guy, but when he coaches the Auburn Tigers, how can anyone tell? The SEC squad is a 10-point underdog tonight in the BCS final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena (Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports photo).

It's a hold-your-nose kind of football game, Roholt explains, where otherwise passionate college football enthusiasts are forced to chose between a SEC school that benefitted from a couple of miraculous wins, and preferential treatment by a system that rewarded them as a one-loss team over several other one-loss teams, or on the other sideline, a squad that benefitted from glaringly uneven Southern justice. Roholt writes:

"While it is possible that Winston would have been exonerated even if the case had been investigated properly, the fact that a player’s chances of staying on the field improved because a criminal case was mishandled, either willfully or incompetently, is vile. The fact that it culminated in a disgusting press conference led by Florida State Attorney Willie Meggs laughing throughout the press conference only made me root harder against the Seminoles during the season. The fact the Winston won the Heisman and the Seminoles made the title game have led to a public celebration of the team and its quarterback, whose presence only serves to validate the actions of those public officials who should be excoriated instead."

The writer points out Winston may indeed be innocent, but the handling of the case kept Winston on the field through the entire debacle. It's a stain on the game and the Seminoles season.

While most fans usually find a rooting interest in a big game, whether conference or regional affiliation, an underdog, or a result that challenges the status quo in college football, this one seems to reinforce all of the sordid and unfortunate aspects of the game. The closest thing to a compelling and supportable story line is the emergence of Guz Malzahn as one of the true innovators of the sport, a creative football mind who has transformed the game with his use of hurry-up no-huddle spread football and combination plays. Malzahn is a true genuis on the order of Chip Kelly, and it would have been a rare pleasure to see the two match wits again.

Even so, it's hard to root for Malzahn. He coaches at Auburn, a school with a long and venal history of circumventing recruiting rules and taking shortcuts, a team that upended the Ducks with a series of officiating good fortune that will haunt Webfoot fans forever, or at least until Marcus Mariota, Hroniss Grasu and Ifo Ekpre-Olomu take hold of the first NCAA FBS playoff series.

Cam Newton fumbled. Cliff Harris was in. Michael Dyer was down. Chip should have kicked a couple of field goals, and Royce Freeman and Marcus Mariota were born three years too late. Auburn won, all right, but the whole combination of luck and misconduct, the sordid way Fairley and Newton were purchased at market rates while Gene Chizik proclaimed the title was a blessing from God, it just makes it impossible to root for the Awwww-burnnn Tiiiii-GERS forever. Monday is dollar night at the Joy Theater: my sweetheart and I will take it "Ender's Game" and leave the end game of the BCS era to the fanatical legions in brightly-colored polyester pants. Whether the chant at the end is "SEC, SEC, SEC" or "ACC, ACC, ACC," it's hard to care very much.

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For some fans, the BCS Championship game is a non-starter

Alan Draper

Alan Draper

Alan Draper