Guide To The BCS

Congratulations! You have recently been awarded the position of Dean at New College University (NCU). As is with every other D-1 college in the nation, your identity will be wrapped up in the performance that your football team puts forth. That's why I have created a simple 7 step process to national notoriety.



1. Buy local real estate and a fleet of luxury vehicles. A strong link to a tattoo parlor is also beneficial.
It is a known fact that appearance is everything to college age men (See: University of Oregon). Also, cheating is easily swept under the rug. What this adds up to is giving free things away to land high talent recruits. When on the recruiting trail, pick your prospective student up in a nice Cadillac or Chrysler. Show him around to all the great places that he could live for free if he goes to NCU (See: Reggie Bush). Follow up the recruiting tour of NCU by handing him the keys to the car and telling him to "take it for a spin" and "see how it feels" because after all, if he goes to NCU he might just end up owning it. Follow up with him later by introducing him to the tattoo guru you "just happened" to run into around town (See: Ohio State University).
2. Create preseason hype, preferably before spring ball
This can be done in many different ways but the main way to do it, is sign a big name prospect (Step 1) with a big mouth. Give him a Twitter account and tell him to "type whatever comes to mind". This will get you on ESPN and eventually, onto preseason polls by name only. Magnify the attention on the one extraordinary player on the team by not allowing sub-par players to say anything besides "No comment".
3. Make sure to be ranked in the preseason AP Top 25
Rankings are such an important piece of college football, yet they are based solely on the voter's perception of the teams. If NCU is in the preseason Top 25, the chances are high that they will be there when the season concludes. When the final poll was released, 9 of the preseason top 10 were ranked, and 17 of the top 20. This will also help to get your name out onto the mainstream college landscape.
4. Choose the correct conference to join
Much like The Game of Life, there are two different paths that one can take right from the start. You have to choose which conference to align with. Choice One: Join a weak conference to dominate, but get shunned by the BCS. Choice Two: Join the SEC and gain unwarranted respect from the whole country. The first choice is a double-edged sword. One one side, you have the ability to dominate a conference from the very beginning of the football program. However, NCU will gain no respect from the BCS because of it's easy schedule. This is called the TCU/Boise State game plan. They WILL not play in a BCS game unless you finish the season undefeated. With choice number two, you will be faced with the most difficult schedule in all of college football. Yet because of this, you automatically earn respect due to your difficult conference scheduling. There is a middle ground. The Big East is the perfect conference for any new school. A BCS-qualifying conference, it is also extremely weak. The ability to win in this conference is staggeringly easy. In a football world of "Win Every Game", it is rare for a 3 loss team to be in a BCS bowl, yet that is where conference champion West Virginia placed themselves this year due to the unsavory play of the Big East conference.
5. Schedule Non-Conference games wisely
Scheduling Non-Conference games to open up the year can be a tricky affair. Between travel costs, aligning schedules and agreeing to match-ups with other teams, there is little organization. The most important thing however, is playing teams on the far right or left of the bell curve. As a brand-new school, it will be important to inspire hope in the players that have taken a risk and chosen to play for you. This would imply scheduling weak opponents for your first few games and trouncing them by a considerable margin. In doing so, your team would race off to a solid 2-0 or 3-0 record and therefore "validate" your hyped up preseason ranking. If you choose to schedule difficult opponents, make sure to be able to compete, because you don't want them scheduling you as a aforementioned "push-over team". Being able to compete will also give you a chance to cement a "good loss" to a highly ranked and high profile team. Oregon did this in the first week of the 2011-2012 season by losing to #1 LSU. Despite losing the game, they maintained a high ranking because they lost to the number one team in the country, so it was a respectable defeat.
6. Check all future employees against the sex-offender database
I can't even believe I have to go over this. Thank you again Penn State.
7. A coaching rant is required once every five years minimum
Another attention grabber is a coaches rant after a game. It has been a long time coming but this year's was one for the record books. The coach of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, David Bennet, showed us why he "needs more dawgs" on his squad. A few years ago, Mike Gundy of Oklahoma State gave his infamous "I'm a man. I'm 40" speech (It only really gets good at 2:25 so just skip to there) and look where it got him in 2011-12: A win in the Fiesta Bowl and a postseason #3 ranking. This rant can also be carried out by a player, but only one who is a nationally acclaimed athlete.

There is your template. Follow this and ride the wave of success that soon follows. What was that? This doesn't talk at all about the on-field performance of a team? Well that would be because, in the eyes of the BCS, what you do on the field doesn't matter one bit. That is the only way to explain the latest batch of BCS bowls.