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Thursday, January 20, 2000
Hula Bowl coaches
By Paul Arnett
favor BCS system
Star-BulletinWAILUKU - Tennessee survived the Southeastern Conference gauntlet in 1998 and eventually won a national championship by defeating Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl.
That season, head coach Phil Fulmer's Volunteers fashioned a perfect 13-0 record and silenced the critics of the Bowl Championship Series system currently in place by beating every team put in front of them.
This year, Wisconsin didn't have quite the season the Volunteers had, finishing 10-2 en route to capturing its second consecutive Big Ten title. Head coach Barry Alvarez's reward for properly managing one of the tougher conference runs was winning his second Rose Bowl in as many tries to finish No. 4 in the country.
When the two Hula Bowl coaches were asked this week whether it was fair that teams in weaker conferences had a better shot at finishing one and two - case in point this year's championship game between Florida State of the ACC and Virginia Tech of the Big East - they said they thought it was.
"The system in place is the best one we have,'' Alvarez said. "Sure, it's always going to be difficult to go undefeated in a league like ours and I'm sure Coach Fulmer would say the same thing about the SEC.
"But the bowls are a reward for teams having good seasons. Take Hawaii as an example. I doubt very seriously that they would have been one of the 16 seeded playoff teams in a system some guys are proposing. So, would that be fair to exclude them after what June Jones did this year? No, not at all.''
Fulmer concedes it's difficult to go undefeated in the SEC. This year, his Volunteers failed to defend their national championship after losing to Florida and Arkansas.
"But even though we lost at Florida, we still got back up to No. 2 late in the season,'' Fulmer said. "Sure, I think our conference is the toughest around. But we showed in 1998 that you can go undefeated if you have a good team and get a little lucky along the way.
"If we hadn't lost to Arkansas late in the year, I believe we could have finished second and had a shot at defending our title. It didn't work out that way and we lost to Nebraska, which was another very good team, in the Fiesta Bowl. Winning a national championship is difficult. But it should be.''
As it turned out, Tennessee finished No. 9 in the nation with a 9-3 mark. Granted, had a playoff system been in place, Tennessee might have advanced to the title game, but would that have been a fair system?
"I don't think so,'' Alvarez said. "Our games in the regular season are the only ones that count. They don't in basketball because everybody starts over once March madness begins.
"I think teams that win six games deserve to be in the postseason because it allows players to experience being in a bowl. You know going into the season that you can't afford to stumble. Each game has value. I don't even look at the rankings. I figure if we go undefeated in the Big Ten, we'll be in the title game.''
Fulmer also likes the current setup.
"I believe the system we have now is the best one you can have,'' Fulmer said. "A playoff system would be too difficult for a lot of reasons. You would have controversy in picking the right 16 teams. The regular season wouldn't mean as much. And you'd be playing too many games.
"We know going into every season that it's going to be difficult to win every game on our schedule. Like the Big Ten, our conference goes six or seven deep in terms of bowl-eligible teams. Any of those teams can beat you, especially at their place. It means each game in the regular season is important. It makes it exciting for our fans and that's what they want.''
