THE WORST BRAND… EVER!!

By the time you read this, there will be a DISPUTED Champion of College Football. I’m writing this mere hours before the big kick-off to the supposed National Championship game. Riiiiight….

To illustrate what a sham this is, I offer a quote from our sad local paper about the Utah Utes: “We’re 13-0, what do you got?”… And I’m a Texas fan?!?! Go figure.

Any HOOOO, without getting too much into HOW “it” actually works right now, I’d like to point out that part of “it’s” problem is branding.

May we approach the bench your honor?
You COULD argue that the BCS is not a brand. BUT I’d win the argument handily, here’s how: Just about everybody has an emotional reaction to it, they make money (hand over fist) and they have a product (football). DING!
Oh I’m sorry…Thanks for playing; your consolation prize is the board game, Branding 101-Home edition.

Back to it – Nobody is really “bought” in except ALL the people and institutions that make said gobs of money. All the fans (ahem, isn’t that who the game is really for anyway?) Haven’t liked it for years. So to this I offer my branding eye to what’s wrong with college football:

Let’s first start by dissecting the name and move on from there. BCS…. bowl championship series; deliberately in lower case letters too BTW.

BOWL: I can buy this. It’s a bowl game. Everybody loves a bowl game period. Good tradition here too. Heck the Rose Bowl (and parade) is 111 years old.

CHAMPIONSHIP: (SFX: Squealing tires, cars crashing into each other) Seriously? I thought a championship was earned, not calculated. If it wants to use the word championship, then it needs to look and act like a championship. Otherwise, the savvy NEW CONSUMER will call BULLSHIT. Oh wait, they already have for years now.

SERIES: Really? Who’s this word for anyway? The fans? Riiiiiight. A series is like poker. Or baseball. Or hockey or… you get the point. There are a number of games at the end of which THERE IS ONE WINNER. Oh, and generally there isn’t a computer or fat fuck cat coaches and people who get paid to have an opinion sports writers deciding who wins the World Series…. It’s PLAYERS. ON THE FIELD. PLAYING the game. Geeze, I’m wound up about this.

So if we look further at how this brand sucks… I mean needs lots and lots of help, there’s the whole computational aspect of the “bcs.” To this I simply say WTF?
Try pulling that shit on Gonzaga, Appalachian State or the 1980 US Hockey Team. “Sorry boys, you’re really not even supposed to be here. The Russians played a much harder schedule and are a much better team so we the sportswriters and members of the world hockey coaches award the gold to the Russians even though…”

Net net, what’s missing from the “bcs” is the reason, the ethos, the core spirit of the game. Nobody watches college football or any sports for that matter to be told that some incomprehensibly complex amalgamation of opinions and performance-based computation decides it. We watch to see them play. To see if the Cinderella comes to the dance strapped with a pair of Air Jordans and bringin her A-Game. We watch it to see an amazing catch, an inconceivable impossibility on the field, To Celebrate human achievement, physical prowess and the limits of endurance. I could go on and on.

Basically it comes down to this: Money. I get that. But that has grossly deformed what could be and should be a beautiful thing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for making money. Heck, I’ll even say that somebody SHOULD make money at it. The champion should stack some serious jing. But make it, stack it, count it and spend it for the right reason.
If you do, I submit, your skeptical audience will return and love you, and admire you. And every dime you thought you weren’t gonna make, because you were keeping it real, will actually (to your surprise) be there. Because, you will have given them what they want, just like Ray Kinsella.