Hope you've had a chance to listen to my latest Broo View Podcast. My guest is Jerry Palm from collegebcs.com. We analyze the BCS from the University of Cincinnati point of view. You can hear it by heading to www.kenbroo.com. The podcast is on the front page. But here's a link, if you're in a hurry.

Just posted to the front page of my web site www.kenbroo.com is the latest episode of Bengals Report Podcast. This time, bengalsinsider.com's Marc Hardin and I preview this Sunday's Bengals vs Steelers game.

Also, the latest Broo View Podcast is up and posted. I'm joined in this latest episode by best selling author John Feinstein. Our topic, the folly that is the BCS. You can find that on www.kenbroo.com. But, here's a quick link, if you're in a hurry.

Good Monday Morning!

There’s a prejudiced out there about the Big East. Which is funny, because the sports media is always accused of having an East Coast prejudice. Tune into any of the ESPN shows, radio or TV, and you get a lot of Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, Patriots. I’ll give you a good reason why: a lot of the talking heads on ESPN and the over the air networks are from the East Coast, or have lived in New York so long, they’ve developed an New Yorker’s view of America. You even seen one of those maps, a New Yorker’s view of the USA? Seven-eighths of it is consumed by New York, New Jersey and Connecticut….the rest of the country is squeezed into the final one-eighth of the map. Funny, but in a lot of ways true.

Here’s why a lot of the national media isn’t taking the Big East seriously: it has only eight teams that play football. It has a ninth team that plays football, but won’t play a Big East schedule and has its own television network. It’s a conference where it’s biggest stars play basketball and it’s celebrity coaches wear Armani and work winters. Except Huggins and that monstrosity of mustard he likes to dust off every now and again.

Dave Gavitt and Mike Tranghese after him, were magicians. They were the smart guys, the first commissioners. They took a lot of smoke and mirrors and a little bit of carnival barker and created an aura for the Big East. Georgetown’s basketball team and Virginia Tech’s football team didn’t hurt the cause either. Tranghese elbowed his way into the same room as the big boys, the suits who run the Big 10, Big 12 the SEC. He almost single handidly helped the Big East survive the major poaching the ACC did to his conference five or six years ago. It was good work. But it wasn’t enough. The Big East isn’t the Big 12. It’s just a step or two ahead of the Mountain West and Conference USA.

And that’s why today, after winning eight straight, with the most charismatic coach this side of Lou Holtz and skill players Urban Meyer would kill for, the Bearcats struggle for national love. Brian Kelly likes to say his Bearcats need to prove what’s going on right now isn’t a one year deal.

That tradition will take care of a lot of what the “Cats are battling right now. But this is a guy who knows the score.

In a month, there’s a very good chance the UC football team will be standing on the turf of Heinz Field in Pittsburgh with a Big East trophy, a perfect season and a resume with enough glitter to rightfully claim a spot in the BCS Championship game. There’s an even better chance it won’t get within a thousand miles of Pasadena. It’s not the team. It’s the conference.

Cincinnati could be at the epicenter of the BCS implosion. Because, if UC finishes the season as the only, or one of two undefeated teams from a BCS Conference and DOESN’T go to the title game, than what’s the point of belonging to a BCS Conference. You play in a certified BCS conference, you run the table and it still isn’t good enough? The system implodes.

And what does that say about the Big East?

So today, I’ve got a little homework lesson for the new Big East Conference Commissioner.: John Marinotto. It won’t help the Bearcats this season. But it might get his conference mentioned in the same breath as the “big boys”

Here’s the homework lesson: expand. Today, tomorrow, by next April. As soon as possible. And poach. Take teams from another conference and have no conscience about it. This is no game for the timid and your conference’s future as a BCS member is at stake. Don’t wait for the warning shots. Be preemptive.

Here’s two teams I’d look at today, right now. Kentucky. You’re laughing. Stop. As long as LSU, Alabama and Florida are in the SEC, Kentucky has about as much chance of winning an SEC football championship as you have commanding a spaceship to Saturn. Don’t think UK would be interested? Is the SEC a better basketball conference than the Big East? Not anymore. Don’t think John Calipari wouldn’t love coaching in that conference again? He may not say it publicly, wouldn’t be politically correct. But he’d love to.

Does UK have a better shot at winning a football conference championship in the Big East than the SEC? You already know the answer to that question.

Better chance of going to the NCAA Tournament in the Big East than the SEC if it doesn’t win the championship? Would UK be available? Maybe not today. But why not lay the ground work.

My other school to target: Memphis. It got left at the post when Louisville and UC jumped ship from Conference USA. But Memphis, continued to field competitive and sometimes, championship caliber basketball teams. The Memphis football program isn’t championship ready. But remember, recruiting big time talent to a Big East football team is a heckuva lot easier than it is recruiting talent to a Conference USA team. Kentucky and Memphis gets the Big East to ten. Two five team divisions and a playoff game and then, you’re on a more level playing field with the other BCS conferences and, most important, in the eyes of the people who vote for your teams in the polls.

Will it happen? It has to. It’s survival. It may not be UK and Memphis. It may be someone else. But if UC is standing on the turf at Heinz Field on December 5th, unbeaten, Big East championship trophy held high and on December 6th the final BCS poll has a one loss team ahead of them? Ballgame….for the BCS, for the Big East.

Spending T-Day working, anchoring the NEWS believe it or not. Had some great help this evening at 5p & 6p from my colleague Michelle Hopkins. But YIKES! I'm anchoring solo tonight at 11p.

Just posted the latest Broo View Podcast. I have an indepth interview with Brian Kelly, the football coach at the University of Cincinnati, as well as BCS expert, Jerry Palm. You can find the BVP on my my web site, www.kenbroo.com. But if you're in a hurry to get to all of those "Black Friday" bargains, you can also download it here.

Just posted, the latest Broo View Podcast. It's on the front page of my web site: www.kenbroo.com. If you're in a hurry, you can download it here. But, be sure to head to my site for previous Broo View Podcasts and Bengals Report Podcast.

Great to be the King...Marvin Lewis reacted to his team finally winning a game by giving it six of the next seven days off. Wednesday is the only mandatory day for players to report, with this coming Sunday being the 'bye' weekend. 1-8 never was so great!

Anyone who doesn't think Pittsburgh is at least the second best team in the AFC is insane. Further proof came Monday night, with another outstanding effort by the Steelers defense. Here's cbsportsline.com with the game story.

Stand by, it will only be a matter of days before you'll hear UC Coach Brian Kelly's name linked to the University of Tennessee job. UT adios'd Phillip Fulmer (nice $7 buyout!) on Monday. Kelly's name will come up a lot this winter, as most national football experts still view UC as a 'stepping stone' job. I don't think UT is a destination for Lord Kelly.

Texas Tech was amazingly good in Saturday night's win over Texas. The Red Raiders are now #2 in the latest BCS poll. But Tech is now in the middle of a grueling stretch. Next up, Oklahoma State Saturday night, then Oklahoma and finally Missouri. If Texas Tech navigates through that without a loss, they may leap frog to number one in the BCS poll, regardless of what Alabama may do.

I still maintain Southern Cal isn't completely out of the running for a spot in the National Championship game. But Ohio State is.

Now go vote. As a wise man once said: "If you vote, you may not get what you want. But if you don't vote, you'll surely get what you deserve." Actually, Jerry Springer told me that years ago. You can see him on our election coverage Tuesday night on WLWT Channel 5. Former Secretary of State (Ohio) Ken Blackwell, too.

Wednesday, we gave you Mike Florio's take on the best teams through three weeks of the 2008 NFL schedule. Now, here are his candidates for worst...

It's amazing how, in a league where the system is set up to help losing teams win again, so many of the same teams are the dregs of football, year in and year out.

Sounds as though, from reading this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Browns are once again in the middle of a quarterback controversy.

Some news in the Washington Post about a couple of former Cincinnati Reds. Has it really been five years since Aaron Boone was traded to the Yankees?

When he was a guest on WLWT's Sports Rock a month or so ago, I asked UC head football coach, Brian Kelly why UC and Ohio State couldn't play a football game every couple of years or so. Kelly answered my questioned by saying it was up to UC to prove that it's worthy of such a deal. Both, of course, are the only BCS conference schools in the state of Ohio. It was a good answer.

But how is UC 'proving' it's worthy of Ohio State by scheduling a game at Akron. Akron! Are you kidding me? This is the same UC athletic department that is trying to get out of a yearly home and home series with Miami, Ohio, a perenniel opponent. UC would gladly play Miami every year at Nippert. But it says it's done traveling to Oxford for games. And now, UC is going to Akron? Whose bright idea was that? Can you imagine Ohio State scheduling at game at Akron, or any other MAC school? And UC will compound this dumb scheduling move with a trip to Huntington, West Virginia next week to play CUSA's Marshall. This is how a BCS conference football team schedules? Good luck building a case to play Ohio State doing that!

Brian Kelly deserves better. UC should have bought its way out of this mess and scheduled two more games at Nippert.

Oklahoma wins, Ohio State is in. West Virgina loses, LSU is in. If you’re a Buckeye fan, I’m happy for you. If you’re a college football fan, someone who loves the sport, not the individual team, I feel for you.

This whole thing is a joke.

There is no way on God’s green earth that a team should go from fifth, to third to championship game without playing a game. But that’s exactly what Ohio State has done, since beating Michigan. LSU & Kansas lost last week, Ohio State moved up to third. Oklahoma beat Missouri Saturday night, Pitt beat West Virginia, and OSU moves up to the top spot and a berth in the national championship game. Excuse Jim Tressel if he’s saying today…this’d be a helluva job, if we didn’t have to play those damn games.

I’ve got nothing against Ohio State and if I did, I’d have the sense to keep my mouth shut about it. It’s not about Ohio State, it’s about the ‘state’ of division one college football. The whole thing is a joke, and you’re the butt end of it.

One-A football has a playoff, two-a, three-a, every level of NCAA basketball has a playoff except, of course, the one NCAA sport that the entire world follows, Division One football. Everybody follows it. People who don’t know if a football is blown up or stuffed follow NCAA Division One college football. On the grand scale of sports, it plays number two to the NFL’s number one.

People get geeked about the NCAA division one basketball tournament, but only because of the brackets. They want to win their office pool, be the only ones at work to correctly predict Princeton will knock off Washington State and have Villanova going all the way. That’s the allure of the NCAA tournament.

But college football? College football is a social event as much as a sport. It’s parking on the edge of campus and walking through the reds and yellows of autumn leaves on the way to the stadium. It’s your college band playing your college fight song. It’s taking your wife back to your school to watch


your team and running into your college sweetheart. Don’t think that hasn’t happened once or twice.

It’s stopping by the drive through on Friday night so you’ve got the brewskis in the fridge for at least 12 hours before kickoff. It’s inviting your friends over to watch your team play on your brand new 42-inch flat panel.

College football is high fives, groans, cheers and wondering exactly what drug the offensive coordinator is on when he calls an off tackle run on third and 14.

So why is Division One college football ‘not’ good enough for a playoff?

When the argument for one came up many years ago we first heard ‘well, we wouldn’t want to disrupt the sanctity of the bowl system. The bowls game operators would be compromised by a playoff system. (emphasis on the word operators). How could you have a national championship game in the Rose Bowl without offending the Orange Bowl and making the Cotton Bowl feel less important. Guess what? That’s exactly what we’ve got now, with no playoff. The Orange Bowl and the Rose Bowl and every other bowl game doesn’t get to host the national title game. And the Cotton Bowl hasn’t been a major New Year’s Day destination for years.

Lately we’ve heard, ‘well, we couldn’t extend the season, the student-athletes would miss too much time in the class room. The can’t be playing football three weeks into January. Of course, these same academians, so far removed from the real world that they suffer panic attacks when leaving campus, have no trouble letting student-athletes play three weeks of basketball in March. Or look the other way when a senior football player stops going to class and starts going to draft camps after Christmas.

The whole thing is a joke.

But you know what? I’ve got a solution. It’s always better to be part of the solution, than part of the problem. So while I was watching Oklahoma beat Missouri Saturday night, I came up with a plan. Call it the Broo plan.


My wife, the first Mrs. Ken likes to tell me I’m long on plans and short on delivery. So let me deliver my plan for a Division One college football playoff.

First, no team plays more than eleven regular season games. Eliminate the conference championship games. You won’t need them. They simply exist as money makers for conferences. You’ll make so much money with this plan, believe me, everybody will be happy. Everybody.

My plan would call for the the top 12 teams, plus one, to play off for the national title. The 13 would be decided by the same folks who decided on the rankings up until this BCS nonsense began: the football writers, broadcasters and the coaches. One poll, 13 teams.

Each team would be seeded. The number one team would draw a bye until the semi-finals.

13 teams, 12 games in the first round of games. 12 teams, six games in the second. In round three, reseed the teams, the number ranked team would play the fourth seeded team. Two would play three.

On championship weekend, you would decide the national champion.

Now think about this. Most, if not all of college football’s regular season is done, as of last night. Most, if not all of colleges on the quarter system are finished for the holiday break by the end of this week. Most schools on semesters….most….are finished by December 20. When do the bowl games begin? Right….just about every year on December 20.

If the team ranked number one entering the playoffs wins the championship, it will play 13 games. The team it faces, if number one gets that far, would play a maximum of 15. Bowl eligible teams play 12 regular season games as it is now. And a lot of them have a lot of time off in between their regular season finale and their bowl game. Look at Ohio State.

What about the teams below the top 13? Well, remember, there are 32 bowl games. My system would need 12 bowls or sites to whittle down to one


champion. That leaves 20 other current bowl games that need teams. That’s 40 more team. That would mean the top 53-teams in the country would play in a post game season game. Do we really need more than that?

Think of the excitement, the hype. Number 11 Cincinnati gets to play number two Kansas in week one at the Holiday Bowl…or the Music City Bowl….winner moves onto the Capital One Bowl in Orlando.

UC fan tell me you wouldn’t want that, instead of what you got for your troubles this season.

Number one LSU, let’s say, lying in wait in Baton Rouge, watching all of this play out, the chatter on radio stations like this one all about whether or not the teams playing will be tired by the time LSU joins the party….or will LSU be rusty and primed for an upset when Ohio State gets ahold of them.

It’s be crazy. It’s be good. It makes too much sense not to do it. Bu that’s probably why the NCAA would never go for it. Probably why this time next year, somebody else who’s had a little too much to drink on a Saturday night will come up with another plan and talk about it on this radio station the next morning.

All I know is this: the NCAA’s BCS deal? The whole thing is a joke.

Right now, Ohio State and Boston College are unbeaten. But could we have a scenario this year where no major college football team plays for the national title unbeaten? There's a good chance. In fact, we may have a two loss team contending for the title in the national championship game.


Ohio State still has rough road games remaining at Penn State and Michigan. Boston College still has games on the schedule at Maryland and Clemson and dicey home tilts with Miami and Florida State.


Oklahoma, LSU and Oregon are the best of the one loss teams. But each faces choppy water between now and the end of the season. LSU's toughest test will be at Alabama. But that could be it for the Tigers, until the SEC Championship game. Oklahoma still has a dicey road trest at 6-2 Texas Tech and a home game against instate rival, Oklahoma State. West Virginia could be lurkiing at the end. But the Mountaineers have some tough Big East games coming up, including one at Cincinnati.

My guess is no team will be unbeaten come early December. And that is yet another compelling reason to have a playoff system. But I'm not holding my breath, waiting for one.

Just posted today the latest "Bengals Report Podcast". You can find it on my web site: www.kenbroo.com. It's on the front page, easy to find.

Sports Rock! rocks this Sunday night at 11:35p on Cincinnati's Channel 5 WLWT. My guess is, we'll have plenty to talk about in the wake of the Bengals vs Steelers game. Check out our 'internet only' version of Sports Rock! on www.wlwt.com.

And if you can locate the Colorado Rockies offense, please call the team. It's 'gone missing' and they need it badly.

Have a great weekend!

Thoughts on college football after all the finals are in this Saturday....USC vs OSU in the BCS Championship game. I know that's a lot of letters, but there's no way USC loses to UCLA after beating Notre Dame Saturday night...University of Cincinnati locked up a bowl with their last second win over Connecticut. At 7-5, UC pretty much assured Pitt it won't be going to a bowl. Pitt is 6-6....West Virginia's home loss KO'd the Mountaineers from a BCS bowl....Enjoy playing before Christmas, Morgantown...That loss, coupled with Rutgers win means Rutgers will play in the second Big East BCS bowl game, provided that Rutgers beats WVU this coming Saturday. If Rutgers doesn't, the Big East may get only one of its teams, Louisville, in a BCS game....

You want some NFL teams that have to win Sunday? How about the Jets at home against Houston.? At 5-5. the Jets are out of wiggle room....How about 5-5 Atlanta at home with 6-4 New Orleans? 9-7 might be enough for a wild card in the NFC, but there'll be a lot of 9-7 teams if this schedule plays out like I think it will....How about 6-4 Jacksonville at Buffalo? The Jags will catch a break. The weather is supposed to be decent in Buffalo. But the Jags need four more wins in their final six games to reach 10 wins, the minimum I believe for a wild card in the AFC....How about the 5-5 Bengals at the 3-7 Browns? Same deal as the Jags situation here. The Bengals need to get to ten wins and they have only six games to win five. Two of those remaining six are at Indianapolis and at Denver.

Ken