FCS Champs

There's going to be a college football playoff. Sort of.

There's going to be a four-team tournament that will wrap itself into the bowl system and won't start until 2014. TigerBlog was somewhat confused when he saw that, since he wasn't sure if that meant January 2014 (which would mean the end of next season) or after the 2014 season (which would mean two more years of the current format).

The current format is horrible, so anything that attempts to improve on that is a good thing in TB's eyes.

And while some would prefer an eight-team or even 16-team field, TB is fine with four, though he could live with eight. He just doesn't want to see college football turn into college basketball, with its nearly irrelevant regular season.

TB also knows that the reason for changing the format isn't altruistic in the least. It's monetary.

The existing Bowl Championship Series produced a game last year that nobody but nobody wanted to see, as Alabama had a rematch with LSU that nobody cared about and more importantly fewer than in years past actually watched.

It's a terrible way to choose a champion for a sport that is probably second only to professional football in terms of fan interest. And there is nothing in American sports that rivals culturally college football.

For all that, the season ends with meaningless bowl games followed by a championship game that is played somewhere around six weeks or so after the last time the teams played a game. If you were to start a system from scratch, that would be about the dumbest idea anyone came up with.

So the new system is a start.

It won't be perfect, of course, but arguing about whether or not a team deserved to be in the semifinals is a lot different than arguing if a team should be in the final. It's unlikely that an undefeated team will get left out or that the obviously deserving team is ignored.

So good for college football.

For those who think this is NCAA-driven, there is little NCAA input on college football. The BCS is an independent organization from the NCAA, which can regulate eligibility issues and such in football but little else.

The world of Division I is divided into the BCS and non-BCS for all sports other than football, interestingly enough, as in "Butler is a non-BCS school in the basketball final" or something like that.

Within Division I football, there used to be Division I-A and I-AA, but now they're called the Football Bowl Subdivision and the Football Championship Subdivision.

Those are very bulky names, ones that are shortened to FBS and FCS. TigerBlog can hardly keep them straight.

The FBS schools are by definition those in the bigger conferences, with the bigger budgets, with the bigger football programs. The FCS schools are everyone else.

The Learfield Sports Directors' Cup uses a points system to rank college teams for their performance in NCAA championship competition and has done so for the last 19 years.

In Division III, Middlebury ended a 13-year run by Williams. In Division II, Grand Canyon ended an eight-year run by Grand Valley.

In Division I, Stanford won again, making it 18 years in a row after not winning the first one.

Princeton finished the 2011-12 academic year in 39th place, which wasn't as good as last year, when the Tigers were, well, 38th.

Princeton has never finished lower than 63rd and has only been out of the Top 50 three times.

Aside form that, Princeton has never below 47th, and Princeton has been in the Top 40 14 times in 19 years. There have been five Top 30 finishes, with an all-time best of 21st in 2001-02.

Once again, Princeton is not only the top finishing Ivy League school (16 times in 19 years) but also the top finishing FCS school as well.

The Directors' Cup is meant to reward broad-based athletic success, and Princeton's goal each year is to attain that. Princeton received points from field hockey, cross country, basketball, track and field, water polo, swimming and diving, lacrosse, rowing, fencing and wrestling (and TB hopes he hasn't forgotten anyone).

And this doesn't even include the national championship in men's squash, which isn't an NCAA sport.

Being the top FCS school is an accomplishment that Princeton is proud of, and the Cup itself is something that Princeton takes seriously.

So congrats to the three winners.

And to those who made Princeton No. 39 - and a champion in its own right.