Recordpub.com - Shining light on a college football conspiracy

Is anyone really surprised that Florida won its second national championship in three years, beating Oklahoma this time, 24-14? Aside from a couple of obvious weapons named Percy Harvin and Tim Tebow, the Gators possessed advantages that will not show up in the stat sheets, the polls or the record books.
The BCS Championship Game was played in Miami - the Gator's backyard, and that warm Florida climate suited them just fine.
In all the hubbub about who will be chosen as the BCS' No. 1 ranked team and who was snubbed, is the fact that Florida - as well as most of the other teams from the south and west - held a clear advantage over their visiting opponents in their respective bowl games.
One might wonder about the outcome if Florida had played in, say, Tulsa - where the low that Thursday night hung in the mid-30s with strong winds...
While the Gators cruised just over four hours down the Panhandle to Miami Gardens, The Sooners traveled 1,442 miles - or almost 24 hours by bus - in what amounted to a home game for Florida.
Aside from a possible small dose of sour grapes by this author, it just doesn't seem right.
And it wasn't just Florida snuggled in at its home turf and feeling cozy. There were other teams who held a distinct geographic and climatic advantage over their opponents - not too mention an edge with the home-field fan support.
The Ohio State University had to travel more than twice the distance to Glendale, Arizona, than did climate-cozy Texas - and the Buckeyes lost the game by three points. That may be appropriate, as Texas also had twice as many fans in the stands with "Hook-em Horns" than the Buckeye fanatics donning scarlet and gray.
It's not just the 2,000 miles the Buckeyes traveled, but the climate differences. How well could Texas play in an Ohio climate with a high temperature of 25 degrees. The red-hot play of the Longhorns may have gotten frostbite.
Furthermore, Vanderbilt won the Music City Bowl by two points and had to travel only two miles to beat Boston College, 16-14.
Boston College, on the other hand, trekked 1,101 miles to Nashville, where the climate was more than 20 degrees warmer than it was in Beantown.
Rice, out of Houston, traveled three miles, while Western Michigan University hailing from Kalamazoo traveled 1,298 - or 20 hours by bus - to the Houston Stadium. Rice won the contest, 38-14.
The examples continue: The St. Petersburg Bowl featuring Southern Florida versus Memphis. The home team (USF) crushed visitor Memphis 41-14. USF is only 30 miles from the bowl site - Memphis traveled embarked miles.
Penn State journeyed 2,601 miles and lost to USC (38-24) in the Colisuem, a place where the Trojans play ALL of their home games. I'm sure PSU head coach Joe Paterno would have loved the roses to freeze in a Rose Bowl played in Happy Valley. Too bad for the Nittany Lions, the low temperature in State College that day was an advantageous 15 degrees - could have been called the "Froze Bowl."
A case could be made for Florida Atlantic, who beat Central Michigan 24-21 on what could be considered a home-field advantage for CMU. However, the Motor City Bowl, played in Detroit, is inside of a heated arena. The low temperature that day in the Motor City (outside Ford Field) was a nippy 21 degrees. Brrr.
Florida State University had a distinct edge over the University of Wisconsin - a 1,000 mile edge.
FSU: same state, same climate. Outcome: FSU 42, Wisconsin 13.
Could the outcome of the game been changed if it were played in Milwaukee? Maybe not drastically, but it may have been a tighter game with a home crowd of Badger red and white, the drowning smell of barley and hops and a high of 14 degrees.
The home team California beat the University of Miami by seven points, in a game played just $3 in public transportation across the bay to San Francisco. Miami traveled 3,110 miles to lose by a touchdown. Al Gore and half of Greenpeace are crying somewhere. No one feels sorry for Miami though - they're used to playing home games themselves.
The Independence Bowl, played in Shreveport, Louisiana, saw another home team win. Louisiana Tech beat Northern Illinois, 17-10. Traveling just an hour up the road, LTU played NIU possibly worn down from its own 890-mile journey to the south.
The Georgia Bulldogs got the better of Michigan State 24-12, traveling 700 miles to the Capital One Bowl in Orlando. However, the Spartans needed to travel 1,200 miles and adjust to the warm climate south of the Mason-Dixie line.
The weather for the BCS Championship in Florida at kickoff was right around 70 degrees, about 40 degrees warmer than what Oklahoma is used to this time of the year.
Does that kind of temperature change really make that much of a difference?
"Coming from the cold and going to a warmer climate, it takes about a two week period to acclimate to that kind of weather change," said John Faulstick, the Kent State University head of the athletic department. He has been involved with the school's athletic training for 29 years.
"The body is not able to cool itself."
Faulstick said the sunshine and warmer climate certainly gives the warmer-weather teams an advantage over their snow-and-cold-belt opponents.
"When you're not accustomed to it, the body isn't able to handle the heat stress," he said.
Some say the sunbelt is simply getting better players and better coaching. One way to find out once and for all is to have a playoff system, with the top-eight seeds determined by the current BCS system.
The better-seeded team gets home field advantage - that includes weather, distance traveled and thousands of screaming, lunatic fans.
Phased out in the 1960s, there used to be cold-weather neutral bowl games, but they were poorly attended. That may not be a problem for a home team.
Just ask any football fan in the north who has ever shoveled several feet of snow from his or her driveway at 7 a.m. if they would watch their favorite team play an SEC school in a blizzard.
Really, what do you suppose would be the outcome?
While the complaining southern schools have been clamoring for a playoff system for years, I doubt the prospect of playing cold-weather bowl games in places like Buffalo, Canton and Ann Arbor would warm the hearts of the southern and west coast schools.
This time next year, I'm sure someone, somewhere in a very cold place will be complaining about the BCS system.

Colin McEwen can be reached at cmcewen@recordpub.com