Recent research has apparently uncovered evidence that a precedent of the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS) had actually been instituted to prevent Cinderella from attending the Prince’s Ball.
“It was known then as the Bachelorette Certification Service (BCS) and had been founded by the lords of the land to ensure the prince married only the best maiden available,” says Professor Dwight Schrute, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute’s Fairy Tale Research Division.
Schrute said his research indicated that the prince himself was unaware the BCS was operating to severely restrict his choices for a wife from among the many young women who were qualified throughout the land.
“That original BCS would most assuredly have prevented Cinderella from gaining admission to the Prince’s Ball had it not been for her Fairy Godmother’s intervention,” Schrute maintains. “The evidence suggests that even her two ugly stepsisters would not have gained admission had it not been for a lapse in security the night of the ball and confusion over pre-ball correspondence concerning their invitations.”
Schrute believes that the Prince would have been forced to “settle” on a wife and would have consequently failed to Live Happily Ever After. Schrute suggests that would have changed the nature of fairy tales possibly forever, no doubt preventing figures such as Adam Smith from conceiving of his own fantasy of the absolute virtue of free market economics.
“You can’t really adopt a fairy tale like the Invisible Hand unless there is a strong foundation and history of ‘happily ever after’ in the fairy tales being handed down to you,” Schrute notes. “So you can argue that Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother may have unintentionally foreshadowed the birth of conservative free market capitalism for all of western civilization.”
Schrute says the important lesson is that the lords wanted complete control over the outcome of the prince’s selection of a wife and they nearly got it. “You needed a Cinderella arriving in a pumpkin coach wearing glass slippers to defeat their BCS system” says Schrute. “Now that’s power!”
Though admitting he is no expert in collegiate sports including football, Schrute does believe the parallels between the current Bowl Championship Series and its precedent BCS appear to operate in the same manner. “There’s certainly no Cinderella making it to the Ball—or championship game—under the current system of team selection,” Schrute states of the current BCS. “And yes, the winner usually is not permitted to live happily ever after as champion without those lingering questions about the winner being the best.”
Reports that Cincinnati, Florida and TCU have their science department’s telescopes aimed at the skies in search of their own Fairy Godmother have not been confirmed. A report that biology students at Boise State are currently using DNA techniques to convert a pumpkin into a coach, mice into horses and lizards into footmen was also not confirmed at press time.
