2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie Review

The Tide rolls onto Blu-ray.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 26, 2013

Call the BCS what it is (take out the "C") but there's no denying the impact of the National Championship game, the one-and-done game based on rankings and polls and sure to upset fans everywhere save for those from the schools represented. Playoffs or no, the grandeur of the game is undeniable, the pressure off the charts, the moment historic, and the possibilities endless. It's too bad none of that is really captured in the 2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray release. This is a generic, bare-bones, no-frills football release that's the game and nothing but the game. It's basically as if someone DVR'd the game, edited out the commercials, plopped it onto Blu-ray, printed a cover, bought some cases, shrink wrapped it, and called it "good." It's good enough to relive the game -- it sure does beat the solution from a couple of decades ago of recording the OTA broadcast onto wavy and, probably now, decaying VHS -- but fans hoping for something with a little more life to it will be sorely disappointed, even Alabama fanatics who will love the score when the final whistle blows.

Make that 5-2.

The Alabama Crimson Tide entered the 2012 College Football season fresh off a national championship the year before. The team surged out of the gate, starting the season ranked #2 in the polls and rising to the coveted top spot after a dominating 41-14 win over eighth-ranked Michigan. The team rattled off win after win and did so in dominating fashion, never even having to squeak out a tough win until toppling #5 LSU 21-17 in a week nine thriller at Tiger Stadium. The team would follow up that nail biter with a 29-24 loss to Texas A&M, ranked #15. But Head Coach Nick Saban wasn't about to let two close games and a loss keep his team off the win column for a second straight week. The Tide dropped to #4 in the polls after the loss, but dominating wins against Western Carolina and Auburn, as well as a 32-28 win over #3-ranked Georgia in week 13, set the stage for 'Bama to take on top-ranked Notre Dame in the championship game.

Notre Dame, the school Rudy loved and historically one of the top programs in college football history, started out of the gate ranked 22nd in all the land, and it was only up, up, and up in the standings from then on. Head Coach Brian Kelly led the team to a lopsided week one victory over Navy (in a game played in Ireland) but failed to beat beat Purdue so convincingly in week two, taking the team's first game of the season in South Bend by the margin of a mere field goal. The Irish's season continued to be one of lopsided victories and close calls, winning games against Michigan State, Miami (Florida), Oklahoma, and Wake Forest by a combined score of 129-19 but barely scraping by BYU, Stanford, and Pittsburgh, the last two games overtimes thrillers, the Pitt game a three-overtime affair. Yet no matter how close or how wide the margin of victory, the Irish continued to rise in the polls. The 22nd rank became 19, 19 became 17, 17 transformed to 11, 10, 7, and 5, 5 dropped to 4, 4 became 3, and finally, the Irish ascended to #1 in the nation by the time the team traveled to Los Angeles for a rivalry game against USC. The Irish would win, cling to that top position, and earn a spot in the National Championship game against Alabama.

Unfortunately, the game wasn't much of a thriller, and frankly neither is the Blu-ray disc. As noted earlier, this is a simple case of the broadcast plopped onto Blu-ray for posterity. Frankly, there's little here to review. It's the game and the post-game trophy presentation, nothing more and, thankfully, nothing less. There are no additional interviews, not increased production values, no looks back on the Alabama and Notre Dame seasons. Buyers are getting the game and the case. It's a convenient way to relieve exactly what aired on television, sans commercials of course, but anyone hoping for something more akin to the documentary style of the recent Baltimore Ravens Super Bowl release will walk away disappointed.

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Watch the game on TV? That's exactly what this disc shows: it replicates a watchable but imperfect broadcast. 2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game rolls onto Blu-ray with a meager MPEG-2 encoded, 1.78:1 high definition transfer that looks like it was pulled off the living room DVR. Unlike the WWE releases that tend to improve, a bit, on the broadcast quality, this release is the video version of barebones, offering a clear, satisfactory picture but nothing more. There's shimmering on lines and graphics and some evident compression issues. The good news is that details are satisfying, revealing the texture of uniforms, the Notre Dame helmets, and the turf field. Distance shots don't show great detail on the grass or uniforms, but there's a satisfying level of basic texturing visible at all times. Colors are nice enough. Green turf, Alabama red, and Notre Dame blue and gold stand out nicely. This release will satisfy fans who just want to relive the game, but this isn't some miracle transfer by any stretch of the imagination.

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game features a bland and straightforward Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Again, it's like it was just plopped off the DVR. Crowd noise is messy and cramped, with no range or sense of space; it's all packed into the middle. Same with band music; the basic notes are clear enough but it's crowded in the center. Fortunately, the play-by-play is never lost under these background elements. Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit up in the booth and Heather Cox and Tom Rinaldi down on the sidelines come through clear enough. Some of the sounds of the game -- blowing whistles, pad-on-pad hits -- again come across with a basic sonic signature but no real sense of authenticity. Fans who watched the game live on TV will gets pretty much the exact same presentation.

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game contains only the post game trophy presentation (HD) tacked on to the program's total 2:28:17 runtime. It, as well as the beginning moments of any of the four quarters, may be selected from the main menu for easy navigation to the major breaking points in the game.

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

2013 Discover BCS National Championship Game isn't the end-all, be-all of college football home video presentations, but fans of the Crimson Tide will want to roll with it, anyway, but only if they somehow don't already have the game saved on the DVR. For those that do, this is the same thing without the hassle of fast forwarding through commercials. Whether that's worth the cost of the disc is up to each viewer, especially considering the lackluster picture and sound and no bonus content.