The BCS

The BCS, short for Bowl Championship Series, is college football’s poor excuse for a post-season. The BCS rankings, which determine the top two teams to play in the BCS Championship, are not as complicated as people like to believe. The two most important components of the BCS rankings are the poll average and computer ranking average. The poll average is an average of the Associated Press poll (mostly sportswriters who obsess over college football all the time) and the ESPN/USA Today coaches poll (mostly college football coaches who use bias, incomplete knowledge, popularity contests and voodoo to rank the teams).

Computer average is an average of eight computer rankings, mostly designed by mathematicians with an interest in sports and college football. Generally the computer rankings imitate human sentiment (every computer has Oklahoma ranked no. 1, for example), but there are exceptions. The New York Times computer rankings are filled with inexplicable aberrations this week (USC ranked no. 5, Florida ranked no. 4, TCU at no. 25, etc.) To help control the occasionally unpredictable computers, a team’s lowest computer ranking is not computed in the average.

The final portions of the BCS are strength of schedule, losses (see above, and quality of wins. Each of these factors is already indirectly involved in both human and computer rankings, but redundancy is not a problem when computing weighted averages.

Problems

The BCS has produced some frustrating results in the past. Three years ago a

one-loss Florida State team got in ahead of a one-loss Miami team which had beaten FSU earlier in the season. A year later, Nebraska stumbled into the championship game after losing its final game of the season 62-35 and finishing second in the North division of the Big XII conference. This year, Ohio State or LSU may sneak ahead of USC even though the vast majority of college football experts believe USC is the better team.

“This is the system that we live with,” USC coach Pete Carroll said this week. “It is what it is. We know all the conversations will come, but we also realize it doesn't have anything to do with what we are doing on the football field.”

The BCS has more problems than gripes about the choosing of the top two teams. Congress is currently investigating the fairness of the system in regard to non-major conference schools. A non-BCS conference team (other than Notre Dame) has never played in one of the four major BCS bowls, the Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta.

“I am troubled by the current system and believe it is unfair to colleges and universities that are not members of the BCS,” Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, stated recently.

This year, Conference USA’s TCU may finish undefeated and miss out on a major bowl. Meanwhile, Big XII member Texas will probably go to a BCS bowl with two losses, including an embarrassing blowout defeat at the hands of Oklahoma.

Nightmare Scenarios

As much heat as the BCS has taken, it has never had to deal with true disaster. ESPN.com senior writer and college football expert Ivan Maisel envisions a scenario in which USC could finish number one in both polls and be left out of the BCS Championship (this year, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans). If LSU and Oklahoma were both to lose once and Ohio State and USC both won their remaining games, USC would likely be ranked first in both major polls and third in the BCS rankings.

Every year the possibility exists that three major-conference teams could go undefeated. If Iowa had not lost a close early season game against Iowa State last year, the BCS would have had to choose

between three major undefeated teams. Eventually, three teams will go undefeated and someone will be left out. This could lead to two unde-feated teams at the end of the season, and possibly the dreaded split national championship.

The Real Problem

While most analysts like to bash the BCS, many of these same people were responsible for its inception. Many were disenchanted with the idea of people voting for a champion and the possibility of a split national championship, and felt the BCS gave a ranking with authority and objectivity. The simple fact is that neither humans, nor computers, nor a combination, can ever provide an agreeable means of finding a champion.

Division I college football is the only major American sport that does not have a playoff format to determine its champion. The NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB and college basketball (and NCAA Division I-AA, II, and III football) all use postseason playoffs to settle the score once and for all. While some may say the Florida Marlins were not the best team in baseball this year, there is no argument over who the World Champions are.

The ironic part about college football’s lack of a playoff system is that college basketball’s March Madness playoffs annually produce more interest, money and viewership than any other American sporting event. There is absolutely no question that a college football playoff would generate incredible revenues through ticket sales, television and the Internet.

A Foolproof Solution

The two main reasons commonly given as to why college football cannot use a playoff system are the “bowl tradition” and missed class time for college athletes. The Rose Bowl is the only bowl with any real tradition (though the Continental Tire Bowl and the Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl have been gaining steam). The missed class time argument never seems to come up for college basketball (or any other college sport) and would not consist of more than two additional weekends (probably during winter break) for college players if an eight- team playoff was instituted.

A simple, eight-team playoff would consist of the six major conference champions (though the new Big East may have to be phased out) and two other “wild-card” entries, determined as the highest ranked non-champions by the BCS rankings. The teams would be seeded by the BCS rankings, with the higher ranked seeds hosting the lower ranked seeds in a mid-December quadruple-header.

The minor bowl games would choose lesser teams, as they currently do, and three bowls would be set aside for the semi-finals and championship game (most likely a rotation of the four current BCS bowls). The “Bowl Tradition” would coexist with the excitement of a college football playoff, with the semifinals on New Year’s Day and the championship a week later.

This year, a college football playoff might begin something like this:

#8 Pittsburgh at #1 Oklahoma

#7 Florida State at #2 LSU

#6 Ohio State at #3 USC

#5 TCU at #4 Michigan

Instead there will be one semi-meaningful bowl game, surrounded by bickering, frustration and politics.