As we turn the calendar to a new year, there are some rituals in which we all participate. We make resolutions, do some housekeeping, enjoy the last of the college football games of the season. But one noise rises above the din. It’s the whiny, nasal, bitching and moaning of sportswriters across our great country. And their venom is directed at one entity: the Bowl Championship Series in college football.
Stop whining about the BCS
The BCS was created in 1998 to pair the 2 best teams in a national championship game while retaining the bowl system that is a money machine and an institution in the communities that host bowl games. So with a tournament out of the equation and with the existing format in place, the BCS did the best they could with what they had.
So, let’s go ahead and lay out the problems with the BCS. It isn’t fair. Not all of the conferences are represented. It isn’t a true playoff. If your school’s team goes undefeated and you don’t play in a power conference then there is a likelihood that your team will not be playing for a national championship in January. It relies on a hybrid of computer polls and human polls instead of games on the field.
That last paragraph basically sums it up. I’m summarizing the universe of articles written on the subject (a google search of “BCS Problems” returns 3 million results). There are also plenty of articles offering ways to fix the system. The most popular fix that our genius sports media wants to utilize is the “plus one” game, where the top 4 teams play in a semifinal bowl game, followed by the winners playing in the National Championship. This is a great solution, unless you have a year like this one and there are 5 undefeated teams. (And according to the rankings this year, Boise State would have been excluded, and they looked like they belonged in the national championship game last night).
The solutions get more complex if you start allowing for more teams. Want an 8 team playoff? Sure. Good luck getting teams 9-12 agreeing that they don’t belong. Sixteen teams? How many weeks out do you want to start this thing? Should the players stop pretending that they go to school? My favorite moment on sports radio is when some blowhard mentions the NCAA Basketball Championship, where 65 teams get included. And they are right to point out that it is a unique and nearly perfect system to ensure that a true national championship is played every year. But, obviously, that isn’t possible in football.
So with inherent flaws, a machine that makes a lot of different people a lot of money, the organizers of the BCS did the best they could to create a #1 vs #2 National Championship game. And do we thank them for their efforts? Of course not. It’s unfair! We should settle this on the field! Etc Etc. What follows is a random string of thoughts on the system, and where it goes from here:
1. I actually liked old, pre-BCS system
Here’s the way things worked in the 30′s-90′s: you played your conference schedule and if you won enough games you went to a bowl game. Your team either won it or lost it. It was rare that the #1 team played the #2 team. Arguing about who was the best became an art form and sportswriters made their case, fan bases argued with other fan bases and all the big bowl games were played on New Year’s Day, which was a thing of beauty. My parents always had New Year’s Day party with multiple televisions set up in the living room, which in 1982 was an amazing thing for a 7 year old kid.
I also preferred bowl games when they wore leather helmets
At the end of it all, a cabal of sportswriters and coaches voted in a poll for a national champion. The results were screwy. Teams with one loss won over teams with no losses. It was a guessing game. It was an endless source of sportswriting material. Why sportswriters wanted to change that, I have no idea. Now when teams get screwed out of the chance to play for a national championship, it looks like a conspiracy. When it is just the result of trying to create the most compelling football game using a complex system and at the same time trying to appease everybody. And when you attempt something like that, no one is happy. Least of all me, I liked watching simultaneous football on multiple television sets.
2. BCS Conference schools should be happy
Is your school in a BCS conference? Then you should fully embrace the BCS. Do you want your team playing one of these crazy offenses from a WAC school? Of course you don’t. You want to be playing a fairly predictable member of another power conference. Is this right? Of course not. Should you be ashamed of yourself? Of course you should. Let’s move on.
3. The quickest fix
Right now there are two glaring problems with the BCS. #1: The Mountain West and WAC conferences are excluded. #2: There is a provision that Notre Dame gets in if they are ranked higher than #8 in the AP poll.
If we could roll Notre Dame into the Big Ten, make that conference crown a champ, then add the MWC and WAC into the BCS, suddenly not so many people are crying about the unfairness factor. Although, I realize that Conference USA, the MAC and the Sun Belt would complain. Still unfair, but not wildly unfair.
4. There is nothing more beautiful than the college football regular season
As perfect as the year end NCAA Basketball tourney is, there is no denying how important the regular season is in college football. How big was Terrance Cody’s block against Tennessee, or Julio Jones’ 4th quarter catch and run to put UA up against LSU? Would those games have mattered as much if Alabama was 
guaranteed a trip to a tournament? Every game you play is incredibly important. The whole season is a tournament. Unfortunately, not a very fair one if you support a non-BCS conference school.
5. The BCS has, more often than not, done what it’s supposed to do.
Most years, angry sportswriters are loath to admit that the system got it right. We’ve got more than a decade in the books, let’s see how the BCS did.
1999: Undefeated Tennessee beats one loss Florida State in a fairly dominant performance. Ohio State, Wisconsin and UCLA all had one loss. Hard to argue with a 12-0 team winning the NC. BCS 1-Haters 0.
2000: Fla St whips undefeated Va Tech, as the nation watches phenom and future dog torturer Mike Vick try to run an offense all by himself. Bobby Bowden wins his second national championship and it’s hard to argue with the results. Cold comfort for Alabama fans who watched a great team underachieve due to the fact that we were coached by clap happy Mike Dubose. BCS 2-0.
2001: Oklahoma beats Florida State 13-2. Is that score right? I have no recollection of this game. But hard to argue with the early 2000′s Oklahoma teams. No one else in the BCS looks deserving. Miami, big winner in the Sugar Bowl, would win the next year. BCS 3-0.
2002: Miami beats hell out of Nebraska. The BCS #3 is Colorado (out of the Big 12) so I think we can all agree that the best team won the NC. BCS is 4-0 so far in delivering a fairly non-controversial National Champion.
2003: A classic football game: Ohio St beats Miami in double overtime. USC beats up on Iowa in the Orange Bowl, but there time is about to come. Hard to argue with that Ohio St team in 2003. BCS is now 5-0.
2004: Controversy! I can’t remember how Pete Carrol screwed this up, but he managed to lose a game he had no business losing and had to watch a Saban-led LSU team dominate Oklahoma. Anyway, this scenario drove sportswriters to the edge of the cliff. Some may have never come back. BCS is now 5-1. Of course, this is the first year you could legitimately complain about the outcome.
2005: Pete Carrol takes out years of aggression on Oklahoma, beating them 94-2. But Auburn, inexplicably with 7 future NFL running backs on the roster, has to settle for beating a crappy Va Tech team in the Sugar Bowl. Sportswriters are apoplectic. Veins and other blood vessels pop during a Bob Ryan rant during the “Sportsreporters,” sending a war-torn nation into a deep funk. BCS is now 5-2.
2006: Texas wins one of the greatest games in college football history, beating USC 41-38. Sportswriters still find things to complain about. BCS is now 6-2.
Vince Young loves the BCS
2007: 18 year old Timothy Tebow leads a crusade against Ohio State. The 41-14 score doesn’t do the blowout justice. Michigan, #3 in the BCS that year, gets beat by 2 loss USC. Also, BCS gives us one of the greatest games and cheesiest marriage proposals in college football history when Boise beats Oklahoma. BCS is 6-2.
2008: A kinder, gentler BCS allows WAC member Hawaii into the party, where they are utterly destroyed by Georgia. Saban’s players, coached by Les Miles, beat Ohio State. Va Tech is #3 in the BCS–they somehow find a way to lose to Kansas. BCS is 7-2.
2009: Tebow’s promise delivers another National Championship to Florida, over Oklahoma. You aren’t going to deny Tebow, regardless of the system. BCS is 8-2.
2010: OK, pandemonium. 5 undefeated teams. No way to resolve this unless Alabama or Texas wins by 50. We did get an old school Rose Bowl, a classic TCU-Boise game, and the Tebow swan song. Is that going to appease Boise St? Probably not. BCS is 8-3.
So, eight out of eleven years there was either a non-controversial title winner. There have been at least three monumentally classic games and many other memorable games. Non automatic qualifiers Utah, Hawaii, TCU and Boise St (twice) have been included. There is still a chance to argue and debate all of the particulars. And even this year, will anybody think less of Boise for what they accomplished? They may not have won a national championship, but anybody that watched them dismantle TCU knows they belong in the discussion for national championship contender. This is just one those years that happens 30 percent of the time and they have to stand behind their body of work. Which is obviously exemplary.
I would love for you to comment. Please bear in mind that I’m an idiot, and be kind.
