It has been the greatest year in college football we have ever seen. We’ve witnessed a division I-AA team pull off possibly the greatest upset in sports history, seven teams ranked No. 1 or No. 2 being upset by teams who were unranked at the time, and our very own Bearcats jumping out to their best start in recent memory. With all of this comes one problem.Come season’s end, we won’t have a true National Champion.
These days, we have a system known as the Bowl Championship Series. The BCS is a computer generated system, which ranks teams every week. At the end of the last week of the season, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams receive an invitation to play in the National Championship game.
Winners of the Big East, Big Ten, SEC, Pac Ten, Big Twelve, and ACC conferences receive automatic bids to play in BCS bowl games (Fiesta, Rose, Sugar, and Orange Bowls). The BCS then invites two “at large” bids to compete in their bowl games. The at-large teams are usually teams ranked in the top ten who didn’t win their respective conferences or came from smaller conferences.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? A machine filled with numbers and statistics, which hasn’t seen one game, is picking the teams who will play in the most important contest of the season.
Although this method has been shown to work every now and then (see 2002 Ohio State vs. Miami National Championship game), the system has had more faults than successes.
There is a simple solution to this problem though-a playoff with the top 12 teams in the nation, giving the top four teams a bye in the first round. After eliminating the conference championship games, this playoff would start the week after the regular season ends. As teams lose, they would be placed in BCS bowl games, according to how far they made it in the playoff system (obviously the BCS would have to add another Bowl). Then as the bracket progresses, the final game would be the BCS championship game. Simple enough?
Now, of course this wouldn’t solve every problem the BCS has, but it would be close enough. You’re still going to see teams in weaker conferences get robbed out of a chance to prove what they can do against the big boys (see Hawaii every season), and expect to see fans, players, and coaches from the teams ranked No. 13-15 complaining, but you can’t satisfy everybody.
This season (as of press time) there is only one undefeated team, No. 12 Hawaii, and there are just four teams with just one loss: Missouri (#1) West Virginia (#2), Ohio State (#3) and Kansas (#5). All four of the before mentioned teams, plus several others, should have the right to compete for the National crown, but because of a computer, only two will fight it out. Is this seriously fair? Of course not.
It’s too bad the money hungry NCAA will never fix this problem.
So until then, college football fans, get used to the following things: our ‘Cats having great seasons like this year and continuing to dwell in the bottom of the top 25, an extremely overrated Buckeye team hanging around the top five just because they’re “The Ohio State University,” and teams like Boise State and Hawaii running the table and being punished because of their weaker conferences.
So enjoy your regular seasons, because after November, it all falls into the hands of the dreaded BCS. And with the BCS, it’s been proven, we never know what to expect (see 2007 Ohio State vs. Florida National Championship game).