The Bowl Championship Series

Loyal readers of this blog might think that this thing would fall under the headline Things That I Hate: The Bowl Championship Series. Well, I went against that. Why? Cause I don't hate the Bowl Championship series, it just plain pisses me off.

The Bowl Championship Series was created in 1998 as a surrogate for a National Championship for College Football since it does not have a playoff to determine it's National Championship. What the BCS does is use several numbers including the coaches poll and a computer index that takes even more numbers such as strength of schedule, points per game, pounds of spaghetti ate at the team dinner the night before, etc. OK, maybe some of those things are fabricated, but it almost sounds like that's how the rankings are determined.

The fact of the matter is this, this system banked on there being two clear-cut teams at the end of the year to brawl it out for the national championship. The only problem is that this has only happened a couple of times in the system's history. In 1999, the Tulane Green Wave went 11-0 in Conference USA. Hey, when you're undefeated, you should get a shot at the title. Who cares that Tulane would have gotten throttled by Tennessee, give them a chance!

In 2001, there was only one undefeated team (Miami). The opponent had to be chosen from a slew of one loss teams. In the shuffle, Nebraska got chosen over Oregon to go to the Rose Bowl (The National Championship Game that season.) Problem is that Nebraska didn't even win their own conference while Oregon won the Pac-10. Nebraska got their ass kicked by Miami and the BCS was even referred to as "a cancer."

In 2003, the BCS had to choose from 3 one loss teams, Oklahoma, LSU, and USC. USC was the odd man out and got blown away by LSU in the National Championship Game. USC won the Rose Bowl and got the #1 ranking in the AP poll, which created a split national champion, something that the BCS was supposed to eliminate.

In 2004, five teams went undefeated (USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah, and Boise State). USC and Oklahoma went to the national championship. Auburn should have went since they had a stronger strength of schedule than both USC and Oklahoma. At the end of the season USC, Utah, and Auburn all were undefeated.

In 2006, Boise State defeated Oklahoma. This was regarded as one of the greatest college football games of all time.

In 2008, more mid-majors crashed the top 15 of the BCS and that leads us to 2009 where we have five undefeated teams in Texas, Alabama, Boise State, Cincinnati, and TCU.

It's getting so ridiculous that the BCS put two of the mid-major teams (Boise State and TCU) in one of the bowls to eliminate an undefeated mid-major team. It's almost like having a NIT championship in football. We need a playoff as soon as possible.

Plus, some broadcasters are completely oblivious to this. Here's just some of the highlights of these arguments...

- "It just makes every game a playoff..."

Really? That's why we have 5 undefeated teams. If it was a true playoff, some team would have a loss and there would be one true champion instead of 2-4.

- "Think about how many kids will be able to go off the field as winners."

This is division 1 football. They're not playing pop warner ball! Oh and that's the way it works in other sports such as college basketball, college hockey, and every other division of football. Wait! They have playoffs too!!!

- "What about the money that all the teams get?"

Oh yeah, it's all about the money. My bad. Well, let's think about how much money a 16 team playoff would generate. More games, more TV revenues. Oh yeah, you'd lose some money there.

Some people say that there should be a 4 or 8 team playoff. I would like to see 16, that way nobody is getting screwed over. Have the top seed host up until the national championship game and if you still want the bowls, you can have them draft after each team is eliminated. With the way the standings are currently set up, we'd have a great first round matchup between Miami and Texas, not to mention LSU and Florida at The Swamp.

Speaking of Florida, if the 4 seed, the TCU Horned Frogs won their opening matchup vs. Penn State, we'd have a true "To be the man...WHOO!!! YOU GOTTA BEAT THE MAN" moment when Florida would have to travel to TCU. Could you imagine TCU scoring the upset and Tim Tebow crying on the sidelines AGAIN! It would be great!

Alas, this will never happen. The college officials are too blind to see that this system is flawed and I don't think we'll see such entertainment for a long time.