The Voices of Reason: The BCS

The Voices of Reason: The BCS
by Various Authors

The 2005 college football season kicked off this week, and the Voices of Reason proudly present their solutions to the nightmare that is the BCS.

Question: What is your solution for fixing the BCS and the college football postseason?

Gretchen Alkema—Have one weekend of playoffs (1 vs. 4; 2 vs.3) in mid-December at a pre-determined location. Then the bowl schedule can be set accordingly.

Mark May—I may be an old fogie whose memory fails him at times, but let me start with some history. As I recall, the Bowl Coalition (the predecessor to the BCS) was organized to address two issues:

Bowl committees were cutting deals with teams beginning in October in some instances to play in their games. This was viewed as unfairly locking some teams out of potentially attractive bowls and favoring the "big name" pedigree schools who could bring lots of fans whether their team was deserving or not.
Teams ranked #2, #3 or #4 felt like they deserved a shot to play #1 in a bowl game but often #1 was contractually committed to play in a bowl vs. a lesser team.

1994 was the year that drove the formation of the Bowl Alliance and the BCS. Penn State had a terrific team and beat #12 Oregon in the Rose Bowl. They finished the year undefeated. But Nebraska won the national championship after edging #3 Miami in the Orange Bowl. The fan and media pressure to avoid these situations in the future was so intense that the the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls agreed to the Bowl Alliance, a more formal arrangement than its predecessor. The champions of the ACC, Big East, Big 8/Big 12/Southwest Conference and SEC committed their champions to play in one of the Alliance Bowls. Notre Dame also agreed to participate if selected.

The big problem was that the Rose Bowl and the Big 10 and Pac 10 conferences refused to go along. This situation again precipitated a crisis year in 1998 when Michigan finished the season undefeated but only split the national championship with undefeated Nebraska. After that, the Big 10 and Pac 10 and Rose Bowl sold their souls to the devil so that they were not cut out of the big TV money. They joined the other conferences and the BCS was formed.

We have now had seven years of this arrangement. How has it fared? In my estimation, it has done just what it set out to do. First of all, bowl committees no longer cut separate deals with teams because of conference contractual tie ins. Fans of certain conferences (like the Pac 10) might decry the crappy bowl games their teams can play in, but that is outside the scope of this discussion. Fans might also wonder why there are so many crappy bowl games to play in, but the NCAA's questionable approval of 28 bowl games is outside the scope of this note as well.

The big question is how the BCS has done in matching up a worthy opponent against the consensus #1 team. Again, the results are pretty good. Of the seven years, I can identify two years when better teams could have been matched against the top squad. In 2003, USC should have played LSU rather than Oklahoma. Oklahoma was a worthy adversary, but they did not earn their way into that game after getting thrashed by Kansas State in the Big 12 Championship game. In 2001, Nebraska had no business being in the Rose Bowl vs. Miami after Colorado stomped all over the Huskers 62-36 in the Big 12 Championship game. Oregon earned that spot.

Five years good, two years questionable? I can live with that. I kind of like the controversy of the off years. The biggest weakness in the BCS is that it does not ensure good match ups in the non-championship games. If I am the BCS Czar, I throw out all automatic conference qualifiers and give the eight spots to the top eight teams in the country. Boise State? Louisville? All welcome. No special preferences for Notre Dame. No ridiculous spot for the Big East winner. If three of the top teams in the country come from the same conference, so be it. They deserve a rewarding bowl vs. another really good team, not some trip to the Motor City Bowl in Detroit.

Finally, a Big 10-Pac 10 match up in the Rose Bowl should occur EVERY year. Screw the BCS. Rose Bowl tradition trumps it.

Notice that I said nothing about a playoff. I am 100% anti-playoff. It has nothing to do with "time away from class." Divisions I-AA, II and III get along just fine with 14 or 15 game seasons. My negative feelings about a college football playoff are entirely emotional and based on tradition. March Madness? A special, unique tradition. The College World Series at Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha? A special, unique tradition. I just have no desire to watch college football morph into the NFL.

Jeff Lewis—See "The Genesis of Winter Wildness."

Mike Daniels—There are many solutions to fixing the current college football postseason. Some of these solutions are educated responses by fans of college football, but most are not. In order to fix the system, you have to know the complexity of the system.

Out of the 112 Division I football playing institutions, close to half belong to a "big six" conference (i.e. Big Ten, Pac Ten). Because these conferences have so many bowl commitments and send five or more teams to bowls around the country, there are financial implications to leaving the current system. When millions of dollars are involved, college presidents aren't too hasty to give up the money.

Forget having a playoff after the current bowls. Extending the season for such a format only cuts into basketball season. It will also increase expenses for those student athletes having to stay on campus during semester breaks. For those schools on the quarter system, it would also cause problems in missed class time for a new quarter. Traveling to these games by fans would also decrease because they would not occur during the normal winter break.

With that in mind, here is the solution. Tweak the current system slightly by having a selection committee to decide the matchups for the top four bowls, just as all other major NCAA sports postseason selections are decided by a committee. Forget having a computer determine matchups for the top two spots, but have individuals select who the best teams are using their own criteria. Adding the human element is the only fair solution.

The only "buy-in" with this solution is the major conferences giving up those ties with the big four bowls. This would be a tough sell, but most likely over a period of time, each of the conferences will reap the benefits from having a team selected to play in one of the top bowl games. Just as the strength of each conference varies from year to year in the NCAA
Basketball Tournament, so too could the fluctuation happen in college
football.

At the end of the day, it will be about money and how rich the institutions and conferences can get from the BCS.

To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.