BCS Wars Episode X The Last Straw

That's it! I'm done with this! I'm finished defending the most flawed method of determining a champion in all of sports. I'm finished listening to the supporters justify people and robots (er computers) tell me who is the best team in all the land, take their word at face value, and watch the trophy get handed to said team. After this crazy season and the events that took place this weekend leading into the BCS Selection Show last night, count me as part of the playoff bandwagon.

So this is year 10 of the Bowl Championship Series that tells us who are the best teams in all of Division 1-A college football. Every year they've tweaked the formula to improve it because every other year there has not been a clear cut number 1 team at the end (or so it seems). What business outside the realm of sports is allowed 10 solid years of failure without being torn apart?

That brings us to this season, the year of the upset. From Appalachian State shocking Michigan in Ann Arbor to a hapless Pitt club knocking West Virginia out of the National Championship Game, we've seen it all. At the end of regular season play, only Hawaii managed to go through their entire schedule unscathed, and only two other teams finished with less than two losses. So obviously it's a toss-up between those three clubs right? Well, have a seat, this may take awhile...

To zoom through the setup from Saturday, Missouri and West Virginia were ranked #1 and #2 respectively with the former needing to avenge their only loss against Oklahoma on a neutral field for the Big 12 title while West Virginia needed only to defeat a 4-7 Pittsburgh club at home to play for all the marbles. That uh...didn't happen.

As I sat down Sunday night watching the BCS Selection Show with my soon to be brother-in-law, we both were expecting to be shocked. What we witnessed was, well, unexpected. (note: I just strung five consecutive words starting with the letter w, how's that for alliteration?) The powers that be took out any guess work by placing Hawaii into the Sugar Bowl with the opponent TBA (how bout the Fox producers making sure to keep the Warrior faithful glued to their televisions with that move?). Georgia ended up being the opponent, another unsurprising at-large selection. In the Fiesta Bowl, Big 12 champ Oklahoma faces West Virginia out of the shallow and pedantic Big East.

Afterwards, anything and everything went awry. In a decision justified only by some sliver of tradition, the Rose Bowl selected Illinois from the Big Ten as an at-large to face PAC-10 champ USC. Why? The Rose Bowl has always been the Big Ten against the PAC-10. Yeah? How about 3 years ago when Texas got an at-large berth in the "granddaddy of them all" against Big Ten champ Michigan over a one loss Cal club? A team that was far more deserving than this Illinois team is even though they ended up losing to Texas Tech in the Holiday Bowl.

In the Orange Bowl, ACC winner Virginia Tech gets paired with 11-1 Kansas from the Big 12. No problem right? Well, how about the fact that Missouri beat them in Lawrence in their last game and their only flaw was they lost to a good Oklahoma team twice? A great story for a campus that has seen a lot of hardship in Blacksburg against a team that played a weak conference schedule and scheduled cream puffs outside of league play. Kansas personifies what is wrong with college football.

That leaves the National Championship Game. By virtue of not playing for two weeks, Ohio State found their way into the top spot in the arbitrary BCS standings, while LSU's ugly looking win against Tennessee (preceded by coach Les Miles saying he's not going to coach Michigan) propelled them from #7 to playing for a championship in their own backyard. According to the voters and computers, these are the two best teams in the country, period. Sure.

Where to begin tearing this logic apart? Oh how about the fact that the Missouri Tigers went from the number 1 team in the nation to outside the BCS in a span of 24 hours? Or that the reason they were left out was because not one, but two teams they defeated on the road got at-large bids ahead of them in Illinois and Kansas? How about the fact that arguably the worst BCS conference (Big Ten) managed to score two BCS slots? Or what about that a two loss team that hasn't looked dominant since early September (LSU) is deemed worthy of playing for a national championship while the only team to run the table (Hawaii) had to scratch and claw to play in a big payout BCS bowl game? It must be right though, because people and robots tell us so.

Hawaii hasn't beaten anybody you might say. Well espn.com's Mark Schlabach writes a spot on article defending Hawaii while calling out teams like Kansas who intentionally schedule soft out of conference teams to rack up wins. Long story short, Hawaii tried to schedule high profile teams and were repeatedly shot down while Kansas played anyone with a pulse so long as they were a mid-major.

This is the underlying problem in how college football determines their champions. One loss can derail an otherwise terrific season. BCS schools know this all too well and simply don't find it smart to take that risk out of conference when they can schedule fourth tier teams to tune up and hope that their conference schedule makes up the difference. Upstart mid-majors have to go undefeated just to be put in the conversation and need to schedule top flight national title contenders out of conference to even dream of winning a national title. However, if they get too good, the teams they need to play will simply say no. It's the perfect system for the rich to get richer, sort of a digital country club. This system flat out says if you are from a mid-major conference, we don't want you. Every other sport in college athletics has room for the Cinderella story. College football wants all the glory and big money to themselves, so the suits created extra bowl games of no significance whatsoever just to give some satisfaction to mid-majors and mediocre teams from their conference. After ten years of BCS failure, it is obvious a playoff is the only way to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, the bowl season makes so much money that everyone with power continues going to the well. To create a playoff, you need to propose a solution that will make as much if not more money for the NCAA. Luckily, I have one.

Take the top 16 teams and make the current BCS bowl games regionals. You can create extra games at all the prestigious bowl sites that would create much more money than at least three back page bowl games combined. All four bowls get four teams, you can call the regional final the actual name of the bowl game. Have one of those four sites host the new final four and national championship game and it will rotate to each of the four every year. Three prestigious sites get an extra game while one gets three. Financially that would vastly improve the revenue coming in. You could still keep the majority of the lower tier/pat on the back for an average season bowl games. Schedule those during the week while reserving Friday and Saturdays for the BCS playoff games (won't want to compete with the NFL this time of year). The four weeks are more than doable, you still get almost all the back page bowl games, and you get better match-ups with everything on the line.

Here's how it would apply to this season:

Sugar Region
1. Ohio State vs. 16. Tennessee
8. Kansas vs. 9. West Virginia

Rose Region
2. LSU vs. 15. Clemson
7. USC vs. 10. Hawaii

Orange Region
3. Virginia Tech vs. 14. Boston College
6. Missouri vs. 11. Arizona State

Fiesta Region
4. Oklahoma vs. 13. Illinois
5. Georgia vs. 12. Florida

Tell me you wouldn't enjoy that.