“Whoever thought we’d be turning to the BCS for clarity and hope? But here we are. The Bowl Championship Series, by dumb luck more than master plan, has worked this season. For the second time in the BCS era, it’s possible there could be five undefeated teams at the end of the season (Alabama/Florida, Texas, TCU, Boise State and Cincinnati). For the first time, all of them would be playing in BCS bowls.
Barring upsets, two teams from the so-called non-qualifiers (Boise and TCU) will be part of the BCS for the first time. Boise still has to beat bottom feeder New Mexico State in its regular-season finale.
There will be those who will get greedy and be outraged that TCU or Boise or Cincinnati can’t play for a national championship. TCU has the biggest beef based on the eye test. It’s clear after watching the Frogs that they are the best of the three.
“We can play with anybody,” Frogs coach Gary Patterson said.
We know that. However, that we’re even able to contemplate TCU in the mix is a sign of progress. Hold onto your seat cushion but the credit has to go to the BCS. Sure, it was the threat of Congressional intervention in 2003 that got the BCS to loosen its qualification standards. But at least the suits were smart enough to see beyond the legal briefs to their own self preservation.
The move allowed Utah to play and win two BCS bowls. It gave Boise a chance at that upset for the ages over Oklahoma. It gave Hawaii, a program with deplorable facilities, a bowl payout ($18 million) seven times bigger than its budget ($2.2 million).
What the last five years has taught us is that it’s going to happen soon. One of these non-BCS teams is going to play in, and win, a national championship game. Boise State probably proved that for the masses by beating the Sooners three years ago.
That opens a whole new argument, whether traditionalists (well, the SEC) could handle Boise, TCU or Cincinnati hanging a national championship banner. That’s what you’re going to get someday, Billy Bob, even with a playoff.
Meanwhile, baby steps aren’t bad. The BCS, in this case, isn’t bad. Glacial movement has its merits. With the BCS, there is frequent unfairness and controversy. Without it, TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State probably wouldn’t be in our consciousness today.
With it, those schools are assured a BCS spot if all three finish undefeated. That’s approximately a $24 million windfall for all five non-BCS conferences. The Big East gets an automatic spot (worth $18.3 million) but it’s doubtful Cincinnati would be in the conversation today had the league not expanded.
The prospect that all the deserving teams are being taken care of should spare the BCS, the nation and scores of innocent trees (spared the slaughter for newsprint) of weeklong hand-wringing.”
Read the rest of his column here.
Tags: BCS
“All the non-BCS kids are eating at the adult table”. Pure nonsense. If all the non-BCS kids are denied a chance to play for the national title, which they are, then that statement is nonsense at best, an outright fabrication at worst.
I believe it is time for the fans to make their voices heard in the way that most impacts the BCS — its pocketbook. The pure hubris of the BCS trying to pull the wool over the fans eyes by launching this website means it is time for a fan boycott. I will not be watching the BCS title game this year, no matter how compelling the matchup appears, and I urge every fan that believes in a true national championship game to join me in making this the lowest-rated BCS “title” game in history.
It’s nice that you want to post pieces supporting the BCS — although I’d argue that posting a piece who’s best argument for the BCS is that it succeeded more by “dumb luck than master plan” probably isn’t the best way to go — but I just have one question:
Did you receive permission from CBSSports.com to redistribute this in its entirety? If not, you’ve got some serious copyright infringement here — one that won’t be rectified by simply linking back (as you sort of did in your first post).
Not sure who told you that “blog” is synonymous with “illegally republishing articles to support your cause,” but let me be the first to tell you that blogs are not for this purpose. This whole new media thing is hard, I know!
But then again, your expertise lies in rigging a system for the college football elite, not in brushing up on copyright law, so I guess we can’t expect you to know that. But now you do. I’ll expect you to fix it.
The BCS is a dumb system. Just do a 4 team playoff. What’s so hard about that?
YOU WILL STILL MAKE MONEY!
The goal of the BCS Championship Series should be to encourage fan participation by having meaningful regional games, within the traditional bowl concept.
Instead BCS #1 & #2 have figured out how to get into the national championship game: don’t play any ranked opponents outside of the conference. This greatly diminishes the importance of the regular season (your words not mine).
Florida and Alabama meanwhile rack up wins against (seriously?!!?) Florida International, Troy, Charleston Southern, Chattanooga, and North Texas. So nobody really knows if the SEC is strong or not. Who wants to watch Tebow run over Florida International? Who cares if they’re undefeated?
Here’s how the BCS should work:
Take the conference champions of the top 6 conferences: ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East, and Pac-10. Then 2 more at-large bids based on conference champions from the other conferences.
Only conference champions can play. If you don’t win your conference, you can’t win the national championship. Enough said.
Conference teams should not be penalized by losing out-of-conference. So conferences can decide for themselves how to determine the winners, based on in-conference games only.
At Large conference teams will have an incentive to play out-of-conference to improve strength of schedule and therefore ranking. Teams should be rewarded with good seeding based on strength-of-schedule, not just wins and losses. A close loss against a #1 seed should count more than a win against an unranked opponent. We want to see MORE good out-of-conference games, not less.
Keep using the bowl system, we love that.
In addition, add a first round the weekend after Thanksgiving when teams can travel. Assign those “1st round” games by region. We learned from NCAA basketball tournaments that regional games are more interesting to fans. Check out the example based on this year below.
Here’s my example for this year:
Saturday after Thanksgiving: (Hypothetical conference champions)
BCS Championship South:
Georgia Tech (ACC champion)
– 1) Florida (SEC champion)
–
BCS Championship East:
– 7) Ohio St (Big 10 champion)
– 5) Cincinnati (Big East champion)
BCS Championship Central:
– 2) Texas (Big 12 champion)
– 3) TCU (At Large/Mountain West champion)
BCS Championship West:
– 4) Boise St (At Large/WAC champion)
– 6) Oregon/Oregon St (Pac-10 champion)
What a great first round! Battles of Ohio and Texas, Florida/Georgia Tech, Oregon/Boise St!
New Years Day: Regional games again matched. High seeds go to their own bowl. (Pretend high seeds all win from example round above)
Sugar Bowl – BCS Championship Semi-Final (Undefeated teams battle it out)
– 1) Florida (SEC champion)
– 5) Cincinnati (Big East champion)
Fiesta Bowl – BCS Championship Semi-Final (Undefeated teams battle it out)
– 2) Texas (Big 12 champion)
– 4) Boise St (At Large/WAC champion)
Orange Bowl*
Georgia Tech (ACC champion)
–
– 3) TCU (At Large/Mountain West champion)
Rose Bowl*
– 7) Ohio St (Big 10 champion)
– 6) Oregon/Oregon St (Pac-10 champion)
*Nothing is preventing Alabama or Iowa from playing in a New Year’s bowl, just not in a BCS Championship Semi-final Bowl.
Citi BCS Championship – Jan 10
– 1) Florida/Alabama (SEC champion / Sugar Bowl Winner)
– 2) Texas (Big 12 champion / Fiesta Bowl winner)
So this year, on Thanksgiving weekend, the 5 undefeated teams go to 3. On Jan 1, they will go to 2. On Jan 9, only one undefeated team will remain. A true and memorable national champion!
And we will have enjoyed some great football throughout the New Year… No more Florida/Florida Int’l with cranberry sauce.
What playoff problem?
“With the BCS, there is frequent unfairness and controversy. Without it, TCU, Cincinnati and Boise State probably wouldn’t be in our consciousness today.”
–> However, WITH a playoff, not only would they be ‘in our consciousness’, they’d actually have a legitimate shot at a Real National Championship.
CBS Article – “If TCU or Boise miss out on playing for a title it’s because each started behind Texas, Alabama and Florida in the polls and never caught up. That’s OK. Play well enough, long enough and you’ll start the season ahead of the traditional powers. ” Thus, unless a team starts high enough in the polls it is impossible for them to play in the BCS Title game.
Harvery Perlman – “At the beginning of the season, every bowl subdivision team starts out with an equal chance to become national champion.”
These 2 statements contradict themselves. So which do you believe in BCS? That of the chairman of your Presidential Oversight Committee or that of the article you cited. You still have not answered this question even though I have posted it on your Facebook and Twitter pages?
Texas is 61-20-2 versus TCU all-time.
No way they deserve the same treatment by the bowls, BCS or the media.
Deal with it.
All time records are meaningless; Texas is 61-20-2 vs. TCU…yeah, so they beat them a lot in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. What does that have to do with NOW.
If we were going to use lifetime records to determine a national championship, then I guess Oklahoma does not desaerve a shot either, since Texas has a pretty commanding lead over them in the Red River shoot out. And of course Texas Tech can forget it. And in the Big 12 North division, pretty much every school was dominated by both Nebraska and Oklahoma for years, so they’re all out. And the entire Pac -10 has a similar lousy record versus USC. Same thing for the Big 10 versus O State and Michigan.
TCU cannot sell out its TINY stadium more than once a year.
The TV networks consider their draw to be non-existant.
They are a non-factor and are being taken way too seriously for this fluke season.
This is pure bunk. FCS seems to do it just fine. Of course there are folks who are left out, but that’s the way it works, it’s still 100 X’s better than the BCS. The issue is solved on the field, not in some geek’s office or some administrator’s checkbook. Shame on you BCS!
This season has shined a white-hot spotlight on the utter failure of the BCS system. To call it a success if to attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Three undefeated teams – one of them from a BCS conference – are getting snubbed from a chance to play for the national title.
How in the world is it “greed” to want Boise, TCU or Cincinatti to have a chance for that national title. That is saying it is “greed” if you complain about being forced to sit in the back of the bus. The BCS system is based on greed. What greed is is to tell Boise, TCU and Cincinatti that they should be happy just to be in a BCS game at all.
When attending college in the early 80s, the 1-AA college teams began their first playoff system. First with 4 teams, then 8 teams, and ultimately 16-team playoff. My college made the playoffs all four years that I attended, and it was an absolute blast to go to those playoff games. So this has been done before and with little fanfare. Every other sport on the planet has a playoff system (from high school to college to the pros), and this website would lead us to believe it can’t be done. Or it would lead to more controversy? You mean more controversy than the BCS system.
How would you like it if instead of March Madness (65 teams, not 16) would instead be voted on a 1-game playoff for the championship? Sounds ridiculous.
Come on, football fans want a playoff, plain and simple. The fan support would go through the roof.
SEC fan
Oh yes this system sure works!! i would much rather see boise state play TCU rather than see one of these teams shock the world by beating a big six conference team.
Really? This site looks like a 6 year old made it. The BS (No C needed) is a sham and every year there is always a huge debate, they try and say who would we choose from the 2 loss teams for at large berths? Well thats better than having three undefeated teams on the outside looking in. 90% percent of people polled say the BS is exactly that BS! the playoffs wouldnt please everyone but it would do wayyyyyyy better than a 90% failure.
“For all it’s flaws, BCS walking right path” Yeah, walking the right path to alienate – at last count 90% and continuing to grow as long as computers and pocketbooks run the show – of the fan base. It’s just insane that these …I wanna say something disparaging but then that is insulting to whatever group I say because they are far more intelligent than the BCS officials… continue to say the system works because #1 always plays #2. Well, what if #3, #4, #5 are also undefeated?? What if it’s like last season where two one-loss teams are champs when another team stands undefeated after wiping the stadium with a season-long NC contender?? For once, BCS officials, the air you are breathing is not healthy. Your horrendous case of craniorectalitis is ruining the game and severely aggrevating the fan base. Soon enough we will finally take action to stop your madness instead of continually saying your system sucks in every media outlet available.
I agree with Brennan G. I’m an SEC fan all the way, but how is fair that the SEC teams play schools like Troy, Charleston Southern, Florida International just to stay #1. That’s the problem with the BCS. Florida’s first few games assured them the #1 spot. While every other college was getting into conference games early in the season, Florida has some of the easiest teams out there so they could stay #1. This doesn’t prove you are a powerhouse, when you beat a school with less than 5,000 students as is the case of Charleston Southern. Let them take on school’s where football matter’s, and see if they can survive.
This system is a joke. I am glad they launched this website because now fans have an outlet for their complaints. NOBODY watches any of the bowl games besides the championship. This current system is so boring. I find myself watching getting more excited about the smaller divisions paly off system than the bowl system. No one cares about the chick-fil-a bowl or the jiffy tire lube bowl. Thats not tradition. Watching deserving teams battle out for the champion spot is tradition. We want a Play off system. I haven’t followed CFB closely after the 2003 fiasco. I watch the Pros now. At least they give everyone a fair shot.
And how dare the leaders of the BCS call the continental U.S. with the exception of California and New York Fly over country!! Without us there is no country and there is no fan base. They need to learn to respect the fans they have left. These people are a bunch of yellow belly fat cats who take advantage of the middle class americans.
Everyone needs to stop supporting this crap. Don’t watch their boring bowl games.
The big powerful schools want all the bucks. That keeps them big and powerful.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=dw-ncaafplayoff120709
“BCS is a farce say” you said it yourself: you don’t follow football closely. You like the way the NFL does it, watch them.
The BCS is so unpopular, because it is an uncomfortable compromise. No one likes to compromise. But no majority will ever be happy with whatever playoff format that anyone can or could come up with. Every proposed +1, or 4,6,8,12, 16, or 32 team format can easily be shot through with holes. (e.g. the SEC will never give up their conference title game- there is too much money and TV at stake; most schools won’t give up a guaranteed regular season game for an uncertain playoff possibility; most schools, players and bowls would not be happy with the diminution, if not dissolution of the bowls; schools will have different opinions on the scheduling depending on their own school calendar)
Yeah, every other sport has playoffs. Not because they can’t determine their best team in the regular season, but because they need something to hype.
You think MLB is really incapable of deciding the strongest team in a league after 162 games? If, and only if, there are two teams with identical records, should there be a playoff- that is if indeed you accept the notion that the champion equals the best. Otherwise, in any sport, what you have is a playoff champion, claiming to be a national champion. (In the NFL, what we really get is their January-February champion). Could playoffs be exciting, full of upsets? Yes, sure. So can bowl games or the regular season.
As often as not in CFB there is one team with a perfect record, and the best have losses. If the purpose was really only about finding the best, shouldn’t that team be awarded the crown without bothering to argue about who the 2nd or 3rd best is? Playoff always bloat in number- from 2 teams to 4 to 16, and so on. They are not about worthiness or truth, they are about money and hype.
College football is one sport that doesn’t need the hype of playoffs to fill 100,000 seat stadiums. Quaint and old-fashioned as it may be to some of you, it is the one sport that can create holiday bowl games- compelling inter-sectional match-ups that draw interest and excitement from across the country.
I would love a response to the BS on this site:
Ari Fleischer says ” history shows the BCS is the best format to match up college football’s No 1 and No 2 teams while preserving the heritage of the bowl system.” So according to this logic at the end of the college basketball season why do we not just match up the top two ranked teams have them play call it a national championship and skip the NCAA tournament???? The assumption here is that a number one vs number two match up automatically decides the best team how does he or anyone really know that???
Secondly, why is it so important to preserve the bowl system. Does the current bowl system not diminish the accomplishments of those truly deserving to be in a bowl by allowing teams that are 6-6 to go bowling? Why would eliminating the myriad of meaningless post season exhibition games rewarding mediocre and average teams be a bad thing? I mean how many does UCLA really make any money in the Eaglebank bowl I mean how many UCLA fans are really going to travel to the Eaglebank bowl?
Ari says a playoff would create more controversy, how is that possible? The more teams we could incorporate it seems to me the less controversy. Sure teams complain about not making the NCAA tournament but does anyone really think the last four out are going to win six games anyway.
Ari says a football playoff would make the regular season meaningless. How can he say that and keep a straight face, how meaningful is the regular season when in recent years Utah, Boise State, Cincinnati, Auburn all have gone undefeated and failed to even have the right to play for a championship while LSU had two losses and did, how does BCS officials dispute that?
In response to realbbb Harvey Pearlman is clueless.