...the BCS
Well, another college football season is about to start, so it's time to start the two new annual traditions: ripping on the BCS and trying to fix the BCS.The BCS started with one very noble goal: determine a national champion in division I-A college football. It was the only of the Div I-A sports to not have a set way to determine the national champion. Most of the sports had easily handled tournaments that whittled the field down to two teams, who played each other, and the winner was the national champion. No matter what their season record was, or who finished above them in their conference or overall, it was undisputed that the winner of the tournament was The Champion.
Football, however... It's hard to run a tournament in football, because only one game can be played every week. To allow for a tournament of a size that would allow the public's attention to be held, you'd probably have to max out at about 16 teams, less than a quarter of the 65 teams that make the March Madness mens basketball tournament (not counting the 32 more than make the NIT). A tournament will not work. It's not a viable solution. There are too many football factories that will dominate the field without allowing for any other teams to get in. The nice thing about the basketball tournament is that last year's creampuff can turn it around enough to get a bid.
So, we've got the Bowl Games. An institution that has been going on for years. Now, some might argue that there are too many Bowl Games (we're at a point now where a bowl eligable team is all but guaranteed post season play....but is that a bad thing?) but that's neither here nor there, cause what we're discussing in the BCS.
The BCS had the stated goal of creating a national championship between the two best teams in the country. However, when teams play no more than 12 games and don't often share opponents, it all has to come down to subjectivity. Sometimes it's easy. Two teams in the whole country go undefeated, there's little argument that they should be playing for the national championship. But it's rarely that easy, and every year something has "gone wrong" that no system would be able to fix.
Three teams go undefeated. One does, so which one-loss team gets to play them? Three teams have only one loss. Plus, you start pulling in human subjectivity, and polls where you get rewarded by being a pre-season pick who met expectations, rather than a preseason middle-of-the-pack who historically bested expectations. There will always be someone put in and someone left out. And, every damned time, people complain about the team left out. No matter who, no matter why. There's always that question of why Team X deserves to play for the national championship and Team Y doesn't.
And every time it happens, the media has pressured the BCS into changing the methodology for picking the two teams who will play for it all. Without looking at the blatently obvious: it's impossible to "fix" the BCS! There, I've said what no one else seems to be willing to. The only way to completely fix the BCS is to always have two and only two undefeated teams. Since that can't be a guarantee, the BCS will always have the effect of putting someone it, leaving someone out, and generating controversy as to why.
So. What's the solution? Scrap the whole damn thing. Screw the whole concept of a national championship game. Let the four BCS bowl games go back to classic conference matchups, and let the media vote on which team they think deserves it, even if that means the major polls disagreeing. Cause it worked just fine for years. The BCS was a fun expirement, but it has failed, and there is no way to make it work. So why even try?
posted by thurdl @ 1:33:00 PM
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