It’s every college football fan’s favorite time of the year.
On Monday, Oct. 19, the first Bowl Championship Series rankings will be released and the debate will begin.
The debate, familiar to anyone with even a remote interest in college football, is how the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision [formerly Division 1-A] needs a playoff system similar to the one employed in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision [formerly Division 1-AA] to decide its national champion. The system currently in place allows the two teams atop the Bowl Championship Series at the end of the season to play for the championship.
I’m not exactly a proponent for the BCS, but I have come to the conclusion that it is not going anywhere, so I might as well get used to it.
I could give numerous reasons why a playoff would be so much better than the BCS, but why do that?
The BCS is much too big of a cash cow for the powers that be to ever let die, so we’re stuck with it, and is the BCS really as bad as everyone says it is?
Since its inception in the 1998-99 season, I think the BCS has produced a legitimate champion every year, just maybe not the matchup most people wanted to see in the championship game every year.
Even in the years a team had a gripe about not being given the chance to play for a national championship, a national champion was crowned that no one could make a strong case against.
The year the most controversy surrounded the BCS was 2004, when LSU won the BCS National Championship by defeating Oklahoma 21-14 in the Nokia Sugar Bowl.
By winning the BCS National Championship LSU secured them the top spot in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll, but not the top spot in the AP Poll, which had USC ranked first.
Although a claim can be made that USC should have played LSU for the BCS National Championship, I don’t think anyone has the right to say LSU was not a legitimate champion.
They earned their way into the Sugar Bowl by winning the toughest conference in the land, the SEC, and they defeated the team that was put in front of them to win the national championship.
Another common argument against the BCS is that it does not give teams from small conferences the chance to win a national championship because the fact that the polls have an influence on who plays for the national championship and a mid-major will never climb above enough teams from power conferences to be included in the championship game.
This argument is completely bogus. I know Boise State knocked off Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl, but I seriously doubt if something like that could possibly transpire if a mid-major was to ever make it to the national championship.
Oklahoma was a good team during the 2006-07 season, but they were far from great. Boise State would have gotten crushed if they played either of the participants of the national championship game that year, Florida or Ohio State. Also, it took a couple of trick plays and some really fluky things to happen for Boise State to pull off their unlikely win.
I think Hawaii should pin the beating they took in last year’s Sugar Bowl on Boise State.
If Boise State had not shocked the world the previous year, voters in the polls would have still felt like mid-majors are not worthy to play in the BCS and would have not allowed Hawaii to move high enough in the polls to be included in the BCS and get slaughtered by Georgia.
Look at what happened to this year’s mid-major darling, BYU. They were ranked in the top 10 of both the AP and the coaches polls and would have most likely been included in the top 10 of the new BCS Rankings had they not been dominated by national power Texas Christian University 32-7 on Oct. 17.
Even if someday the NCAA decides to implement a playoff system into the Football Bowl Subdivision, there will always be somebody left out.
Just look at the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Every year, 65 teams are selected to participate in the tournament, and the coach of the 66th can always think of numerous reasons on why his team should have been included in the field.
There is just no feasible way to make everyone happy.
For now we should just accept the BCS for what it is, a formula that puts together several great bowl matchups every year and has crowned a legitimate national champion every year of its existence.
To those of you who just can’t get over the BCS, I have two suggestions for you: get used to it or get over it.
By ERIC McGUFFIN
Editor
demcguff@ius.edu