The BCS and accompanying bowl system is far from perfect. Nobody except for maybe the BCS oversight committee can dispute this. A lot of fans, analysts, coaches, and conferences are clamoring for a playoff system to replace the computers and polls that determine who plays in the championship game. Here are some of the arguments I've heard in favor of playoffs or against the BCS, and with nothing better to do in December, let's just take a stab at refuting some of these, why don't we?
The BCS screwed Texas out of a chance to play in the Big XII and national championships. Sort of, but barely. The Big XII went to their fifth tiebreaker (but technically their seventh), which was BCS standings. Two more tiebreaks down the road, and a chicken randomly pecks at three piles of feed, each represented by one team. Whichever feed the chicken deems delicious wins the tiebreak. This wasn't the Big XII's fault. All of the conventional ties were deadlocked, so they were already triggered into Randomland.
An eight-team playoff makes sense. Barack Obama said on 60 Minutes he thinks an eight-team playoff is a good idea, and since then "eight" seems to be the trendy number, although four, 16, and even 32 teams have been proposed. We'll stick with eight.
Who would be the eight this year? Ten teams have either one loss or none, and that's before we include Cincinnati and either Boston College or Virginia Tech, the Big East and ACC champs respectively. That's 12 teams. Which four do you leave out? Ball State, because they're a MAC team? Texas Tech, because their one loss was by 44 points and almost shat the bed against Baylor? Penn State, since their loss was to unranked Iowa? Florida and USC, because their lone losses were to barely ranked teams (Mississippi, Oregon State)?
Also, Wall Street Journal's Allen Barra has a great point. Why would Obama, who won the presidential election by campaigning against only the No. 2 ranked presidential candidate, favor a more upset-prone system? Imagine if top-ranked Obama lost to No. 8 Giuliani in the first round.
There are too many bowl games, and many of them feature crappy 6-6 teams. Yes, the bowls keep expanding, and a lot of them don't have much tradition. Nobody cares about most of them? Probably. Most people don't care about Sun Belt teams or the MAC either. Let's get rid of them too, since they're clearly annoying casual football fans simply by existing. If a 6-6 team doesn't deserve to make the postseason in college football, then I guess a 13-16 regular season team shouldn't have made the NCAA basketball tournament last season.
Article comments
1 - Robert M. Barga
the top 16 teams in a playoff system. I think this would handle it the best, and thus be a good system
Either the coaches vote on the top 16 via run off or the top 16 in the current system
2 - Daniel
Why not set up a system with the champion of each confrence? No one gets left out and it keeps the system from being based on money or popularity.