Last week I looked at the arguments against the BCS and attempted to tear each one up like a Facebook message from someone I don't know. That was not meant to conclude that the BCS is awesome. But it's too original of a brainchild to throw out the baby with the bathwater, and it doesn't make much sense to say "Boise State got screwed, this is why we need a playoff!" when it's much simpler to find a way for next year's Boise State equivalent to qualify. With that said, here are some suggestions:
Redistribute Bowl Payouts More Fairly. The University of Washington was the only one of the 120 bowl system schools not to win a single game. As it turns out, they didn't really need to win anything to receive bowl kickbacks. The Pacific-10 Conference gets a $17.5 million payout just because of the Rose Bowl, and that windfall is divided evenly among all teams. Washington will get $1.75 million as a reward for losing every game. Iowa State, who went 2-10 and didn't win a single Big XII Conference game, will get double that ($3.5 million), since two Big XII teams are in the BCS. Meanwhile, undefeated Boise State will play in a very fun Poinsettia Bowl game against 10-2 TCU, and 12-1 Ball State gets the GMAC Bowl in January, but each team will only get $750,000 for their troubles.
No More Preseason Polls. The USA Today rankings comprise one-third of the BCS. In their preseason poll, Alabama, Utah, Boise State, and Cincinnati were all unranked. Three of those are BCS-bound, with the fourth being undefeated and in the top 10 of the BCS standings. Three-loss Georgia was ranked first. LSU, who finished 7-5, was 6th. Auburn, Arizona State, Illinois, and Tennessee, who all finished 5-7, were ranked. Hell, Michigan was ranked. (Good thing the AP poll isn't used; in its preseason poll, Washington actually got a single vote.) What I'm trying to say is these guys don't know shit, and neither does anyone else in August.
Polls probably don't need collecting until Week 5, when most teams at least have four games — one third of the season — under their belt. Otherwise, after one week of games, you'll have ranked 0-1 teams. After two games you might still have Auburn in the top 10, just because they dismantled two weak teams. And after three games you might say, "Well, Ohio State has two unimpressive wins over pissbucket schools, and got clobbered by USC. We'll put them all the way down to 14th, ahead of several undefeated teams who probably got a lucky start to the season."
Article comments
1 - matt
Simple fix. The bowls are part of Football tradition. The solution is easy.
Step 1 nix the recently added fifth game.
Step 2a. Return the 4 traditional bcs games to confernce champion matchups, with 6 major conference champs and two at large. (or)
Step 2b. Give non bcs conferences the chance to displace a conference champ based on strength of schedule.
Step 3. The winners of the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Orange Bowls meet in a semifinal.
Step four. winners of semifinal play a championship game
2 - Dr Dreadful
Well, maybe just some way to avoid the fiasco of schools with a 1-11 record ending up in the glorious Grandma's Old Chipped and Cracked Earthenware Fruit Bowl staged in Gleaming Teeth, Utah.
3 - El Bicho
Another way to fix it without the P-Word: No more Big Ten schools.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
Ouch, but probably true. (Although, can anyone really say Ohio State didn't deserve to be in that game? Hell of a win by Texas.)
5 - Jet
If you consider by how much Texas was predicted to win by Suss, I'd have to disagree, but then I live in Columbus, so I'm one of "them".
6 - Matthew T. Sussman
I said on page two that OSU had no business there, but they stepped it up and were 40 seconds away from beating a team "percentage points" away from facing Florida on Thursday.
7 - michael z.
Excellent article. I have several suggestions on how to fix the BCS as well. If interested, check out my post.