Fans dislike it (unless their team benefits).
Coaches hate it (unless their team benefits).
Universities despise it (unless their school benefits).
Conspiracy theories suggest that the Bowl Championship Series was created in part by ne’erdowellers of the powerful conferences (and don’t forget Notre Dame) to consolidate their unquenchable thirst for what every has-been college benchwarmer craves: young, nubile college coed cheerleaders.
That is the very reason that pedigree programs such as Texas A&M have managed to only reach a BCS bowl once, we do not employee the services of razzle dazzle pom-pom estrogen-laden females to do our coordinated yelling.
Anyways, the Associated Press sent a letter, dated December 21st to the emerald city offices of the BCS — a nice and friendly, Christmas-Hanukkah-Kwanza cease-and-desist letter.
Apparently, the AP feels its reputation is on the line as the BCS continues to falter and screw the pooch year after year. So they do not want to have their poll used as part of the BCS formula to determine rankings for the bowl games and have thus requested to have the AP component of the BCS formula removed effective immediately.
For those unfamiliar with the current sky-is-falling situation, Division I-A college football is the only organized sport in the Industrialized World that does not utilize a playoff system to crown the best team victor maximus. Furthermore, after 7 years of trial-and-error, the bean counters and paper-pushers at the BCS still have yet to figure out a system that pits the top teams against one another.
Instead of utilizing a Sweet 16 or Elite 8 bracket tournament, the BCS uses conference champs plus two-at-large wild cards. There are six conferences which are considered the big kids on the block: Pac 10, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, ACC and Big East. Whoever ends up number one in each of those is given an automatic bid to one of the four BCS bowl games (Sugar, Rose, Orange, Fiesta). So regardless as to how good a team is in relation to the rest of those in Division I-A (as ranked by the AP or USA Today), so as long as they win that conference championship they get a bling bling filled bowl trip (each team that goes to a BCS bowl receives $11-14 million).
No big deal you say? Well normally it has not been a huge problem as the strength discrepancy between the conferences has been relatively balanced throughout the past few years. This year however, the Big East had only 7 teams and only one of them was any decent: Pittsburgh. They won the conference and were given the automatic birth to the Fiesta Bowl. This, despite the fact that they are ranked a miserable #21st. The BCS bowls are where the creme-de-la-creme are theoretically supposed to compete and this is certainly not the case here.
To make matters worse, three big conference teams (USC, Oklahoma, Auburn) finished with undefeated records, yet only two of them can compete head-to-head in the current configuration. Plus, Utah from a “weaker” conference, went undefeated managed to sneak into a highly coveted wild card at-large bowl bid — against mighty Pittsburgh.
A couple easy fixes to this system:
- institute a playoff system for the top 16 or 32 teams: Division I-AA, II and III do this very thing and have no problems
- keep the BCS ranking system but remove automatic bowl berths and have #1 play #2, #3 play #4, etc…
- play rugby instead
On a much more important note, on New Years Day I will be going to the Cotton Bowl to cheer on my fellow Aggies as they play against the barbaric Vols from Tennessee. Gig’em.