College Football 2012: BCS Changes Will Not Stop the Complaints

USA Today has gotten news of what the BCS leaders are actually looking at on the table in so far as the options for the 2014 switch from the BCS are concerned. The plan details the four options on the table and provides options as to what each plan would look like. In short form, the choices in the discussion include an adjusted BCS, the original plus-one model, a four-team playoff and a four-team-plus playoff that works to save the Rose Bowl.

Those are the choices, folks. Four choices from which the leaders of the sport will be deciding. An adjusted BCS that will likely leave folks feeling totally dissatisfied. A plus-one model that would match up the teams after the dust settles from the bowl games. A four-team playoff that comes with a couple different options; that is as close as people are going to get to the big playoff they want. Plus, a model that had to come from the minds of the Big Ten/Pac-12 braintrust of Scott and Delany, a plan to preserve the Rose Bowl in all of its splendor. 

Pretty intriguing stuff and four options that are looking for ways to stop the controversy that has swirled in recent years with respect to determining the national champion of college football. However, in the grand scheme of "what fans want," none of them actually seem any better. That is to say in a decade or so, we'll arrive back at the same place we are right now, listening to the continued complaints from Joe Fan about how they need to let more teams into the mix. How they should make college football more like the NCAA tournament. How the NFL gives more teams a shot. How every other sport does it, so college football should let everyone in.

The need to get exactly what fans want is remarkably overwhelming. Every comment section of a playoff articles fills up quick with the idea that more teams should get in. This idea that a big college football playoff cures all ills is remarkably pervasive throughout the sport. Equity issues between the haves and have-nots? A playoff will fix that. Rematch in the BCS Championship Game? A playoff can fix that. Your team gets left out of the title game after going undefeated in a non-BCS league? A playoff can fix that. A playoff is the "Tussin" of college football; it fixes everything.

So, in looking at these plans, all of which seem like viable compromises between the bowls, the BCS format and the playoff sect, I can't help but see the ultimate futility of all of them. Going with the adjusted BCS just gives people a reason to continue on their "the BCS is BS" streak. A plus-one game would only serve to hurt feelings after teams win their bowls and end up left out by the rankings. In the playoff format, all you get is whining over an undeserving conference champ getting in or a team who didn't win their league being allowed into the dance. There is not much to be said about the Rose Bowl plus plan that clearly plays to the self-importance of "The Grand Daddy of them all."

None of these are actually going to sate the crying of the masses; the folks hellbent on getting their big college football playoff will find a reason to complain about it. Not because it is right or necessary, but because it is what they want. Call the whole "Playoff Movement" by the BCS what it actually is, an Appeasement Movement. The schools are trying to find a way to keep things as close to what the game has been while shutting up the droves of people clamoring for an eight or 16-team playoff.

This is not about the best two teams getting to the title game; this is about people wanting to see a big postseason spectacle. It is not about the best teams; it is about the desire to get their team a shot or help out the little guy.

If this was about the best two teams playing in the title game, people would be complaining about the actual issues at hand; scheduling and polling. Unbalanced schedules misrepresent teams; they give people a boatload of wins without playing anyone. Solve that problem; make schedules standard so that teams getting after a title actually travel a tough road.

Fix the polling problem because that is the biggest issue we see in where teams fall in the BCS. Vet the voters better. Eliminate a coaches poll that allows men who don't watch the games to have a say in the final equation.

But no; that's not what people want to fix. The goal here is to get the system they want pushed through; not to fix any of the actual problems. If the BCS is adjusted, those same problems exist. If the plus-one is adopted, we've still got all of the same issues. With a four-team playoff, instead of three and four complaining, we end up with five and six saying their loss to so-and-so shouldn't matter as much as their Top 25 wins; you know, like Oklahoma State did this season. 

These options just don't satisfy much more than buying some momentary relief for a problem that fans have created. It has an eerily similar feeling to 1997-1998, when the BCS was first implemented. People did not like seeing split national titles, so a system was devised to avoid that very problem. Fourteen years later, and we're at this crossroads in the sport.

The sport is healthier than it has ever been. More teams have access to the big bowl paydays than in anytime in history, and instead of having a mindset to open the access a bit, the only call is for a radical restructuring. On the whims of fans and a handful of conference officials who, just 14 years ago, no one would have listened to in the first place.

Ultimately, the fear here is not about the four-team playoff, the plus one or the adjusted BCS; all four of the presented options are a solid compromise in an effort to retain the bowls and appease the playoff push. The fear comes in the expansion of the playoff that will invariably be called for in the next decade. The push to eight or 16 that will serve to take college football from a sport that crowns a regular season champ to a spot that "does what everyone else does" by crowning a tournament champion.

If you don't understand the difference between the two, then I really am not sure what to tell you.