The BCS is NOT the Problem: College Football's Regular Season Needs To Change

Sports are about paydays and Ohio State, Hawaii and Kansas committed felony larceny this past football season. 

They created a script for any school to back their way into a lucrative BCS payout; schedule cupcakes, sneak through your conference with a loss or undefeated and accept your multimillion dollar check. 

These schools have set up a recipe for the ruination of college football. With knowledge of this scheme, there is absolutely zero motivation to play quality non-conference opponents. 

No more Tennessee vs. Cal, Alabama vs. Florida State; why take the risk when FIU, FAU, UL-Monroe and North Texas are always looking to be your personal whipping boys.  Not to mention all the I-AA squads looking for their $500,000 check to take a beating. 

While everyone is outraged over the lack of a playoff system (I'm not part of the everyone, I'm a bowl system enthusiast) they are completely oblivious to the five-month fraud currently being allowed to transpire. 

Two issues present themselves:

1.  Teams playing weak competition and sleep walking into huge paychecks without earning their spot through beating quality opponents. (See Kansas circa 2007)

2.  Teams from weak conferences sneaking into BCS.  (See Hawaii, 2007 edition)

Sure Utah and Boise State beat their BCS opponent; that's none of my concern, they are good teams.  The issue comes with their season being littered with perennial doormats as conference foes. 

If your conference isn't one of the six belonging to the BCS, you don't belong for a reason.  Sure being the WAC or Conference USA champ is great but does that really make you an elite program in the grand scheme of things? 

One good worshipper doesn't validate an entire congregation of sinners; these schools are guilty by association. 

As far as scheduling is concerned the big six should take steps to insure that frauds such as Ohio State ('08, '07), Nebraska ('00) and Oklahoma ('02) don't ignite the playoff talk among BCS haters.  A sure fire way to silence the hate is to have battle tested teams emerging from the six conferences. 

To help the John Swoffords of the world I've outlined a feasible and strategically plausible plan to insure the integrity of the bowl system and to maximize quality of the product on the field. 

There are six BCS conferences, sixty-five teams.  Three conferences have twelve teams (ACC, Big XII, SEC), one has eleven (Big Ten), another has ten (Pac-10) and one has eight (Big East). 

With a rotating schedule somewhat similar to that utilized by the NFL, a non-conference schedule can be generated matching up similar teams from separate conferences.  In practice it would work as follows:

—Conference champions would rotate between the six conferences playing each other.

—Corresponding teams in conferences would play with home and away sites designated through scheduling (seven home games per team).

—Teams are allotted one non-BCS conference game.  This game can be against either a Division I-AA or a I-A team that doesn't participate in BCS division football.  Call it a "tune-up game."

Here are several mock schedules created under this system, note the inter-regional match-ups and possibilities of additional exposure for recruiting purposes. 

Also since money is the most important variable compare television rating possibilities as well as the overall influx of revenue (hotels, restaurants, tickets) due to big games at non-traditional meetings of teams.

North Carolina as a seventh-place ACC team would play: NCState, Duke, Miami, VT, UVA, GT, Clemson and BC for conference.  Oklahoma State, Perdue and Cal as non-conference BCS match-ups and McNeese St in their tune-up game

LSU as a first-place SEC team would play: Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas, Miss. State, Ole Miss, Georgia and Florida as conference games.  Ohio State, Oklahoma and West Virginia as non-conference BCS match-ups and Tulane as a tune-up game

Oregon as a fourth-place Pac-10 team would play:USC, UCLA, Oregon State, Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Stanford, Washington and Washington State as conference games.  Auburn and Texas as non-conference and Houston as a tune-up game

Rutgers as fifth-place Big East team: Cincinnati, West Virginia, Louisville, USF, Syracuse, Pitt and UConn in conference.  Penn State, Florida State, Texas Tech and UCLA in non-conference BCS games, and Temple as a tune up.

*Pac-10 teams play 9 conference games, Big East play 7 all other conferences play eight

As you can see there are quite compelling match-ups under this system as well as exposure in markets not generally reached by teams, both east and west coast. 

Through creating big games between teams early in the season, television ratings would truly spike.  And with continued success, new rivalries (Ohio State vs. LSU, West Virginia vs. Oklahoma) could be formed, adding to the pageantry of college football's landscape. 

Teams emerging from this "gauntlet" styled scheduling with one or two losses would be tested and proven winners eliminating the need of a playoff and increasing regular season profits along the way.