(Photo by Charles Dharapak-Pool/Getty Images)
“Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what's needed to be done. Today we are called once more—and it is time for our generation to answer that call. For that is our unyielding faith—that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.”
Senator Barack Obama (D- Ill.)
February 10, 2007, at his Presidential Campaign Announcement
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created in 1998 to match the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) in a national championship game. These two teams are selected by three different sectors of voters; the coaches, the Harris Poll (media), and a configuration of six computer rankings.
Each sector of voting is equivalently weighted; however, the largest indicator of deciding a national champion, the ability of the student-athletes, is not measured in this system.
This book is not about the formula of the BCS nor how to improve the formula, but instead, how the Kennedy Proposal (KP) is the only feasible solution to afford the FBS student-athletes, coaches, and fans a multi-game post-season tournament that will define a National Champion on the field of play.
The “plus one”, eight-team, 10-team, 12-team, 16-team, and the Mountain West Conference (MWC) models have unacceptable formats, extend the FBS season into two semesters/quarters, either fail to preserve the bowl system or are simply not feasible.
On May 1, 2009, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Commissioner and current BCS coordinator John Swofford testified to the House Committee of Energy and Commerce that, “College football and its post-season can only be understood by knowing the history of the game.”
Therefore, a full analysis of college football’s post-season must be explained to the United States of America, as most are unsure how the BCS came into existence and why it should not be dissolved.
College football’s first game was played Nov. 6, 1869, between the Princeton Tigers and the host, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. The Knights won the first match 6-4 with the Tigers receiving revenge a week later in the second and final game of the season, winning 8-0.
At this time, no post season structure was in place and college football remained without a post-season until 1902, when the first Rose Bowl was played in Pasadena, California; however, explaining the post-season timeline starts with 1869 and ends with 2118.
The period 1869-2010 mustn't be thoroughly explained because this is our current timeline; however,2010-2118 must be explained because the main reason the majority of presidents and chancellors do not support a playoff is because over the length of time they believe that the bowl system will eventually demise and the number of post-season opportunities for FBS student-athletes will decrease.
The bowl structure has proven to remain vibrant since 1902—that's 118 years.
The current BCS format has been signed and agreed by all conferences until 2014, but the perspective that must be understood is that if the BCS is dissolved in any way that the alternative is not a playoff but instead to return to the old bowl system that operated from 1902-1991.
Any proposal submitted to improve or change FBS’s post-season must withstand the test of time and therefore must be configured through the bowl structure and must preserve bowl games as bowl games. Any other format , like using bowl games as playoff sites, has not proven to endure over a century of FBS’s celebrated post-season.
Six conferences—ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pacific 10 (Pac 10), and Southeastern (SEC) are the Automatic Qualifying (AQ)conferences and are the powers controlling the system and they have no intention to dissolve, change, or improve the BCS in the near or far future.
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