Isn't It About Time For A College Football Playoff

The Alabama Crimson Tide are the nationals champions of the 2009 season, there’s no denying that.  But what about the 2009 Boise State Broncos, or the 2008 Utah Utes.   Yes, ‘ Bama is certainly a deserving champion but shouldn’t the Broncos have a chance to play for the title? 

            The fact is that the parity in college football is at an all time high, and now more than ever a playoff is needed.  Every year since the Bowl Championship Series has been in place, the title game has been surrounded in controversy.

            According to Wikipedia the Bowl Championship Series which was founded in 1998, was put in place to end the controversy over who is the true champion of college football.  However, due to its many flaws, it does anything but.  The BCS uses a system of polls both from college coaches and media members in order to determine part of the rankings.  The other two-thirds of the ranking come from computers computations.  However, these computer rankings don’t take into account the human polls.  This creates wide disparities for the BCS. 

  No matter who raises the crystal ball at the end of season, there has always been at least one team left who has a zero in the loss column.  I find it unexplainable and inexcusable that a team who has yet to be defeated does not deserve the opportunity to play for a national championship.

            As a USC fan I have been on both sides of the argument.  In 2004 my Trojans played Oklahoma for the national title in Miami and won handedly 55-19.  Even though both teams were undefeated going into the Orange Bowl, there was a third team who was left out of the dance. 

The Auburn Tigers finished the season undefeated in the South Eastern Conference yet weren’t given a chance to claim the national championship.  Despite Pete Carroll, the head coach of the Trojans, publicly asking for a chance to play Auburn, no such game ever materialized. 

            In 2008, USC was once again part of BCS controversy.  After losing an early game in Corvallis to Oregon State, it was the Trojans who were left on the outside looking in.  While the national championship game was played between Florida and Oklahoma, who also had only one loss each, USC went to the Rose Bowl where they easily took care of an over-matched Penn State team. 

It wasn’t just USC that got the short end of the stick though.  That same year the Utah Utes finished the season undefeated, but because they were from a non-BCS conference were never given the opportunity to play for the championship.  Instead they were sent to New Orleans where they destroyed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. 

            However nothing could beat last year’s drama where five schools (Alabama, Texas, Cincinatti, TCU and Boise State) were undefeated heading into the Bowl games. 

            Sure, bowl games are great.  But when a school has a team who is capable of winning a championship and they are never given the chance bowl games don’t really quench your thirst.   

The biggest problem is the computers automatically rank teams outside of the six BCS conferences lower on their polls, making it almost impossible for them to play for a title.  Perhaps Bob Hertzel of the West Virginia Times puts it best, “We are finding out it was easier to overturn Jim Crow laws in the South, then to get the Boise States and Utahs of the world on equal footing with BCS schools.”

While I can admit the BCS is much better than the former system, it’s light years behind what it should be. 

“If you’re the only one doing something a certain way, it may very well be wrong,” said Dan Wetzel of Yahoo news. 

Wetzel, however, is still very critical of the system for good reason.  “The old system was like non alcoholic beer.  The BCS is like near beer, you know that low alcoholic stuff that gets sold in some locales.” 

Wetzel believes a playoff is real beer, and I can certainly agree.  These fools in the BCS committee are laughing their way to the bank every December for developing a system that’s marginally better than the one before it.  While these suits make their millions fans are left to a watered down postseason. 

Something has to give.

I understand the BCS is a money making system and that’s fine.  Teams that don’t qualify for the playoffs can still have their bowl games.  Actually for all I care you can use the BCS Bowl games as your playoff games.  But it is beyond asinine that we have had controversy in the current system every year and yet nothing is done. 

This January, as I do every year, I will sit down to watch all the bowl games.  Hopefully, my Trojans are playing in one but if they aren’t that’s okay.  I’ll watch because it’s football. 

But Wetzel is right.

Division I football needs a playoff and nothing will satisfy until we get one.  Ever year I’m left wondering, like all football fans if the team celebrating on the field is the real “champion.” 

Please NCAA let us have real beer.  We need it, no we deserve it.