NCAA Football: Keep the BCS or Install a Playoff System?

During every college football season, as the action heats up, questions are asked about whether the NCAA should abandon the BCS system for a playoff system.

The biggest problem is that everyone has different ideas, which makes it a challenge to come up with a playoff format that everyone will agree with. The size of the playoff and how to handle who would make it are two large hurdles for those lobbying against the current Bowl Championship Series.

In the current system, there are 34 bowl games, five of them BCS games. Getting into one of the five BCS games might seem great, but it can actually be very frustrating for some schools.

Respectability is one of the major issues, as has been proven in two of the last three seasons with Boise State and Utah. Both times each team upset a team that was from a BCS conference, which includes the Big 10, Pac 10, Big 12, SEC, ACC, and the Big East.

Is it really fair for a team to beat every team on its schedule, beat a top 10 team nationally from a power conference, and not have to chance to live the real dream, playing in the FedEx National Championship Game? 

People seem to always bring up the excuse about the schedule. They feel it is unfair to reward a team that doesn’t play in one of the popular conferences. Sure, there are the teams on national television more often, but that is hardly a good argument. Just this season, Utah defeated Alabama in the Allstate Sugar Bowl, which helped them become the only team this season with a perfect record.

So why was Utah ranked below USC in people's minds? Because of a so-called "soft" schedule. Yet the team from Salt Lake played four teams in the top 25 and ended their season with a strength of schedule ranked 57th in the country. The USC Trojans, a perennial favorite, had a strength of schedule of 67th. 

What really makes this interesting is that even though each team won its respective conferences, the Trojans, which play in the Pac 10, only lost to Oregon State—which Utah defeated. So who deserved the better bowl spot?

Another big controversy this season with the BCS is that Texas defeated Oklahoma, and they each had the same number of losses, yet Oklahoma was able to receive an invite to the FedEx National Title Game.

It feels kind of cheap for a team to play as good of a schedule as it possibly could have, and actually be ranked higher than a team who, if they would have gone undefeated, would have most likely played in the championship game. 

A playoff would settle these questions and give everyone a fair chance at becoming the last team standing, because it doesn’t seem fair for a team to win head-to-head and then see the team it beat play in the National Championship. How would a coach explain to his players and fans that even though their team defeated another team, that other team got to go to the Fiesta Bowl because...a perceived better schedule? TV ratings? An arbitrary computer ranking?

Sponsorship and money, in general, are another thing that makes the power conferences disagree about the BCS. All 34 games are nationally televised, with 23 of the bowl games on ESPN networks in 2008-09, and on Nov. 11 ESPN announced that in 2011, the BCS will come to cable television for the first time, agreeing to a deal which will give ESPN four games for $125 million per season.

My idea? Have an eight-game playoff. The problem with this is that some traditions will end, such as the Big Ten and Pac 10 playing in the Rose Bowl since 1946, but the time has come to give everyone a chance. Let the players decide who will be able to call themselves champions instead of a computer.

The NFL playoffs and NCAA basketball tournament show that the money will still be there for college football, as March Madness and Super Bowl Sunday are highly-rated events.

Until a playoff system is put in place, a fair one that all parties agree to, the controversies will continue about who was the better team and why someone with a worse record can play for the championship. A playoff would end these questions once and for all, and college football could finally say that, each year, it indisputably crowns the champion.