Is the BCS College Football Title the Most Difficult to Win in All of Sport?

Which sport played at which level offers teams the most difficult title to win in all of sport?

Is it harder to win a championship in the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, MLB, college basketball, college baseball, college hockey or college football?

There is no doubt a number of  ways to approach this question. A logical look at some basic numbers make a clear case for which sport and which level offers the steepest slope to reach the peak of Mt. Championship.

Starting with the professional version of football, the NFL currently consists of 32 franchises. Twelve move on to a single elimination playoff to decide the champion.

This means that of the 32 teams, roughly 38 percent have a chance to compete for a place in the championship game.

The current format of the NBA includes 30 franchises. A full 16 move on to a series-driven playoff scheme.

By the numbers, this equates to a whopping 60 percent of teams having an opportunity to play for a place in the title game.

The NHL, like the NBA, consists of 30 franchises and, again like the NBA, 16 participate in a playoff series. The series is decided by a series of games at each bracket level.

This gives professional hockey teams the same healthy 60 percent chance of having an opportunity to play for a championship appearance.

In the MLB there are currently 30 franchises. Under the recently expanded playoff scheme, 10 teams will now play for a right to compete in the World Series.

This gives MLB clubs a 33 percent chance to play for a championship.

Switching gears to the collegiate ranks, we’ll begin with Division I men’s basketball. It decides its champion via the popular playoff format that currently involves the participation of 68 squads.

These 68 teams are selected from a total group of 345 schools, meaning nearly 20 percent have a shot at making the playoff grid leading directly to a championship game.

In Division I college baseball, there are currently just shy of 300 teams who participate at the D-I level. Sixty-four teams make the cut, meaning that 21 percent of teams have a direct shot at the title series.

Division I collegiate hockey has a mere 59 men’s teams. But, 16 squads, or 27 percent, of the total field participate in the single elimination playoff scheme that determines a champion.

In the top tier of collegiate football, the D-I A or FBS consists of 123 teams for the 2012 season. Under the current BCS format, only two teams are selected to compete for a national title.

This equates to a paltry 1.6 percent of the total teams being selected to compete for a chance at the championship hardware.

To be fair, only squads from BCS conferences have participated for the BCS title up to this point. This means that the field is reduced from 123 FBS teams to 66 BCS teams.

Therefore, three percent of the field participates in the postseason chase for the title.

Moving forward, if the BCS opts for its four-team playoff in the future, the number changes to a three percent level of participation at the FBS level and a six percent inclusion among the current group of BCS AQ squads.

Comparing all eight sports across the board, the NBA and NHL top the charts by offering a generous 60 percent of their regular season fields a shot at a title game.

Next in line comes the NFL at 38 percent, followed by the MLB at 33 percent. Then comes collegiate hockey at 27 percent, college baseball at 21 percent and men’s collegiate basketball at 20 percent.

At the very bottom of the barrel in championship participation rates is the BCS- driven level of college football.

It offers anywhere from two to six percent of the field—depending on who you deem “selectable” and whether or not a playoff plan actually comes to fruition—an opportunity to play for its title in the postseason.

No matter how you slice it, the highest level of college football offers the most difficult and exclusive championship scheme in all of American team sports.

The BCS National Championship is not only lacking logic as a stand-alone title determinant. It also represents a level of unfairness that is, by the numbers, comparatively alarming when stacked up against other collegiate and professional team sports.