The BCS Champion Is The Champion Of Nothing

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was created to select a National Champion in College Division IA (now FBS) football.  It has failed, and failed in a terrible way. 

Now that the BCS is in place, it is unlikely there will ever be the changes made which would give it the least bit of validity.  The BCS, by lack of thought or planning, left the control of the teams to the presidents of the schools.  The schools will never give up that control.

The BCS first planned to make a fair selection of the top two teams to play for the National Title.  Were the BCS planners naive or just lacking judgement?

The BCS is comprised of 120 FBS schools which are assigned to numerous conferences.  All of these conferences have different rules which affect how their teams play.  The lodging, transportation, and recruiting rules are different in each of the various conferences.

The schedules of the schools are not controlled by the BCS.  Therefore, all of the 120 teams play different teams under different conditions.  Some of the teams play most of their games in their section of the country.  Some teams play small, lower division schools, who are not even eligible to compete in the BCS.  Other schools play only BCS eligible teams.  The BCS doesn't care.

Some of the 120 schools play in non-BCS conferences.  The BCS gives a limited number of those schools access to the BCS bowls, depending on their ranking.  It is interesting that a non-BCS conference school humiliated their opponent in a rare BCS bowl game last season.  The BCS ranking system had Alabama ranked as their top team for most of last season, and Utah demolished them in their bowl game.  

The first system that the BCS attempted was to use a combination of the Coaches' Poll, the AP Poll and a random set of privately operated computers.  This system ultimately failed when it became obvious to the AP that the "random computers" didn't work under any guidelines and most of the operators knew nothing about sports.

The AP pulled out of the BCS selection and started selecting their own champion.  The BCS decided to find a bunch of people, some knowledgeable and some not knowledgeable about the game of football.  They became the Harris Poll.

The voters in the Harris Poll rank the teams by, well, I guess no one knows how they actually do it.  The Coaches' Poll decided this past year not to allow their votes to be known to anyone.  That might be because one SEC head coach votes for people he knows from high school.  He said he did it out of respect.  Oh, I get it.

The last of the "three-prong" attack on common sense are a bunch of guys sitting around computers, just "doing things their way."  The BCS doesn't control how they operate their computers.  The saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out." 

Common sense will lead you to a simple fact.  If, in fact, the computers are accurate, there should be no need to have more than one.  That one computer should be at the BCS "center of technology," or something.  No way, no how should a half dozen or so computers decide on who is going to play for the National Championship.

In summary, consider the following:

-  The BCS does not control how the game is played, when it is played, or how long it takes to select a champion.  The school presidents do.

-  The NCAA doesn't care to work with the BCS.

-  The BCS people do not control the system they have in place.  The voting coaches, by contract, must vote for the winner of the BCS title game.  There have been years that the coaches have refused to do so.  Utah received votes last year and USC received votes, including from SEC coaches when a SEC team won the game.

-  The coaches have now made their vote secret.  Now why would that be?

-  The computer people don't work from a set of instructions on how information and what information is fed into their computers.

-  The BCS selects people to be in the Harris Poll who have no experience in sports, but do have experience in making friends.

The NFL has a championship based on their teams playing in controlled schedules.  All of their games mean something, because they cannot play a lower division team.  All of the NFL conferences work from the same rule book.  None of this takes place in the BCS.

I'm a man of common sense.  I had to develop my common sense over decades of experiencing the bumps, bruises, cuts, broken bones, various projectiles to the body, and a knife to the  back.  In other words, I've learned to pay attention.   Therefore, I know that it is only right to offer a recommendation after making a complaint.

Scrap the BCS.  Tear it down.  Throw the people and papers out.  Sell the furniture and buildings.  Cancel the phone service.  Don't hand out severance pay, because none of the employees earned a darn thing.  Do the same thing to the Harris and computer people.

Next, return to the AP and Coaches' Polls.  They are as close to anyone you would call an expert on college football.  Let them crown their own National Champion. 

The school presidents, bowl committees, and associated communities will love it.

Currently, there is no "Bowl Championship Series."  There are just two teams selected by the most faulty method known to man.  Just two teams out of 120.  The winner of that game is a "champion" of nothing.