Vauge and Missunderstood Rules at the Heart of the BCS Problem

The Senate's biggest BCS critic missed the heart of the problem in yesterday's BCS hearings.

While asking about the fairness of the BCS, Senator Hatch was surprised to learn from the BCS' lawyer that they had already provided rules that allow non-automatic-bid conferences to become automatic bid conferences.

Like the vast majority of college football fans, Senator Hatch had never heard of these rules and asked "have they been published?"

The BCS lawyers quickly outlined the three rough points in the rules and the hearings moved on. The rules, in fact, have been published. The evaluation data is based on four-year sets of data for each conference and includes (1) the ranking of the highest-ranked team in the final BCS standings each year, (2) the final regular-season rankings of all conference teams in the computer rankings used by the BCS each year and (3) the number of teams in the top 25 of the final BCS standings each year.

Sadly, Senator Hatch was unprepared to ask any follow up questions about these rules which are vague, non-specific, and controlled by the BCS behind closed doors.

The rules leave a lot of questions unanswered, and sadly, Senator Hatch missed a big opportunity to ask the BCS under oath to finally explain to America exactly how this system works.

Eventually, the BCS is going to have to answer questions like:

>> How well would one of the currently non-automatic qualifying conferences need to do to become one of the insiders? Would ranking nearly as well as an automatic qualifier be enough? Or would an outsider have to rank better than an insider?

>> Is there a set point of evaluation they would need to pass regardless of the performance of other conferences? Or is it only based on performance relative to the other conferences?

>> Who is making a poll that ranks all 120 schools? No sports writers are ranking all 120 teams. Is this based a computer poll? A mix of six computer polls? What criteria are those computer polls based on?

>> Are the bowl games included in this poll? Or does it only use the regular season?

>> How are the elements weighted? Are the three elements weighted equally? Is one worth more than another?

>> How are the rankings for all conference members averaged? Median? Mean? What sort of math and statistical calculations are used to compare conferences?

>> Do all members have input on the formula? Or is it devised and calculated only by the current AQ members?

>> Why isn't someone asking why BCS insists on basing their multimillion-dollar decisions on a set of vague criteria and refuse to make the results public? Why are they so insistent on avoiding speculation or scrutiny?


The MWC proposal asked that non-AQ conferences qualify based on winning 40 percent of their games with AQ schools.

This is a simple and fixed objective based on field performance and not polls and computers...anyone can figure it out and check it's accuracy, unlike the current system which few people even know exists and no one can figure out what it's really based on.

If Senator Hatch, the MWC, and Boise State want to portray the BCS as an anti-trust they should point out they are making the rules up as they go along, ensuring the right members of the club stay in and the wrong members stay out.

If they want to prove BCS is an anti-trust, maybe someone should ask them why their formulas and evaluations are carried out in the smoke-filled backroom and their results aren't released.

Finally, here's an example of exactly how this smoke-filled backroom works: When Mike Tranghese spoke about the Big East's evaluation after the 2007 season (that guaranteed the Big East's inclusion through 2013) he said "It was quiet, the way I like it."