The Sunday Afternoon BCS Report: Week 15

A great college football regular season was capped by the Army-Navy game on Dec. 12.

This game would have been lost in last week's championship weekend, so it was good to be scheduled by itself on a Saturday in December.

When you get the BCS out of the way, good things can happen.

Army took a 3-0 lead into halftime. But Navy has not lost a game to Army or Air Force since 2002, so when they dominated the third quarter, it wasn't a huge surprise.

Army and Navy have played 110 times since 1890.

Navy has won the last eight, and they are heading to the Texas Bowl to play the Missouri Tigers. 

Army would have gone to the EagleBank Bowl with a win, but their season ends with them trailing the all-time series with Navy 54-49-7.

The big news off the field is that Cincinnati will face Florida in the Sugar Bowl without coach Brian Kelly.

Kelly left for Notre Dame before leading his undefeated Bearcats toward a showdown with one of the best teams in college football.

It is a shame that there is not a playoff system in college football.

Wait, that is not true, every other college football division is having their playoffs right now.

There was even a champion decided, of all places, on the field when Northwest Missouri State—playing in their fifth-straight D2 title game—beat Grand Valley State.

For my final top 20 poll, I am going to predict the bowl winners. It will be fun after the bowl season to do the real final top 20 poll.

Top 20

1. Texas

2. Cincinnati

3. TCU

4. Alabama

5. Ohio State

6. Florida

7. Iowa

8. Boise State

9. Oregon

10. LSU

11. Georgia Tech

12. Virginia Tech

13. Miami

14. Penn State

15. Oregon State

16. Pittsburgh

17. West Virginia

18. Stanford

19. BYU

20. Arizona

Conference Power Rankings

1. SEC

2. Pac-10

3. Big 10

4. Big East

5. Mountain West

6. Big XII

One Last Thought...

The early college basketball season has been full of epic matchups.

It is OK to play big games in the college basketball regular season because of March Madness.

Big-time regular season college football games are so rare that they are huge stories.

Teams do not want to risk any losses out of their conference games because the regular season is the playoff season in college football.

What starts on Dec. 19 with the New Mexico Bowl is the exhibition season of big-time college football.

It culminates with the BCS Championship game where polls picked the top two teams.

Without a true path to a title game, is it really anything more than an exhibition game?

The BCS puts on a good show, and they hand out a nice trophy, but college football fans aren't buying it.

Every week of the regular season sets up what happens in the postseason, and, with five undefeated teams, there is no way to know that the top two teams are playing for the title.

The BCS does not work.

It needs too many variables to go their way, and it has only happened once this decade where the top two teams wound up undefeated.

The Texas-USC Rose Bowl game was the only true national title game this decade, and that is the biggest flaw of the BCS.

By using the regular season as a round-robin playoff, they rarely get the matchup of the top two teams.

It's the only sport where a champion is crowned, and then the debate begins.