For College Football, BCS Is Better Than Playoff

 President Obama is wrong.  We do not need change.  While wildly unpopular and certainly imperfect, the Bowl Championship Series is better than a playoff system.  Compared to the three most popular professional sports leagues in America--the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the National Basketball Association--college football has the best system of determining a champion. 

Since its inception in 1998 through the 2008 season, the BCS has been used to determine 11 national champions.  Of the 11 champions, five went into the BCS National Championship Game ranked No. 1, meaning it was the best team at the end of the regular season.  In that same time span, only the NBA had an equal amount of teams with the best record at the end of the regular season end up winning the championship.  The NFL only had two teams accomplish the feat, and MLB had just one. 

In 2007, the New England Patriots of the NFL finished the regular season with a perfect 16-0 record.  The team won its first two playoff games and was matched in the Super Bowl against the New York Giants, a team the Patriots beat in the regular season.  The Giants finished the regular season with a 10-6 record, and not surprisingly, were an underdog against the Patriots.  However, the Giants defeated the previously unbeaten Patriots to win the Super Bowl.  The Patriots finished with an 18-1 record and the Giants finished 14-6. 

There are numerous other examples of teams that had mediocre regular seasons but ended up winning a championship because they started playing well in the playoffs.  If the goal of a sport is to crown the best team as its champion, a playoff system simply does not work.   

The excitement of a college football regular season is unparalleled.  Since every professional sport and every other collegiate sport uses a playoff system to determine its champion, the importance of the regular season is reduced. 

In 2008, the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL finished the regular season with a 9-7 record and still reached the Super Bowl.  In 2006, the St. Louis Cardinals of MLB finished the regular season 83-78 and still went on to win the World Series.  In contrast, in 2001 the Seattle Mariners of MLB finished the regular season with a record of 116-46 and failed to reach the World Series.

Since the inception of the BCS, only once has a team lost more than one game and reached the BCS National Championship Game.  With such little margin for error, each game is of great magnitude and brings an increased level of excitement.  If college football used a playoff system to determine its champion, regular season games would become less important and therefore much less exciting. 

Unlike professional sports, every collegiate sport with the exception of Division I-A football, or Football Bowl Subdivision, is forced to use committees to determine which teams belong in that sport’s playoff.  In professional sports, teams are divided evenly into conferences or leagues and further divided into divisions.  Rules are in place to determine how many teams from each conference or league reach the postseason. 

However in collegiate sports, schools are divided into conferences based on geographical location.  These conferences are many times not competitively balanced, meaning some are much better than others.  Because of this imbalance, collegiate sports are forced to use committees made up of conference commissioners and schools’ athletic directors to determine which teams belong in the playoffs.  

Every year, there are disputes about which teams belong in each sport’s playoffs, or in college football’s case, the BCS National Championship Game.  However, since college football and college basketball are the only collegiate sports that receive significant media attention, nothing is made of the dozens of disputes surrounding other sports.  These disputes are a part of collegiate sports, and nothing can be done to make them go away. 

Since 1998, there have only been three significant disputes surrounding the selection of the teams playing in the BCS National Championship Game.  Compared to college basketball, which has disputes surrounding its playoff system every year, three is relatively minimal.  The BCS has proven to set the two best teams against each other in the BCS National Championship Game more times than not.  The same cannot be said about other sports.

College football regular seasons conclude in late November.  Conferences that have championship games end their seasons in early December.  Using the schools that finished the 2008 season ranked in the Top 10 of the Associated Press poll, final examinations range from Dec. 7-18.  With Christmas just one week later, it is likely that a playoff system would not be able to begin until late December or early January. 

If a playoff system were to include eight or more teams, as many people would like, at least three games and therefore at least three weeks would be required to determine a champion.  The season would then be pushed into late January and extend an already long season. 

Questions arise when trying to determine where and when playoff games would take place and other logistical issues like the costs for teams and fans to travel to playoff games.  The current bowl structure would have to either be eliminated or significantly altered.  With all these changes, college football would be modified much more than many people realize.  Even if a playoff system was determined to be better than the BCS, the amount of changes that would need to take place would not be worth what the sport would have to give up.

Playoff systems are more exciting than the BCS system.  There is no disputing that.  Playoff systems, however, have proven not to crown the best team champion while the BCS has.  With a regular season that is more exciting than every other sport and a system to determine its champion that has proven to work more than a playoff, it would be foolish for college football to remove the BCS and create a playoff system.