BCS Championship: Great Game, Let's Have A Playoff And Never Do It Again

In an exciting (and just a little sloppy) BCS title game, Auburn beat Oregon with a 19-yard field goal as time expired to win the Tigers' second national title.

It was great theater and it looks like it will have great television ratings. So, that means everything is just awesome for college football, right?

Of course not.

Just about every college fan with a pulse and more than three firing syanpses knows that a playoff would be far more beneficial for the players, the schools, the fans and the sport as a whole.

But BCS executive director Bill Hancock dutifully made the media rounds leading up to the title game trying to make the case why the BCS is a superior system.

What might be the most effective means of analyzing the current college football situation is to take a look at the arguments of the BCS for its' continued existence and see if they hold up.

Under the current system, every game matters. A playoff would turn college football's regular season into something akin to college basketball's regular season.

Really? Every game matters? Apparently not to TCU, who didn't lose a single game and still ended up without an opportunity to compete for a title.

How much did all those games matter to TCU? The argument is consistently made that college football's regular season is "like a playoff." Again, really? What playoff format has a team go unbeaten and left out of a chance to win a championship?

And that's certainly not the first time a team with at least equal credentials to the BCS No. 1 or No. 2 has been left out in the cold.

Just for starters, how about Auburn in 2004? Oregon in 2001? USC in 2003? Nebraska in 1999? Michigan in 2006? Boise State in 2006? (kudos to Ryan McGee of ESPN.com for that list)

So the BCS motto really should be, every game matters—except when they don't.

A playoff would destroy the bowl system which brings such joy to athletes and makes college football special.

The bowls are great, even the BBVA Compass Bowl, the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl, the New Era Pinstripe Bowl and every other "minor" bowl that has sprung up over the last few years.

Why do those bowls exist? Because people love to watch football and ESPN has plenty of space to broadcast football.

How would changing from the BCS system to a playoff harm those bowls? Do any of those bowls—heck, do any bowls apart from the uncreatively named "BCS Championship Game"—affect who wins the national title? Nope.

Does that mean people would stop wanting to watch college football when it otherwise wouldn't be on television?

Of course not. As long as there is a television market for more college football, the bowls will exist and the teams that did not make a playoff system (whatever form it might take) would still participate.

Rest assured, even with a playoff, college kids will still get their swag bags from guys in funny-colored blazers.

The BCS always guarantees a one-versus-two matchup.

This is a popular BCS-defender argument, which apparently means BCS defenders have no qualms about insulting your intelligence.

OF COURSE the BCS matches up one versus two, that's how the system is generated. It can't do anything but generate that matchup.

But, of course, the devil is in the details. Who gets to decide who is No. 1 and No. 2? What criteria are used? And why would we think that, at the end of the regular season, there are only two teams deserving of a chance to play for a national title? 

If the powers-that-be force the BCS to go away, the sport will revert back to the system in place before the BCS was created.

Hancock and the other BCS defenders have been trotting this chestnut out more frequently lately, which makes me think they're really concerned about outside forces breaking up their little party.

To combat this, they want to put the narrative out that if the BCS goes away, the only possible outcome is a return to conference tie-in bowl games and no one-versus-two matchups.

As the argument goes, without the BCS, there would be no way for Auburn and Oregon to meet up on a neutral field after the regular season.

To quote Hancock from a USA Today editorial he wrote defending the BCS, that's malarkey.

We've seen the ridiculously good ratings even a flawed BCS structure has provided for college football. To think that college presidents, when presented with a playoff-or-nothing decision, would turn down millions and millions of television dollars—dollars, by the way, they desperately need if nothing else than to maintain Title IX compliance to keep sports like football from disappearing altogether—is ludicrous.

Hancock's "back to the bad old days" talk is a bluff, designed to scare college football fans away from demanding fundamental and necessary reform.

There's plenty of other arguments BCS defenders will use against changing the system. PlayoffPAC, a group dedicated to establishing a college football playoff, has a really good catalog of the pro-BCS arguments and their rebuttals here.

But what really needs discussion is why the status quo is so vigorously defended by Hancock and the BCS-school presidents. A playoff system would be fairer and would make more money for everyone involved in the system. It's a win-win.

So why are they fighting so tooth-and-nail against it?

Control. If there's a playoff, the automatic-qualifying (AQ) schools give up their stranglehold on the reins of power in college football. Right now, the system is set up very well to ensure that the rich—the AQ schools—stay rich, and stay in control of the system.

It also makes sure that the non-AQ schools stay in their place, in the second tier of college football.

There are wolves baying at the doors of the AQ's smoke-filled back room, though. More than one member of Congress is in the process of investigating whether the BCS is in violation of federal anti-trust law.

PlayoffPAC has been supporting the investigation and helping turn the media spotlight on the corruption and inequity that the BCS is steeped in. Dan Wetzel's brilliant book, Death to the BCS, brings to light the shady ways in which the BCS was born and continues its' existence on the backs of the schools and the athletes.

We've heard smart people say for years that college football will never have a playoff, that the college presidents will never let that happen.

Malarkey. But the walls are closing in on the three-letter fraud perpetrated on college football fans every year.

Soon, sooner than all those smart people realize, the pressure will be too great and college football will join every other organized sport in having a fair and lucrative means to crown a champion.

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