Super Bowl Proves Blowing Up the BCS for a Playoff Is the Right Thing To Do

Watching Green Bay take it to Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl Sunday night quickly reinforced how pathetic it is that the FBS champion is still crowned through a seriously flawed BCS system.  Does anyone else believe that college football is stuck in 1970, and is in dire need of a postseason overhaul? 

The most obvious reason for changing the system is to get rid of the reality that one loss means a team is all but dead from competing for the title.  Absurdly, the BCS is the only format that eliminates most of its best teams from playing for the championship.  Even worse, the powers that be have the audacity to justify this ridiculousness by arguing that the regular season is the playoff. 

The second reason is to remove bias from the process of determining a champion, or at least minimize its impact.  Between the preseason polls, the coaches poll, the AP poll, the computers and the money, the BCS is the only system that allows its champion to be crowned by factors other than performance on the field.

No doubt the BCS gets it right occasionally—1999, 2002 and 2005 come to mind—but these seasons were the exception, not the norm. 

By comparison, can you imagine a world where the Red Sox make the playoffs over the Yankees after losing the head-to-head series during the regular season and finishing with identical records?  This happened to Miami in 2000 and Texas 2008, and both went on to win their BCS bowl games while the teams they beat lost in the championship game.

Furthermore, what would have happened if the Celtics were left out of the 2008 NBA playoffs because the coaches voted that the Atlantic Division was terrible, and the other teams were just “Little Sisters of the Poor?”  Utah (2004), Boise (2006), Utah (2008), Boise (2009) and TCU (2010) all suffered the consequences for “supposedly” playing in inferior conferences, but somehow all five teams managed to win their BCS bowl games against “Big Brother” schools. 

The pattern is clear.  The debate is best settled on the field, not off of it.

The only change that is necessary is to create a playoff.  Not a plus one, not tweaking the formulas, not adding more bowl games.  Playoff.  Eight-team playoff to be exact, and here is how it should look.

The top eight teams make it into the playoff.  In the first round, the top three seeds get home games and the four vs. five game is played at one of the current BCS bowl sites. 

The sem-finals are played at two of the other BCS bowl sites, and the championship is played in the remaining BCS bowl site. Rotate the championship sites as they do now.

Despite the flaws, the BCS formula can be used to determine the eight teams because the bias is minimized by allowing eight teams to qualify instead of two.  No direct tie-ins, no automatic qualifiers, just the top eight teams.

Under this format, the bowl system is protected, revenue potential is higher than it is now and the top teams are rewarded by getting an extra home game.  This system may encourage better non-conference games since an early season loss won’t necessarily derail a season, and it ensures that only two schools would play 16 games—if you buy the college president’s argument about too many games interfering with academics.

Most importantly, the integrity of the game is preserved.  No one doubts the champion of any sport except the FBS, and it is sad to listen to the same argument about the system year after year. 

The time has come for the decision makers to cease being stubborn, greedy and condescending and give the college football world what it deserves, a playoff.