Bowl Games vs. Playoff System: The Never-Ending BCS Debate

Dear BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock,    

I am not writing this letter as an angry, homer fan whose team was slighted out of a chance at a title.  I am writing this as an angry fan of college football and sports in general. 

As a devoted sports fan I live for the Stanley Cup playoffs, the NBA finals, the Super Bowl, the World Series, and especially your collegiate counterpart, March Madness.  There is a glaring hole on this list though, the sport that consumes my Saturdays, college football, has not been included. 

However, my concerns don’t lie with the game itself, I think college football is as competitive as it has ever been, my concerns lie with its postseason system the BCS.  I understand that the BCS is designed to pit the upper echelon teams against each other in an epic one game, winner take all scenario, but the system to often leaves discrepancies at the end.  If the season worked out perfectly and there were two teams with the best record and no other competition, then the system would work perfectly.  But what happens if there are three or perhaps four teams at season’s end with identical records? 

Despite this fundamental flaw in the system, I am not writing this letter to try and persuade you to dump the system totally and go to a playoff.  I have abandoned that hope as a pipe dream.  I realize that the money tied into these blockbuster bowl games is far too big to be changed.  Bias is what I would like to eliminate from this system, and in turn, make this system better than what it currently is.  If you are going to use a system that only allows two teams to play for the coveted championship trophy, than everyone should have an equal opportunity to achieve that goal.  Two things need to happen in order to eliminate or at least diminish the bias in the BCS system today:

Preseason rankings need to be eliminated—Preseason rankings negate almost any chance of a true cinderella run to the championship.  Teams like Boise State, TCU and even Utah are not given the chance to make an improbable run as Butler did in 2009 season and George Mason did in 2006 on the collegiate hardwood.  Since 2000, Boise State and TCU have combined for 207 wins, while Ohio State and USC combined for 204, three wins may not seem like a large difference until you look at the five nothing advantage USC and Ohio State hold in the title appearance department.  Bottom line, if you start outside the top 15 you have slim chances at a title berth, outside the top 25, and I wouldn’t bet on it, but if you come from a mid-major conference, you can forget about it.  That doesn’t seem right to me.  If you win, you deserve a shot to win it all.  I guess that isn’t as simple as it seems.

Eliminate automatic bids for “power” conferences—Two words. UConn Huskies.  The Huskies squared off against the Oklahoma Sooners in 2010 basically by default.  The Huskies used the automatic bid from winning the Big East to propel themselves to a Fiesta Bowl berth. Besides Jordan Todman, this was simply not a team that was worthy of a BCS bowl berth, but due to the current system, being the top team in a sup-par "BCS" conference got them a chance to face a much worthier opponent in the Sooners. While Boise State was banished to the Las Vegas Bowl for one bad half of football all season, in what has been dubbed a sup-par WAC, UConn waltzed into a blowout in the Fiesta Bowl as many predicted would be the case. I hate to repeat myself, but that doesn’t seem right to me.          

In your 13 years as Director of what devoted fans call March Madness, you had the privilege of witnessing the improbable run by George Mason.  That run was made possible by a system that makes sense for how its game is structured.  I don’t propose ditching the system, just to clean it up a bit.  Play the bowl games, make your money, but make sure the 10 best teams get to the games they have earned.  Isn’t that what it is all about?

Sincerely,

Ian Hanford

Devoted sports fan and advocate of improbable playoff teams