The BCS Dream: How Did We Get Here?

To truly understand why the BCS is even in existence, one must first understand the factors that led to its creation.

Prior to 1992, there was no system or set of rules that would guarantee the two best teams in college football would meet for the national title. If a matchup between No. 1 and No. 2 actually transpired in a bowl game, it would have been based on little more than dumb luck.

A majority of Bowl games up until 1992 were based on conference tie-ins between conferences and bowls, and in that regard, little has changed today.

For example, the Big Ten winner and the Pac-10 winner used to always meet in the Rose Bowl. In fact, from 1947 through 2001 the Rose Bowl was played exclusively between a Big Ten and Pac-10 school. Not until 2002 did this change with the Miami vs. Nebraska National title game.

The SEC winner has typically gone to the Sugar Bowl. Keeping in mind that Georgia Tech and Tulane used to play in the SEC, an SEC school has participated in the Sugar Bowl 89 percent of the time since 1935.

The now defunct Southwest Conference champion would usually go to the Cotton Bowl. The Big 8, which was basically Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado, would typically go to the Orange Bowl.

In 1990, the landscape of college football changed in a major way when Arkansas seceded from the SWC to join the SEC. In 1993, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Baylor all followed suit and left the SWC to merge with the Big 8, thus forming the Big 12 that we know today.

Prior to the Arkansas bailout, the SWC, SEC, Pac-10, Big 8, and Big Ten were the power conferences of their times. Problem is, these teams seldom got to play each other in the postseason due to bowl tie-ins. You could have an undefeated USC team and an undefeated Alabama, but USC would have been contractually obligated to play in the Rose Bowl.

Therefore, the best two teams were playing 2,000 miles away on New Year's Day.

Over the years, this scenario left the possibility for several undefeated teams at season's end, and prior to 1992 that happened on numerous occasions. How was the national title determined up until 1992? By the Associated Press (A.K.A. Sportswriters) and the UPI (AKA the coaches' poll), while some smaller media outlets crowned their own champions.

This led to many "mythical national titles," and in a few instances, up to six National Champions were crowned in the same year. In 1981, Clemson, Nebraska, Penn State, Pitt, Texas, and SMU all claimed a share of the national title. The National Championship was split five ways in 1951, 1960, 1970, 1973, and 1980. It was split four ways in 1956, 1957, 1962, 1964, 1967, 1975, 1977, 1984, 1990, and 1993.

The problem rested with the sportswriters and coaches who voted in their respective polls. They refused to look at the complete season with any degree of objectivity. They were almost always extremely subjective and biased toward the teams within their own conferences.

This was not the Internet era here, folks. These were the grand old newspaper and snail-mail days. Coaches and sportswriters did not have hundreds of media outlets to view all the national games, so naturally, they voted on what they would witness on a weekly basis.

If you were an Alabama sports writer in 1978, the Crimson Tide were the best team you had seen. Conversely, if you were a West Coast sportswriter in 1978, USC was the king of the hill. Needless to say, a change was sorely needed.

Enter 1992 and the Bowl Coalition. This included everybody EXCEPT the Big Ten and Pac-10. Under this plan there were two tiers of bowl games. Orange, Sugar, Cotton, and Fiesta were tier-1 bowls, and the Gator and Sun Bowls were considered tier-2.

As stated, the Pac-10 and Big Ten were left with the Rose Bowl or nothing. This system was short-lived and replaced with the Bowl Alliance in 1994.

The Bowl Alliance was a dumbed-down version of the BCS, and in 1998 it actually became the BCS after the Pac-10 and Big Ten were formally invited.

On paper, the BCS looked like a great idea. The vision of a computer ranking system, with human input, deciding a National title game was not that far-fetched.

Knowing what we now know regarding coaches and sportswriters and their innate ability to be homers, the BCS system actually looked like a FAIR system. It would essentially put the best two teams in the country against each other every single year and without debate.

How many times has it actually worked? Well, in eight out of 10 years there has been a legit form of controversy—not necessarily with the winner or who got into the title game, but many times with who got left out of the title game and why.

USC vs. Texas seemed to be correct in 2005, USC in 2004, Ohio State over Miami was spot-on, Florida State in 1999, and Miami in 2001 also seemed unanimous, but not totally free of some semblance of BCS drama.

Other than those few years, you are hard-pressed to find a season since the inception of the BCS that has ended with a happy and united football nation.

This is the system we have. Is it perfect? Far from it, but in some defense of the BCS, things used to be far worse...or did they?

Assume we have a scenario this year where there are seven or eight one-loss teams. Is that any different than 1981 and the six national champions that sportswriters and coaches crowned that year?

What does the BCS title really represent if the AP can just vote a team as the National Champion, even if that team didn't play in the BCS title game? See: the 2003 USC Trojans. More people that year recognized USC as the National Champion than LSU, the 2003 BCS winner.

Is the current system fair? Does it really care about naming a champion? If we really thought that, I wouldn't be typing, and you wouldn't be reading. 

Who is to blame for all of this? Stay tuned for the answers to that question in part three, coming soon!