The BCS Gets It Wrong...Again

It’s time for another bowl season, and therefore, by default, time for another long and drawn-out debate about the effectiveness of the BCS system. Every December for the last decade, the bowl selections have been announced—and madness has ensued.

Hair pulling, grown-man hissy fits, and politically correct coaches mumbling about how all they can do is “work within the system” have become staples to the holiday season. It wouldn’t be a white Christmas without roast turkey, “Jingle Bell Rock,” and BCS insanity.

The flawed system has officially replaced The Grinch and good ol’ Uncle Scrooge as the downer of the holiday spirit. It just remains to be seen if the story of the BCS also ends with redemption.

For many, the only upside this year is the oft-quoted remarks by President-Elect Barack Obama stating his desire for a college football playoff. His comments have been mentioned by nearly every major sports columnist and every talking head on sports television. Even Pete Carroll made a small plea when discussing his Trojans’ undesirable (to them) trip to the Rose Bowl.

It speaks volumes about the desperation (and resignation) of the college football nation when it places its only hope in a guy who has so much on his plate. I can only hope he doesn’t make instituting a playoff system a priority. Now don’t get me wrong—something should be done. I’d just rather see the economy fixed first.

I haven’t always been in favor of a playoff system. I never thought the BCS system was perfect, but it is difficult to let go of the tradition and excitement of bowl games. There is something genuine and pure about a system in which not just one team is happy at the end of the season, but several teams feel like winners (it sounds juvenile, but it’s a nice sentiment nonetheless).

But over the years, it has become clear that incorporating a playoff into the current system is in order. College football fans received another reminder this year in the case of Texas.

Now, I’m not usually in the mood to defend Texas. After all, it was they who took Cal’s spot in the Rose Bowl back in the 2004 season.

After my beloved Golden Bears went 10-1, with their only loss in a tight road game to eventual national champion USC, the Longhorns jumped Cal in the final polls after Bears coach Jeff Tedford refused to run up the score on Southern Mississippi. In return, Texas coach Mack Brown lobbied for his Big XII team to take a spot in a major bowl game that traditionally has gone to a Pac-10 school.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when your first bid to the “Granddaddy of ‘Em All” in nearly 50 years falls short because of a lack of style points and a lot of class. So to me, Texas got what was coming to them.

But in this day and age in sports, Karma really shouldn’t be the name of the game. So in the spirit of goodwill, I will admit that Texas got hosed.

Without extensive inter-conference play, it is very difficult to judge the quality of teams in opposing conferences. I can understand how last season, the voters (and the computers) placed LSU and Ohio State, both two-loss teams, at the top of the rankings, thus sending them to the national championship game.

At some point, Missouri, West Virginia, and Southern Cal, all with two losses as well, had to be eliminated from the national title picture, either through the twisted minds of the voters or through the even more twisted minds of the computers.

But when the choice comes from within the conference, between two teams that played each other (on a neutral field no less), I’m not really sure how the team that won the head-to-head matchup gets left out.

When then-Nos. 1 and 2 Ohio State and Michigan played in their final game of the season back in 2006, it was universally accepted that the winner would head to the BCS championship. After all, they couldn’t both go, and since they were going to be playing each other, it made the decision easy, right?

But this year, when it was time to make a decision, the voters picked the high-flying Sooners over the steady Longhorns. I guess I kinda get it. Oklahoma is definitely the sexier of the two. But it still seems illogical.

I in no way mean to diminish Oklahoma’s accomplishments. As an offensive unit, they took a page out of the West Coast offense playbook and turned it into a work of art. Scoring 60 or more points in five straight games is no easy task. It also does seem like they were the better team towards the end of the season.

But does head-to-head mean nothing? It seems like that should be the very first tiebreaker. I’ll say it again: Texas got hosed.

So I’m still waiting for the end of the story. Will the BCS gain its redemption? How many more miscues (to say the least) will occur before someone does something about it?

Maybe Mack Brown ought to appear to the college presidents as the Ghost of Bowl Seasons Past and show them, in succession, what a mess the BCS has made of college football. Maybe then someone will take the time to change the system. Maybe.

But I doubt it.