BCS Rankings: 5 Possibilities to Tweak the Rankings Process

There's a large contingent of college football fans that are definitely turned off by the idea of seeing a rematch of the "Game of the Century" between No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama in the BCS national championship game.

Not many people will dispute the fact that the Tigers and the Tide are probably the two best teams in the country, but still, the idea of a rematch for a national title certainly rubs some people the wrong way.

The goal of the BCS may be to always put the two best teams in the national championship game, but the system seems flawed if it somehow leaves open the possibility of putting together a battle that's already been decided.

Everyone has always had their opinion on how to change the BCS. Well, here's a look at five tweaks that I would personally make to the system to shake things up.

You Have to Win Your Conference to Play for the Title

The question that will be worth asking if we do in fact see an LSU-Alabama national championship game pairing is, how can you be considered a true national champion if you didn't even win your own conference?

That's the weird territory we'll enter if Alabama beats LSU in the national championship game. 

Alabama hasn't won its own division, it hasn't won its own conference, so how can the Tide justify being the No. 1 overall team in the country?

Alabama may in fact be the second best team in college football, but the fact is, the Nick Saban's squad didn't handle its business when it needed to this season, and if you're not good enough to win your conference, you're not good enough to play for the national title.

No Rematches in the BCS Championship

If Alabama beats LSU by a fairly close margin in the national championship game, what exactly does that prove?

Then the series would be 1-1, and LSU would already have a victory over Alabama on its own home field, which looks better than an Alabama victory on a neutral field.

That's why I think we need to take possible rematches in the BCS national championship game out of the equation for future seasons.

It's true, these types of scenarios rarely arise, but given the strength of the SEC, it's not out of the question that we could see two SEC teams in a similar situation once again some time in the next few years.

In the future, I would like to see a system where if at the end of the season we're left with a No. 1 team and No. 2 team that have already played in the regular season, then we should bypass the loser of the regular-season game and keep them out of the national title game.

No Automatic Qualifiers

BCS officials will reportedly consider changing the system by taking away automatic qualifying status from the six BCS conferences, and that's a change I think would work.

Let's have the 10 best teams in the five biggest bowl games, regardless of what conference they're from.

Why should we have to put an undeserving Big East champion in a big bowl, while keeping a great SEC team out? Because you can only have two teams from the same conference?

This is a major alteration that will dramatically affect the current system, but I think it's one that would definitely change things for the better.

No Polls Until Week 10

Florida State, Texas A&M and Nebraska were three teams that once again proved how silly preseason college football polls can be, as none of them managed to live up to their Top-10 preseason hype.

I've always said that we should get rid of official preseason polls and wait until at least midseason to start ranking teams.

I even think Week 8 is a little too soon to start putting out official standings.

Back when the BCS rankings were first released in Week 8, we had 10 undefeated teams, and everyone kept asking how we were going to figure things out if five or six teams finished with a perfect record.

Obviously, that didn't happen.

I think 10 weeks into the season is a good enough measuring stick to start really ranking teams with certainty. This way you can avoid ranking fraud teams like Illinois, Texas and Florida in the Top 20.

Make Strength of Schedule More Important

According to USA Today’s Jeff Sagarin, Oklahoma State played the eighth-most difficult schedule of the 2011 season, while Alabama played just the 23rd-toughest slate.

If Oklahoma State beats No. 10 Oklahoma tonight in the Bedlam game, that will be the seventh win over a team that was ranked in the BCS Top 25 at some point this season. Alabama only has five such wins.

If both the Tide and the Cowboys finish with identical 11-1 records, it doesn’t seem fair that the team with the weaker schedule would be able to get the chance to play in the national championship game.

That’s why I think we should tweak the system so that if two teams finish with identical records and their fighting for a bid to a BCS bowl game, we should give the benefit of the doubt to the team with the better strength of schedule.