BCS Rankings: 3 Changes That Should Be Made to the System Before Next Season

Is the Bowl Championship Series perfect? No. Is the BCS as bad as the constant negativity surrounding it would suggest? No. In reality, it's somewhere in the middle. With a couple tweaks, like the three outlined below, it would do a much better job of giving college football fans the best show possible.

Make all polls public

Each week a new set of BCS rankings are released, every ballot filled out by a poll voter should be made available for public inspection immediately. There's no reason anybody who's making such a big impact on college football should be able to hide behind a shroud of secrecy.

The difference between Alabama and Oklahoma State in the final BCS standings was .0086, and the computer rankings favored the Cowboys. That means voters had a direct impact on the Crimson Tide getting their rematch with LSU.

Perhaps if all ballots are released on a weekly basis and voters with questionable placements are hounded about why their rankings just don't match up, fans will be treated to a much fairer outlook from everybody involved in the process.

Cutoff line for BCS bowls

With all due respect to West Virginia, the Mountaineers don't belong anywhere near a BCS bowl game. They finished 9-3 in the weakest power conference, their biggest win came against Cincinnati and losses against Syracuse and Louisville don't exactly scream elite.

The Mountaineers earned a bid as Big East champions despite finishing No. 23 in the final standings. TCU, on the other hand, won the Mountain West Conference, was left out because it didn't crack the top 16 as a non-AQ team.

Adding to the West Virginia dilemma is the fact that four teams ranked inside the top nine didn't receive BCS bids. The marquee bowl games are suppose to feature the nation's best squads and it's clear West Virginia doesn't fit in that category.

Perhaps if there was a mandatory cutoff line for all BCS bids (top 12 or top 16?), the overall end-of-season product would be a lot more enjoyable.

Don't let bowls pick teams

At the end of the day, college football bowl games are all about making money, fans understand that. However, it's truly unfair that a team like Michigan or Virginia Tech gets chosen just because it has a fanbase that travels well.

By giving each bowl with an at-large bid attached the chance to pick and choose which school it wants to have, it severely diminishes the BCS' importance. Again, no disrespect to the Wolverines or Hokies, which both had solid seasons, but there are better teams traveling to lesser bowls for an unfair reason.

Boise State head coach Chris Petersen, who obviously has a vested interest as his Broncos were left out of the BCS once again, offered up an intriguing idea. He proposed using a committee format, similar to that of which the NCAA basketball tournament uses, to place teams in their respective bowls.

While there's no perfect plan of attack because a few teams will always feel jilted, at least under this scenario it wouldn't feel like every decision was purely based on greed.