BCS Controversy: A Perfectly Imperfect System

This season, more than any I can remember in recent history, many college football fans are upset by the BCS rankings and the system in general.

LSU, who is unanimously ranked No. 1, will be facing off with Alabama in the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans.

Many fans around the nation, especially in Oklahoma, feel that Oklahoma State was snubbed from the game due to a ridiculously biased ranking system.

The drama surrounding the rankings prompted University of California Santa Barbara professor Matthew Potoski to conduct a study on bias in the USA Today Coaches’ Poll, a major factor in the overall BCS rankings.

The study showed that there is definitely bias in favor of coaches’ teams, conferences and opponents that ultimately have an effect on the rankings.

The research also found that public disclosure of the final regular season ballots has an impact on coaches’ voting. 

The practice of disclosing the final regular season votes started in 2005 and the professor states that a study of the pre-2005 ballots suggests that bias could be reduced if ballots were disclosed publicly each and every week of the season.

Another problem with putting so much weight into the coaches’ votes is the fact that most coaches do not get to watch many games each week and thus base their opinions on gut feelings, public perceptions and media coverage.

While margin of victory is not supposed to hold much weight in the BCS rankings, a coach’s view of a team is definitely going to be swayed if all he sees is highlights or scores.

Injuries, bad calls, etc. are not always taken into account before votes are cast.

In other words, it doesn’t really matter what happens during the course of a game. It only matters what the final results are.

How do you fix a system that has no way of eliminating bias and completely subjective voting?

Unless you take the coaches or individuals with direct ties to specific teams out of it, you don’t have a chance. One possibility is a completely impartial committee appointed by the NCAA to rank teams.

These rankings combined with the computer ratings of each team would give you final rankings similar to the current BCS.

The advantage to an impartial committee is that they could watch the games rather than depend on the highlights and bias of media outlets. 

They could discuss the games and take into account intricacies such as key injuries, bad calls, field conditions, etc.

Would it be a perfect system? Probably not.

Would it beat what we currently have? Without a doubt.

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