A Modest Proposal to Improve the BCS

Like it or not, the BCS system is going to be around for a long time. All playoff proposals are doomed to failure because they pressure the BCS conferences to relinquish their power and distribute revenue more equitably to the non-BCS conferences.

Rather than agitating for the abolition of a system we are stuck with, wouldn't it be more productive for the college football commenting blogosphere to apply its collective intelligence to improving the BCS in ways that don't threaten the income of the BCS conferences?

Here's an example. What if Division 1-A created a one round mini-tournament in the middle of the season that includes the top 24 ranked teams? It would not be a playoff, or a substitute for a playoff, just a unique one round tournament with no subsequent rounds.

The week following the tournament, all teams would resume their normal schedules. All that changes is the BCS rankings, based on the results of the games just like any other week.

To do this, all 119 teams would have to permanently schedule their bye week for week eight, the week after the first BCS standings are released. The top 24 teams in the BCS rankings would at that time be divided into four six team brackets:

Bracket 1 Teams ranked 1-6
Bracket 2 Teams ranked 7-12
Bracket 3 Teams ranked 12-18
Bracket 4 Teams ranked 19-24

The six teams in each bracket would play three football games, seeded by ranking. The higher ranked team would get home field. Bracket 4 would play on Thursday night, Bracket 3 would play on Friday night and Brackets 1 and 2 would play on Saturday, with the starting times of the games staggered from Noon until 8 PM.

Here's what the tournament brackets would have looked like this year based on the first BCS rankings released after week seven:

Bracket 4 Thursday night

24. Cal at 19. South Florida
23. Ball State at 20. North Carolina
22. Vanderbilt at 21. Wake Forest

Bracket 3 Friday night

18. Michigan State at 13. Ohio State
17. VTech at 14. Utah
16. Kansas at 15. Boise State

Bracket 2 Saturday

10. Oklahoma State at 9. Georgia 1PM
11. Missouri at 8. BYU 1PM
12. LSU at 7. Texas Tech 4PM

Bracket 1 Saturday

4. Oklahoma at 3. Penn State 4PM
5. USC at 2. Alabama 8PM
6. Florida at 1. Texas 8PM


This top 24 interconference tournament would great for fans and would give the sport a big event to market.

While it would not resolve the fundamental issue of the undisputed championship, it would correct some basic flaws in the BCS system in the following ways:

1) Gives the fans and pollsters an opportunity to see all the top ranked teams play against each other when, unlike the bowl games, the results still have a meaningful impact of the race for the top two spots in the BCS rankings.

2) Also, compared to the bowl season, the matchups would be strictly logical and not skewed by conference bowl tie-ins. This is one of the biggest complaints about the BCS and the bowl system.

3) Ensures that all ranked teams play another ranked team at least once during the regular season, or if they already play ranked teams, it adds one more ranked team to their schedule.

4) Allows BCS conference teams with unintentionally weak schedules a chance to move up in the polls and improve their strength of schedule for the computers.

5) Forces BCS teams who intentionally schedule a lot of cupcakes to face stronger competition.

6) From a non-BCS conference point of view, it gives ranked non-BCS teams a chance to prove themselves against better competition, thus greatly improving their chances for BCS busting bowl bids.

7) From a BCS conference point of view, it would potentially weed out the non-BCS conference "pretenders." Teams like last year's undefeated Hawaii and this year's undefeated Boise State are always one of the main sources of anti-BCS whining at the end of every year. This would alleviate that.

8) Provides 12 high quality inter-conference games. Many people want to see these games played on a regular basis (with all the wonderful bragging rights and arguments that would ensue).

9) Would improve the quality of the polling in two ways: first, most voting coaches would actually be able to watch the ranked teams play for the first time and second, it would be helpful to the other pollsters to see all the top teams play against each other consecutively. This might mitigate the "lose early, win late" factor in the end of year beauty contests by setting a mid-season reference point.


Looking at the 2008 season in hindsight, the tournament would have provided the following specific benefits:

1) Would have given USC an opportunity to get back in the NC race by playing Alabama.

2) Would have probably made it so we didn't have to depend on Iowa to keep Penn State from staking a claim on the NC game when their strength of schedule was really too light to justify it. Of course, PSU might have beaten Oklahoma, thus removing any doubts and argument as to their legitimacy.

3) Might have given Texas the extra quality win they needed to get into the NC game.

4) Would have provided four non-BCS teams, Utah, BYU, Boise State and Ball State, an opportunity to prove themselves against better competition, greatly increasing their opportunity to move up to a more meaningful spot in the final rankings.

5) Most importantly, it would probably have answered one of the big questions of the 2008 season: "Are Big 12 offenses really that good or are Big 12 defenses just lousy?" The cumulative interconference results and statistics from the tournament in this regard would have had a big impact on voting at the end of the season.