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Coming into this college football season, the Bowl Championship Series, in its eighth year of existence, proved to be just as controversial as it has been in the past. Who will play in college football’s championship game? What does college football do?
They can carry on and pray there will be two undefeated teams from major conferences when the regular season ends like Texas and USC in 2005. Well guess what – that didn’t happen again this year and the controversy continues to swirl. Here we sit in December scrutinizing the BCS and wondering what would happen if college football were like every other sport and crowned a national champion in a true playoff atmosphere.
According to http://bcsfootball.com, “The Bowl Championship Series is a five-game arrangement for post-season college football that is designed to match the two top-rated teams in a national championship game and to create exciting and competitive matchups between eight other highly regarded teams in four other bowl games.”
That is what the BCS is supposed to accomplish. While it may create exciting and competitive matchups, it has failed once again to match the two top-ranked teams without controversy.
While BCS administrators sit down and wonder where their flawed system went wrong again, I have a solution. Unlike every other sport, Division 1-A football does not have a playoff system. There are many reasons as to why. Division 1-A football traditionally has always had bowl games, ranging from the Cotton Bowl to the Rose Bowl and now such bowls as the Poinsettia Bowl and the Holiday Bowl. These bowl games are what makes college football and, if there were playoffs, those bowl games would have to be altered. In addition, these bowl games net some serious income for participating schools. Teams in BCS bowl games net between $1 and $15 million just for participating. If there were a playoff system, schools would lose money. I see it now. It is all about money! From my perspective as a college football fan, wouldn’t it be better for the sport if there was an undisputed champion and no controversy when it was all said and done? I think so.
Some years, the BCS system does work, as it did last year when Texas and USC were head-and-shoulders above the college football world. Unfortunately, that is the exception and not the rule. This season there has been one team that has held the number one spot for the entire year, the Ohio State Buckeyes, and for most of the season the No. 2 team has been their rival, the Michigan Wolverines. Those two teams were undefeated going into their last regular season game, there was no problem right? Wrong. The problem is these two Big Ten squads play each other in the last game of the season and someone had to lose. The game proved to be an instant classic, and Ohio State came out on top with a 42-39 victory at home in front of over 100,000 fans. Entering a raucous environment and going toe-to-toe against the top team in the country, Michigan was rewarded and was still the second-place team in the polls, until this week.
Let’s flash forward to today. The bowls are set and Michigan is not in the national championship game. The SEC champion Florida Gators are in. What changed? Granted, Florida won two games since Michigan’s loss, including the SEC Championship over Arkansas. What happened, did people forget about Michigan? Of course they did. If Michigan had played against Ohio State this past weekend, there is no question there would be a rematch for the BCS Championship. Now that leads me to my next point.
The voters in the polls did not want to see a rematch, so they put Florida ahead of Michigan in the polls and let the BCS do its so-called “magic.” While Florida is a worthy candidate to challenge Ohio State in the national championship game, as they only suffered one loss in the toughest conference in football and played the toughest schedule in the country, the outcome is still questionable. Again my point is to avoid the controversy; a playoff system should be put in place to crown a national champion.
While it may not happen for a while, college football will eventually come to its senses and implement a playoff system. Whether it is the top four, six, or eight teams, the teams who would play in the national championship game would play a maximum of three games. Instead of sitting around like Ohio State has since Nov. 18 and waiting for the BCS Championship game on Jan. 8, games could be played and college football would have a real champion. There would still be the excitement and intense competition the BCS creates, but there would be no controversy.
Bangor Daily News