Understanding College Football

I like Barack Obama. I voted for Barack Obama, but Barack Obama doesn't know college football. When Barry said (I'm going to start pushing early for a simple way of differentiating between good Obama ideas and bad Obama ideas. Good Obama ideas will be prefaced with "Barrack Said" and bad Obama ideas will be profaced with "Barry said". Agreed? Good) "I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on (having a play-off)" he clearly demonstrated that he doesn't know many college football fans. BCS vs. Playoff has become the Astro Turf vs. Natural Grass of the new millennium.

If we really want to get serious about fixing, refining, or replacing the current system we need to first establish clearly the essence of College Football. The structure of college football should enhance that essence. A good way to to that is by identifying the things we like and dislike about the BCS, and then divining some general principals from that.

Good BCS

1) The Current bowl system provides enough rewards to keep all 120 teams motivated during the season. Under a playoff season there would be at most eight post-season playoff spots available, and only a small percentage of teams would have a chance at earning a playoff spot. So what would the other teams play for? There are currently 34 bowl games, which means there are 68 available post season spots, which is enough to keep all but the worst teams motivated through-out the season. Maybe the International Bowl doesn’t mean much to 118teams, but it means something to the two teams that are in it. Also, think about the economic benifett of 34 games, over the seven games we would have in a playoff system.

2) The BCS has preserved the importance of the conferences. Unlike all other major sports in the United States, college football is a regional sport. Those that point out the faults of the BCS conference fail to recognize this. Steve Spurrier once said he cares more about winning the SEC than the BCS. Spurrier was demonstrating one of the essential truths of College Football. National Championships are nice, but what drives the sport is a passion for being the biggest kid on the block, to be able to lord your supremacy over your friend sand neighbors. Who cares if your team is better than a team 1,000 miles away?


3) The BCS has also expanded the interest in regular season football. While Conferences still play prominent roles in the BCS, winning a conference championship only gets you into one of five games. To make the Championship Game a team has to out rank all by one other team. This encourages fans to not only watch their team, but to watch other teams in other conferences. This year a loss for Penn State was a victory for Florida and Texas. For that reason the national TV ratings for the College Football are up under the BCS system.


4) It does create a great game at the end of the season. Under the old system we never would have had Texas vs. USC, or Miami vs. Ohio St.

Bad BCS

1) The BCS is a compromise system that uses both polls and conference results to determine who plays in the big bowl games. This situation led to Oklahoma playing in the BCS championship game despite loosing to Nebraska in the Big 12Championship game in 2003. It’s not important if Oklahoma deserved to play in that game or not. In fact it’s impossible to determine objectively if Oklahoma deserved to be there because the standards used by the BCS system contradicted each other.

2) A lot of bowl games just don’t mean much to College Football as a whole.

3) The Polls are inadequate. The Polls currently used in the BCS don't have reasonable standards for membership and rules of conduct. Pollsters should have the knowledge and time to properly evaluate up to 120 teams every week, and procedures need to be in place to insure they are performing their job with a minimum level of competency and care.

4) Nobody understands the computer polls. When done correctly, advanced statistical models really do a good job of identifying a team’s quality; you just have to have the right statistics to do so. There is currently too much mistrust of the computer polls right now, because no one has taken the time to understand them and explain them to the coaches, media, and fans. Bye the way, shame on you Pete Carroll for not understanding the computers. You're college football coach, its part of your job!

5) The conference formats are not the same. The fact the conferences very greatly in quality and format makes it very difficult to compare teams who have not faced each other.

6) The BCS has two sometimes competing goals; one, to determine a champion, and two to put together a fiscally successful exhibition. Combining this with the bowl alliances creates some un-compelling match-ups.

Is there anything I missed? Is there anything to be added to "Good BCS" and "Bad BCS"