To hell with the BCS

This archived article was written by: Devin Latu

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), is supposed to give us an undisputed national champion in college football. But in reality, the whole idea of the BCS is stupid. It’s time to do away with this ridiculous system and start a college football playoff.
The BCS determines the two teams to play in its title game by some bizarre mixture of polls, computer rankings, coin flips and I’m pretty sure a magic 8-Ball. But only rarely is there any agreement on whether the best two teams got in. The system is a mess. A playoff involving the top eight teams in the country would be a huge improvement. There would still be arguments about who would make up that eight, but there shouldn’t be any doubt that the winner of a three-round tournament would be a legit champion. Former Michigan Coach Lloyd Carr once said that a playoff system would be best in college football. Even President Barack Obama has said that he thinks it’s a good idea.
Sports wouldn’t be sports without winning and losing. The trouble with the BCS is that it leaves the so-called winner to be torn apart by people for not really deserving the championship, and it leaves the teams who deserve to play for the title never knowing how good they really are. The most recent example of this is the undefeated Utes getting screwed out of a national title game in the 2008 season. Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff said “From the very first kickoff of the college football season, the BCS uses its monopoly powers to put more than half of the schools at a disadvantage.” Another example of this was in the 2003 season, the BCS “selected” Oklahoma and LSU to play for the national championship. This is even though Oklahoma couldn’t even win its conference title, let alone a national title. And the number one team in 2003, USC, was not even in the picture.
This is hardly one of the bigger problems facing the country right now, but it’s an annoying situation that could be fixed.