Why the BCS is as Close to Perfect as Were Going to Get

It’s that time of year again, when college football goes bowling. With bowling comes the inevitable complaining about which team got screwed out of which bowl. And of course the big complaint is who should be playing in the National Title game.

This year we are giving the Big XII Champion Texas Longhorns against the SEC Champion Alabama Crimson Tide. A match-up of the two best and undefeated teams team in the nation, all for the undisputed national championship. But as it happens so often in college football we have multiple undefeated teams that all feel that they should be playing for the title, this year those teams being Cincinnati, Boise State, and TCU. So inevitably with this controversy comes the discussion of a college football playoff.

I hate to break it to most of you but a playoff in college football just is not viable as you would like to think it is. Although yes there are some viable playoff systems that have been put worth much like Dan Wetzel’s on his yahoo.com blog (that article can be viewed here ). The problem comes into play with one big thing, Money. With the bowl system as it is right now there are millions upon millions of dollars changing hands with each game, between the bowl game and the city, and the teams. You also cannot forget the millions upon millions of dollars in television contracts that are at stake with the bowl games as well. Anyone who would be at odds to lose any money at all has been and will continue to fight a playoff system.

There is also a point of tradition with several of these bowls, the conference tie-ins that bowls like the Rose Bowl carry go back decades and will not be given up easily not just by the bowl, but by the conferences affiliated with that bowl and more than likely the schools that are in the conferences. Now not every bowl has a history like the Rose Bowl, but how about the Sugar bowl and their yearly visit from the SEC champion, or the Cotton Bowl, yes it’s not a BCS bowl but their tie-ins are as old as the Rose Bowl’s.

There is also the aspect of fairness for each of the schools involved. In Wetzel’s column he states that for full fairness the conference champions of each conference no matter how lowly should be included in the playoff. He is right it is the only fair way, but you cannot sit there and tell me that Troy actually has a chance to beat Alabama in Tucaloosca. I am a firm believer in the any given Sunday (or in this case Saturday) argument but this late in the season a team like Troy is not, and I emphatically say NOT, going to beat Alabama. A playoff system would just be wasting my time with a game like that and I would not watch, there real interesting game would come in the lower seeds but that would be expected. Then what do you say to teams like Nebraska or Oregon State who had a much better resume for a title game but are not in because every conference champ has to be.

The BCS is the fairest system we have right now. Does it favor the power conference teams, yes, and as well it should. In theory these teams are playing the toughest opponents week in and week out. And even in cases where they are playing the weaker teams in their conferences the level of athlete should be superior then most if not all of the players on a team like Troy. However the BCS is not perfect, but there is no perfect system for college football as it is set up right now. But the BCS is as close is were going to get, because I’ll say this much I would rather have the system that is set up right now instead of the split national titles that we had in the 90’s.