Instructor: Collin Hull
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As you can see out of the votes most fans want playoffs. Source: SB Nation website, Jan. 31, 2011 23% want a final four, 70% want an 8 to 16-teams playoff, and only 7% want it to stay like it is. Do we really know who the TRUE champion is in college football without a 16-team playoff system? Many fans argue that the teams that are playing in the BCS championship game are not always the one’s that should be in it. The University of Utah was undefeated in 2004 and 2008 along with Boise State University being undefeated in 2006, but because they are in a non-BCS conference they had to watch teams with at least one loss those years play in the championship games instead of them (Procon 4). Most people ask why they didn’t make it those years and the answer is easy, it is because they are not in a BCS region. It does not matter how good you did that year. If you are not in a region like Florida or Oklahoma then you will not play in the BCS championship game. It is that simple. Most fans, players, and coaches are getting sick of this happening and want a playoff system to start so they can see who the REAL champion is. 
University of Utah was the only undefeated team in 2008 but still finished 6th in the BCS rankings. Source: ProCon website, Jan. 31,2011 If the National Football League were to use the BCS style games then how would the Green Bay Packers have won the super bowl this year? The teams that play in the BCS conference get a lot more money then the non-BCS teams. In the book, Bowled Over by Michael Oriard, he shows how a conference like the SEC gets 38.2 million dollars for playing in a bowl game compared to the Mountain West only getting 7.0 million for playing in a bowl game (164, 165). Mike Sorensen says in the Deseret News that the playoffs need to happen. He continues to say that the ideal number for football playoffs is a 16-team playoff (1). He then adds that “eight of them should be automatic and eight should be at-large berths” (1). So the eight automatic berths would be the winners of the six current BCS conferences along with the Mountain West conference and the best team from the remaining conferences, having the final game of that playoff being January tenth. In the Deseret News on November 13, 2010 it was written that it is easy to see how cool it would be if Oregon, Boise State, TCU, and Auburn had a playoff this last year to see the champion instead of going by the almighty BCS (1). Too bad that will not happen thanks to the BCS being in its first year of its television contract with ESPN (SI 2). This contract will run through the 2013 season. Any major changes cannot be made until the 2014 season and into the 2015 bowls. An Anti-BCS association page entitled “Anti-BCS Association (ABA)” was put on Facebook to try and get everybody that is against the BCS and wants to have a playoff system instead to join that group. When that page reaches 20,000 members they will send the executive director of BCS, Bill Hancock, a book of all of the members names and will also contact a news station trying to get them to publicize this petition. It seems there are plenty of people wanting to keep the BCS going but a lot fans want a playoffs system to start. Most of the people wanting the BCS system to stay as it is are the people who make lots of money off of it. The people who are making money off of it are the people who run these bowl games. Those people set up where the teams are going to play and make millions off of it. The problem with how much money they make is they waste it on themselves and give little amounts of money to the schools. What makes this even worse is, if a non BCS team goes undefeated the BCS teams will still play in a higher bowl game and get a lot more money then the non BCS teams. In the past five years, since the addition of a fifth BCS game, the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East Conference have combined for a 3-7 record in BCS games and zero Top 5 finishes in the AP poll. They provided six of the 10 teams that participated in the least-watched BCS game of each season and three of the six teams involved in the BCS games to draw fewer than 70,000 fans (Carey). Yet those two conferences have cashed checks worth $188 million in five years! Meanwhile, the Mountain West and WAC are a combined 4-2 in BCS games with four Top 5 finishes. Even with that record those two leagues have collected just $72.85 million from the BCS (Carey). That’s a $115.15 million gap in five years. Can anyone see something wrong with this? With a playoff system it will not be just the teams coming from the rich conferences making it. Most coaches from college football teams want a playoff system to start as well. Back when coach Pete Carroll was coaching football at the University of Southern California he wanted the BCS to stop and playoffs to be the deciding factor of the Champs. 
Coach Pete Carroll was angry that his team had been dropped in the BCS standing after a win! Source: Bronco talk website, Feb 8, 2011 Coach Kyle Wittingham of the Utah Utes is also on the same page as Pete Carroll along with many other coaches and players in college football. In the book DEATH TO THE BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series, fans can understand why such a backward system exists (Wetzel, Peter, and Passan 32). The book shows what keeps that system alive, and how it can be toppled. The Bowl Championship Series exists because of the men in power. They are drunk on money and influence, and will do whatever it takes to keep both. If that means keeping the BCS ahead of a playoff system that could generate $750 million more than three times the current amount of the bowl systems and fund athletic departments they say, “so be it” (Wetzel, Peter, and Passan 49). Conclusion The problem with all of these arguments of whether there should be a playoff system instead of the Bowl Championship Series is that nothing can actually happen until the 2014-2015 season due to the contract it is under. People can keep complaining but they have a few years until it is even possible for anything to happen. After that contract is up though there will probably be a lot of people wanting a playoff system to take the place of the BCS system. The people who run the BCS system will still more then likely want it to stay like it is, but they will have to put up against all of the people who want a playoff system to be created. It is unknown if this problem that many people have about wanting to get a playoff system instead of the BCS system will ever be solved. It makes sense that every other college sport has playoffs so hopefully one day the football part of college sports realizes that they should do the same. Until then we will be hearing complaints from the many fans, sports cast crews, players, coaches, and reporters about how a playoff system in college football should be created. 
Source: Off Tackle Empire website, April 21, 2011 Works Cited “Anti-BCS Association (ABA)” Facebook.com. N.p. Web. 22 February 2011. “BCS boss: Return to old bowl system more likely than playoff” SI.com. N.p. 10 January 2011. Web. 31 January 2011. Carey, Bryan. “BCS Ranking vs. Playoff system: What is Best for College Football?” Epinions.com. N.p. 9 Jan 2007. Web. 31 January 2011. Dorunda, Anthony. “BCS vs. Playoffs: Which should we have?” Wilkesbeacon.com. N.p. 10 Sept. 2010. Web. 31 January 2011 Oriard, Michael. Bowled Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era. North Carolina, NC: The U of North Carolina P, 2009. Print. “Should college football replace the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) with a playoff system?” ProCon.org. Collegefootball. 1 November 2010. Web. 31 January 2011. Sorensen, Mike. “A plan to create a playoff in college football” Deseretnews.com. N.p. 13 Dec. 2010. Web. 31 January 2011 “This season cries out for a playoff system” Deseretnews.com. N.p. 13 Nov. 2010. Web. 31 January 2011. Wetzel, Dan, Josh Peter, and Jeff Passan. Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series. Gotham Books, 2010. Print. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 297.78 Kb. Share with your friends:
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