The bcs: The cruel, twisted anticlimax to an otherwise perfect game

English 1000+71

December 8, 2010

Maxwell Philbrook

Butler University is small, private institution of fewer than four thousand undergraduates located on the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana. Duke University is similar to Butler in that it, too, is a small, private school in Durham, North Carolina, and has fewer than sixty-five hundred undergraduates. The two schools were forever linked on April 5, 2010, when their men’s basketball teams met in the NCAA national championship game at the culmination of its annual postseason tournament. As the similarities of the schools could suggest, the game was an intense, entertaining, and close contest, with Duke barely edging out Butler by two points to claim the title. What made history, ironically, was the closeness itself.

Duke won its fourth championship in its tenth appearance in the final. Butler was making its debut.

Duke’s basketball coach is Hall-of-Famer Mike Krzyzewski, regarded as one of the best basketball coaches ever and in his 31^st season at the helm of the Blue Devils. Butler’s coach is 34-year-old Brad Stevens, in just his 4^th season in charge of the Bulldogs.

Duke is a historical college basketball giant. Butler is not. And yet, they played an intense, entertaining, and close contest in the 2010 NCAA championship game.

This incredible mismatch was made possible by the annual phenomenon known nationwide as March Madness: the NCAA basketball tournament. The 65 (now 68) teams invited create drama and entertainment watched by non-sports fans as well as diehards, and has made its way into American culture as one of the premiere sporting events today. Other popular ones, such as the Super Bowl, the World Series, etc., all have a common denominator: they are all part of (and usually the finale of) a tournament. Most sports, professionally and collegiately, have found that a postseason tournament is the single best way to crown a champion at the end of a season. It incorporates fairness in its contests by determining winners on the field, and it provides drama and entertainment for all fans.

However, one sporting giant has yet to apply such a system: Division 1 college football. College football uses for its postseason an outdated system of unassociated, unrelated games called bowls that are largely ceremonial and do not join each other to make a tournament bracket. One of the bowls is designated as the national championship game by an organization called the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, and its participants are selected not by victories on the field but by a complicated rankings formula off of it. While NCAA basketball continues to bask in the glow of tremendous stories and drama produced by March Madness, and while the NFL takes millions of dollars every year to the bank from playoffs and Super Bowl revenue, the NCAA elects to utilize its outdated and unpopular system year after year. This is why that despite its profound success historically, financially, and culturally, NCAA Division 1-A football continues to cost itself all credibility by failing to employ a postseason tournament to determine its annual champion.

In late 2004, the Auburn Tigers, despite their perfect 12-0 record at the time, were denied an invitation to the 2005 Orange Bowl, that year’s designated national championship game. This decision caused further questioning of an already controversial system. The BCS, is the system employed by college football to determine the national champion in lieu of a traditional postseason tournament and is self-described as “designed to ensure that the two top-rated teams in the country meet in the national championship game, and to create exciting and competitive matchups among eight other highly regarded teams in four other bowl games.” Auburn University may have disagreed with that sentiment in 2004.

This instance is just one of many that has occurred since the institution of the BCS in 1998. With each winter seemingly comes a new controversy regarding inclusion and exclusion of schools into the championship game, causing college football fans (including public figures) frustration unknown to any other sporting fan base. These fans claim to be robbed of the quality and entertainment of the postseason the sport deserves.

Among those upset are some certain lawmakers, from Texas congressman Joe Barton to President Barack Obama. “It’s like communism,” Barton said. “It can’t be fixed” (Litke 1). Obama’s administration also began looking into possible antitrust violations of the BCS in January 2010, following quotes from the President back in 2008 regarding his desire for a playoff. And of course, the common fan: a November 2009 poll conducted by Sports Illustrated shows that 80.9% of college football fans would prefer some sort of playoff system over the current or pre-BCS system (Staples 1).

However, despite the numerous issues the BCS has in its system, it is certainly not without its share of supporters. BCS backers claim that the system works because it guarantees a matchup each season of the top two teams in the country. They are satisfied with the results that the BCS arrives at each year in early December. They also will claim that the system is irreplaceable due to a number of obstacles a true playoff would bring. For instance, supporters of the current system assert that a playoff will ruin the sports tradition of bowls, be too excessive in terms of extending the season’s length for the players, and interfere with class work on top of the already busy schedules the student-athletes have. While all valid points, plenty of counterargument can be made. For example, Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News recently wrote an opinion piece defending the BCS, and citing these reasons why an alternate (i.e. a playoff) won’t work (Kawakami 1). Kawakami cites many of these aforementioned difficulties with a playoff. He opens by saying that a playoff system would completely devalue the college football regular season, which can be easily disproved. BCS supporters love that the regular season is a weekly elimination test, with one slip up costing a team the entire season. A playoff accomplishes this exact amount of abrupt disposal, only in an organized, controlled manner and in an environment (in terms of the participants and the chronology) more appropriate for such a do-or-die setting. A team should be eliminated upon a loss at the end of the season, not the beginning. Kawakami continues to cite excessive length of the season as a reason to avoid a playoff. Many believe that these amateur-level athletes should not be subjected to professional-level work. These people likely never played college football. If these people were to watch two-a-days during training camp under the hot August sun, they would quickly realize that these athletes are of the highest caliber physically, conditioned to be football players of any classification. But giving these arguers the benefit of the doubt, the numbers too will disprove their theory. The current maximum amount of games a team can play in Division 1-A is 14 (Twelve regular season games, a conference championship game, and a bowl). For all teams besides the tournament qualifiers, the maximum would remain at 14. In a 16-team playoff bracket, the maximum would increase to 17 for the tournament qualifiers. However, only two teams could possibly reach a 17^th game, and if a championship game qualifier did not participate in a conference championship game, the max is reduced to 16. In addition, only eight teams (the eight first-round winners) could advance past the 14-game threshold. So yes, perhaps a handful of extra games could be added on to a championship team’s schedule; however, it is hardly a mandatory month-long addition every team in the country would have to make.

Kawakami also wonders if the student-athletes will have enough time for studies with final exams during December. The current bowl system avoids this drama by waiting until the week after finals to begin its season. There is no reason that the playoff couldn’t do the same: take a two week hiatus for finals following the conclusion of the regular season, followed by a four week playoff upon resumption (the same length the current bowl system uses for all of its games). The two weeks will adequately allow for studies as well as rest and recovery for a perhaps extended playoff run.

One final argument supporters of the BCS will lean on is that a playoff called for by so many fans won’t actually fix the problem. It will just extend the current dilemma, they say, because no matter how many teams would be included in a tournament, there will still be a “first” team left out of the bracket, leading many to complain that the playoff system is still too exclusive. While one look to the seemingly never-ending calls for expansion to the massive NCAA basketball tournament may render this semi-true, this argument can be nixed by providing just one alternative suggestion.

Dan Wetzel is an award-winning sportswriter for Yahoo! and is the co-author of the book Death to the BCS, which as the title suggests, explains why the BCS is a poor product and not only suggests its “death” but offers an incredibly intriguing alternative. His plan, which he publishes annually in an article in the magazine Sports Illustrated, describes a sixteen-team bracket to produce the champion (Wetzel 1). Unique to Wetzel’s plan is the inclusion of all 11 Division 1 conference champions, despite allegations that the conferences outside the “major” BCS conferences (Big 10, Pacific-10, Southeastern, Big East, Big 12, and Atlantic Coast) are inferior. Wetzel defends this decision by stating, “[the small conference champions’] presence is paramount to maintaining the integrity and relevancy of the regular season. Teams that put together exceptional season deserve to be rewarded.” Essentially, he argues that pitting a mammoth number 1 seed against a small Sun Belt champion is a de facto bye, and therefore the only harm that could come from denying that one seed a true bye is an upset, which on its rare occurrences would provide a Cinderella storyline equal to or greater than the ones created in the NCAA basketball tournament. The good coming from their inclusion is, of course, the financial and emotional boons that would come from qualification, as well as national recognition and something of substance to strive for during the Mid-American Conference regular season.

After the 11 champions are determined, a basketball-style selection committee would use their expertise and supplemental statistics to determine the 5 “at large” participants. The four-round bracket would be played at campus sites until the final, providing both a traditional collegiate feel to the games as well as an obvious incentive to strive for a higher seed during the regular season. The tournament would take place in late December and early January, as the current bowl system does; the playoff would be conducted in a manner similar to the ones used by non-Division 1 NCAA football, which accommodate for its participants’ finals schedules and their amateur status in regard to season length. Finally, instead of effectively killing off the current bowl structure, Wetzel sees no reason it can’t continue as it presently does: independent postseason games unrelated to the championship. The current bowls can continue operating in identical fashion they do today, without the 16 teams selected for the tournament. They will still make money as long as there is a demand for football on television (there will be) and, as Wetzel puts it, “The Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day afternoon? It should be played forever.”

So how would this all look? Using 2010 as an example, the BCS Championship game features Auburn and Oregon. Wetzel’s 2010 tournament would have these two schools as one and two seeds, respectively, followed by the likes of Ohio State, Wisconsin, TCU, Stanford, Michigan State, Virginia Tech, Arkansas, and others that all had national title hopes in the past two or three weeks. All of these teams could potentially win a tournament like this talent-wise, but the current BCS freezes out even these top-notch teams for exclusively the top two. Of course, in Wetzel’s tournament, a dilemma arises when deciding the final at large seeds. In this year’s version, Boise State is noticeably absent. Unfortunately for Boise, their loss at Nevada cost them the Western Athletic Conference championship and was even substantial enough to cost them an at large bid. No one, including Wetzel, would argue that Boise State is definitely unworthy. In all likelihood, they could easily win such a tournament. But the line does need to be drawn somewhere and although this model still excludes some teams, including 16 and leaving out number 17 is far more preferable to leaving out team number 3. This is a critical part of any playoff plan, one that will be cited to the death by BCS-backers. Even if the playoffs were implemented, they’d say, people would be upset about being left out. Of course, the only way to avoid this is to include each and every team, which everyone would agree would be a joke roughly equivalent to six-year-old park district soccer. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, there does need to be a cutoff. Currently, the BCS is technically a two-team bracket, excluding the third team and all followers. No bracket, whether one four, eight, twelve, sixteen, or any number of teams greater than two, alleviates this dilemma; however, simply by adding teams to the bracket, the problem at hand becomes less significant.

College football maintains yearly a strong tradition, deeply embedded in American culture from the heart of the South in Alabama to the snowy fields in Michigan, from old Western success in southern California to newfound glory hidden in Idaho. It is something that American citizens feel passionate about, care deeply for, and have a vested interest in. Such a radical upheaval of its procedures is not a simple task nor is it a task that can be catered to everyone’s preferences. But it simply cannot continue to be argued that the current system in place is adequate and acceptable. The corrupt, exclusive ways of the BCS are an injustice to the game and its fans alike, a corporate mechanism run by the elite in the field in place to make a higher profit at the expense of the quality of the product. Sure, a playoff system would be far from perfect. It would have initial kinks to work out which would certainly produce venomous criticism and opposition. But if such a system were to be carefully planned and subsequently installed, those not in favor of it would have no choice but to accept college football’s entrance into the 21^st century. Such a system, executed correctly, would bring fairness, objectivity, and much needed modernization. Despite the quality of the game, singular, that the BCS produces, its methods and procedures counter all of it and cost NCAA football all credibility. A playoff would restore all of that without compromising any of the on-field quality this country has fallen in love with for over a century.

Everyone has passion for his or her school. There’s nothing like watching the young men representing one’s school take the field, ready to defend their name, their colors, their university. In December 2010, the year ends with those men being made aware of their fate on a selection special on television. Imagine a year when that decision is made on the 50-yard line. Those same young men are running out onto the field with the same passion and energy, ready to fight. The only difference?

It’s playoff time.
Works Cited
"2010 NCAA FCS FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP BRACKET." NCAA.com. NCAA, 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2010. .
"At a Glance." About Butler. Butler University. Web. 6 Dec. 2010. .

"The BCS Is ..." Bowl Championship Series, 22 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. .

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Duke Sports Information. "Mike Krzyzewski Bio." GoDuke.com. Duke University, 30 June 2005. Web. 6 Dec. 2010. .
ESPN.com News Services. "BCS under Scrutiny from Captiol Hill." ESPN College Football. ESPN, 30 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. .
Kawakami, Tim. "My Semi-annual, Always Unpopular Defense of the BCS." Talking Points. San Jose Mercury News, 27 Nov. 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2010. .
Litke, Jim. "BCS Is Like Communism: Joe Barton NBC Dallas-Fort Worth." Nbcdfw.com. NBC, 6 Jan. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2010. .
"NCAA HISTORY." NCAA.com. NCAA, 2010. Web. 06 Dec. 2010. .
"Quick Facts about Duke." Resources for Media. Duke University, 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2010. .
Staples, Andy. "Survey Shows Where Fans of All Conferences Agree, Disagree." SI.com. Sports Illustrated, 19 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2010. .

Wetzel, Dan. "College Football Playoff Plan." Rivals.com. Yahoo!, 6 Dec. 2010. Web. 6 Dec. 2010. .

Wetzel, Dan. "The Wetzel Plan." Rivals.com. Yahoo!, 27 Nov. 2007. Web. Nov. 2010. .

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