No one's ever happy with the current system when it's their team getting screwed. Before the first BCS rankings have even come out, before the season's even half over, Coach Whiney is already complaining that his team is going to get excluded from the national championship game again. Okay, in fairness, he's complaining that an SEC is team is going to get left out. Hey, jerkface, relax. I know "defense wins championships", but defense is boring to watch unless it's your own team. For the most part, watching an SEC game is like watching paint dry. So the poll voters turn your crappy game off and switch over to watch (the other) USC pummel some poor Pac-10 team, or Texas whoop up on Rice, or Ohio State and Iowa duking it out. Make your games more exciting, more people will watch them, and you'll get more votes. I'm just saying is all.
All that being said, there is a problem with the current system. First off, there's 32 bowls this year. That means 64 teams. There's only 119 Div I-A teams. You have to have 6 wins to even be bowl eligible, right? Someone explain to me how more than half of the teams can have a winning record. By playing Div I-AA teams (of which you can only count one win for the 6 needed)? Ask Colorado, Duke, or NC State (among others) how well that's worked out. A bowl game should be a reward for a well-played season, not an entitlement for simply having a .500 or better season. Besides, didn't the NCAA already have to make an exception for someone last year because not enough of their wins were against IA competition?
Number two, half of the "power" conferences play championship games to determine who will represent the conference in a BCS game. Everyone should do it or no one should. It creates an unlevel playing field which can either boost your public perception or destroy it in an instant. Lat year everyone thought VT was hands down the best ACC team, but they rolled over against FSU in the ACC championship, so FSU was off to the Orange Bowl where they put up a hell of a fight against teh Nittany Lions. The Big East looks like it might have a de facto championship game when WVU and Louisville meet. Same deal with Michigan/Ohio State. At least one team in the SEC is going to get booted by losing their conference championship. Oh the flip side, an SEC win against a quality opponent might convince enough people to bump you up in the polls. Let's say Florida throttles Auburn in that game. Who's going to keep UF ranked below USC when they're busy playing a medicore UCLA? Flip it again. Let's say Texas struggles against Mizzu in the Big XII championship. You have to move them down right?
So instead of having just #1 and #2 play each other (and arguing about who deserves those spots), why don't we take Tubby's advice and have a 4 team playoff. The eliminates the problem Auburn faced of going undefeated and yet still being denied a chance at a title. But what happens when 5 teams go undefeated now? Or one undefeated and 4 1-loss teams that are all basically equal? How do you get to decide who gets to play in those games? You can't (unfortunately) have a selection committee (like the basketball tourney) and devote the entire month of January to a playoff system with 16 teams. Besides, what happens then if, god forbid, a team like GMU pulls off a few big upsets. For argument's sake, let's say Rutgers is in that field of 16 and has a good run and ends up destroying Ohio State in their final game (who's luck runs out for once). Are they the national champions? I say yes. They beat everyone you could throw at them. Except now you have to worry about seeding and homefield advantage and a lot of extra travelling and so forth. A playoff system is probably the most fair and impartial method of deciding a champion because you're allowing a series of games to decide the outcome (skewed obviously by how you set those games up). It of course has it's own problems.
The lesson here is that no system is ever going to be perfect. Let the games run their course and maybe your complaning is all for naught when all the SEC schools lose this week or Ohio State and USC slip up and the championship game is an all-SEC matchup. Accept how the current system is run and deal with it. Or, if it's really that bad, get together with the other like-minded people, come up with a new system, and present it. The BCS changes how it operates nearly every year, there's no reason that your system (or mine) can't be responsible for crowning a national champion. Formulate a plan and account for all the possibilities. This like a coder. Well, this event will probably never happen, so I don't need to need to worry about checking for it or initialize this variable. *ka-blamo* Null Pointer Exception. Segmentation Fault. Core Dump. Whoops. I would love to see some non-power conference teams climb the rankings such that, under the current rules, 5 of them are guaranteed BCS game spots. What happens to the 6 guaranteed spots from the power conferences? There's only 10 teams in the 5 BCS games. I'm 100% sure the BCS committee hasn't accounted for this. Like them, I'm 99.9% sure it's never going to happen. But what if... KABLAMO!!!
All that being said, there is a problem with the current system. First off, there's 32 bowls this year. That means 64 teams. There's only 119 Div I-A teams. You have to have 6 wins to even be bowl eligible, right? Someone explain to me how more than half of the teams can have a winning record. By playing Div I-AA teams (of which you can only count one win for the 6 needed)? Ask Colorado, Duke, or NC State (among others) how well that's worked out. A bowl game should be a reward for a well-played season, not an entitlement for simply having a .500 or better season. Besides, didn't the NCAA already have to make an exception for someone last year because not enough of their wins were against IA competition?
Number two, half of the "power" conferences play championship games to determine who will represent the conference in a BCS game. Everyone should do it or no one should. It creates an unlevel playing field which can either boost your public perception or destroy it in an instant. Lat year everyone thought VT was hands down the best ACC team, but they rolled over against FSU in the ACC championship, so FSU was off to the Orange Bowl where they put up a hell of a fight against teh Nittany Lions. The Big East looks like it might have a de facto championship game when WVU and Louisville meet. Same deal with Michigan/Ohio State. At least one team in the SEC is going to get booted by losing their conference championship. Oh the flip side, an SEC win against a quality opponent might convince enough people to bump you up in the polls. Let's say Florida throttles Auburn in that game. Who's going to keep UF ranked below USC when they're busy playing a medicore UCLA? Flip it again. Let's say Texas struggles against Mizzu in the Big XII championship. You have to move them down right?
So instead of having just #1 and #2 play each other (and arguing about who deserves those spots), why don't we take Tubby's advice and have a 4 team playoff. The eliminates the problem Auburn faced of going undefeated and yet still being denied a chance at a title. But what happens when 5 teams go undefeated now? Or one undefeated and 4 1-loss teams that are all basically equal? How do you get to decide who gets to play in those games? You can't (unfortunately) have a selection committee (like the basketball tourney) and devote the entire month of January to a playoff system with 16 teams. Besides, what happens then if, god forbid, a team like GMU pulls off a few big upsets. For argument's sake, let's say Rutgers is in that field of 16 and has a good run and ends up destroying Ohio State in their final game (who's luck runs out for once). Are they the national champions? I say yes. They beat everyone you could throw at them. Except now you have to worry about seeding and homefield advantage and a lot of extra travelling and so forth. A playoff system is probably the most fair and impartial method of deciding a champion because you're allowing a series of games to decide the outcome (skewed obviously by how you set those games up). It of course has it's own problems.
The lesson here is that no system is ever going to be perfect. Let the games run their course and maybe your complaning is all for naught when all the SEC schools lose this week or Ohio State and USC slip up and the championship game is an all-SEC matchup. Accept how the current system is run and deal with it. Or, if it's really that bad, get together with the other like-minded people, come up with a new system, and present it. The BCS changes how it operates nearly every year, there's no reason that your system (or mine) can't be responsible for crowning a national champion. Formulate a plan and account for all the possibilities. This like a coder. Well, this event will probably never happen, so I don't need to need to worry about checking for it or initialize this variable. *ka-blamo* Null Pointer Exception. Segmentation Fault. Core Dump. Whoops. I would love to see some non-power conference teams climb the rankings such that, under the current rules, 5 of them are guaranteed BCS game spots. What happens to the 6 guaranteed spots from the power conferences? There's only 10 teams in the 5 BCS games. I'm 100% sure the BCS committee hasn't accounted for this. Like them, I'm 99.9% sure it's never going to happen. But what if... KABLAMO!!!
