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BCS must be changed
By Adam Czech
 Adam Czech -- Staff Column
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Now is about the time of year that we college football fans start to feel the itch.
We know that New Year’s Day and the smorgasbord of big time college football bowl games that accompany it are just around the corner. Normally, all of our focus would be on the football field. We would live and die with each play, knowing that one mishap can cost our favorite team a shot at the national championship.
But recently our focus has been diverted from on-field heroics to something else: bickering.
The introduction of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in 1998 has brought more uproar to college football than a Republican at a Paul Wellstone memorial.
The BCS is a complex series of rankings that tries to determine who the top two teams in college football are at the end of the regular season so they can square off in a bowl game (either the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl or Orange Bowl) to determine the national champion. The BCS bases its rankings on average position in the USA Today/Coaches and AP Media polls, strength of schedule, losses, the number of wins over quality opponents and a ranking based on various college football experts.
The end result is usually chaos. Most of the country thinks Team A should be in the National Championship game when Team B makes it instead. Last year Team B was represented by Nebraska who was demolished in the national championship tilt by Miami, 37-14.
Currently, the 2002 version of the BCS has Oklahoma, Ohio State and Miami ranked No. 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Yes, that’s right, if the season ended today Miami would not be worthy of a chance to play for the national championship even though they are the defending national champions, have not lost a game in over two years and feature a quarterback (Ken Dorsey) and a running back (Willis McGahee) who could finish first and second in the Heisman voting.
If you think this sounds chaotic now, wait until all three teams are undefeated at the end of the season. Or if only one team remains perfect and several bunch up with only one defeat. Then the real chaos will begin.
The solution to all of this mayhem is simple, actually. The BCS has a place in college football, but not to simply determine the top two teams. Instead, it should be used to determine the top eight teams for a national playoff. Sure, the teams that end up No. 9 and 10 will probably whine about being left out but no system will ever be perfect.
College football can also continue to rake in the cash off these games by getting a national sponsor for the first round of the tournament (say the AT&T Final Eight or the Pizza Hut quarterfinals) and calling the two semifinal games and the championship game the Fed-Ex Orange Bowl, the Tostito’s Fiesta Bowl and the Rose Bowl, just like it is now.
Meaningless bowls such as the Humanitarian Bowl, the Music City Bowl and the Motor City Bowl can still continue to be played. College football won’t have to worry about these bowls losing any of their gusto due to the new playoff system because nobody cared about these bowls in the first place. When’s the last time you and your buddies got together to take in the drama of the Insight.com Bowl, anyway?
As much sense as this format seems to make, don’t hold your breath on seeing it actually happen. The NCAA is not known for doing things that actually make sense, especially when they think their pocket books may be threatened.
For now anyway, let the bickering begin.
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