The Bowl Championship Series

It's kind of weird to write about the sports world after writing about something as important as the tsunami, but I'm going to do it anyway. Mainly because I love sports. Is being a sports fan escapism to some extent? Sure. But sports also tap into a part of the human spirit that nothing else quite touches. We, as fans, are drawn to the way that a great player can, at times, take on a kind of transcendental nature and perform at a superhuman level (Peyton Manning this year, Barry Bonds every year). Yet we are also draw to the way that a great team with a great chemistry can execute highly complicated plays with ease and grace. The fact that we are drawn to the interwoven successes of the team and the individual is very much indicative of the American spirit.

Now, that being said, I would like to talk about something in sports daily that completely undercuts all the we love about sports. And that thing is the college football Bowl Championship Series. The most exciting time of the year in any sport is the postseason, when the best teams in the league square off in tournaments of varying structures to determine the year's champion. Every major sport on every level uses some kind of tournament or playoff to determine the champion. Every sport, this is, except for Division I-A NCAA football. Even all of the lower divisions in college football use a playoff system. Instead, they use a system called the Bowl Championship Series - a complex amalgamation of computer rankings, human polls, and math intended to determine who the best two teams in the country are at the end of the season. The top two teams in the BCS rankings play each other for the national championship. There are, of course, many problems with this. This year there were five undefeated teams, three of whom play in major conferences. Auburn, which was undefeated, plays in the Southeastern Conference, the best football conference in the country. Yet they were ranked #3 by the complex system and were left out of the championship game. The top two, Southern California and Oklahoma played in the championship game - a game in which USC destroyed Oklahoma.

I could argue that the other two undefeated teams (Boise St. and Utah) as well as other great teams like Texas (one loss) deserved a shot at the title, as well. But the Auburn situation is inexcusable. They won their consolation bowl game and ended 13-0, the only 13-0 team in history not to win at least a share of the national title. And what do I mean by share of the title? Because of the complexity of the system, there are cases when the BCS and the Associated Press disagree on the #1 team at the end of the year. Last year, for example, the BCS title game winner, LSU, was #2 in the final AP poll behind USC. So what happened? Both teams claimed were declared national champions! Hell, I guess we don't need a World Series or even playoffs in baseball. That would have been great for me this year. The Cardinals, having the best regular season record, could have just been declared champions as soon as the season ended, rather than getting swept in the World Series.

Now it is important to note that another major flaw in the system is that some teams can't win a national championship, no matter what. Since the computer rankings are based heavily on strength of schedule, only teams who play in major conferences realistically have a chance. Of course some of the smaller conference schools could schedule tougher opponents, but not every team can do that. And that ruins the purity of the start of a new season, because a large number of teams know from the outset that they can't win a title, no matter how well they play.

And the driving force behind this entire farce is money. And this blatantly undermines the beauty of college sports, in particular. College athletes aren't getting paid, most of them will never be professional athletes, yet they play with a passion that the pros can't match. Nonetheless it's money that drives a champion that is determined largely by computers. It's money, tied up in bowl sponsors and TV contracts and such, that prevents college football from being able to determine its champion the way it's meant to be determined - on the playing field.