How the BCS Screwed Up

By David Williams
For Outsports.com

(David Williams, 33, was a linebacker for the University of Arkansas in 1988 and '89. His biggest collegiate highlight was getting three sacks in a 1989 game against the University of Houston.)

The world of college football was stunned on Sunday as the new No. 1 team in both the AP and the Coaches Poll was snubbed by the BCS Championship Game, with Oklahoma and LSU selected to play for the national title.

You have the national championship being played by one team that did not even win its conference, and another team that had a strength of schedule ranking of #115 at one point in the season. Only the Bowl Championship Series could destroy the credibility of its own national championship game in the way we witnessed this past weekend.

We now have basically two games being played in January to determine who wins the national championship. Oklahoma and LSU will square off for the BCS national championship game, while USC will face off against Michigan in the Rose Bowl. If Southern California wins the Rose Bowl, the Trojans will become the Associated Press as well as the “People’s Champion.” No No. 1 ranked team has gone into a bowl game, and then been dropped from the top spot after winning its bowl game.  If USC wins the Rose Bowl, it will indeed finish as No. 1, handing them a share of the national championship. But, due to contractual obligations between the BCS series and the American Football Coaches Association, the coaches’ poll is required to rank the winner of the BCS Championship game as the No. 1 team. If USC wins the Rose Bowl, its will share the national championship with the winner of the Sugar Bowl, creating the very situation that the Bowl Championship Series was created to avoid. 

How did all of this happen? Going into this past weekend’s games, everyone assumed that if the Trojans won their game against Oregon State, they were a sure pick for the Sugar Bowl to face off against Oklahoma. No one was even considering that LSU would have a chance, unless USC lost its game. Then, mayhem erupted. USC convincingly whipped Oregon State, and LSU handled Georgia in the SEC Championship Game. But Oklahoma was thoroughly manhandled by Kansas State, 35-7, resulting in a drop from the No.1  spot in both polls this weekend to No. 3. But then the computers took over.

When Syracuse handed Notre Dame a convincing defeat, enough points were deducted from USC’s BCS rankings to allow LSU to overtake USC by 0.16 of a point. This is where I start to have a real problem with this system. USC went out and  changed its non-conference schedule to reflect what a national powerhouse team’s schedule should look like. USC secured non-conference games with BYU, Hawaii, Notre Dame, and Auburn. Going into the season back in August, many viewed USC’s non-conference schedule to be one of the toughest in the nation, and it is not fair to punish USC because their non-conference foes failed to meet the standards that everyone thought they would entering into the season.

Meanwhile, LSU stacked its non-conference schedule with the likes of Arizona, Louisiana-Monroe, Western Illinois, and Louisiana Tech. Kansas State’s Bill Snyder has repeatedly been criticized and punished by the BCS for his refusal to toughen Kansas State’s non-conference schedule since the beginning of the BCS, but then the BCS rewards LSU with a shot at a national championship, with a non-conference schedule that was ranked 115 in the nation, weaker than Kansas State’s non-conference schedule.

Evidently, LSU fans also believed that their non-conference schedule was extremely weak, or they would not have acted as so shamelessly last weekend. LSU fans sent a signed bulk e-mail out to all of the Associated Press pollsters, including myself, lobbying us to vote LSU ahead of Southern California in the AP poll. SEC Commissioner Mike Slive’s offices were overrun with e-mails and phone calls from the pollsters last week, demanding that the SEC do something about such behavior. Slive told the media that he would have the incident investigated, but he told us that unless school officials were behind the bulk e-mail, there was nothing he could do. He said he found the actions to be distasteful, but he pointed out that the SEC Conference could not control their fans actions on something like this.

All I am going to say on that subject is SHAME ON YOU, LSU fans. You have shown the nation the type of fans that college football does NOT need. I do not really have a problem with Oklahoma still playing for the national championship, as its strength of schedule ranked at No. 10 in the nation, and they played a non-conference schedule that has been consistently toughened up since Coach Bob Stoops took over the Oklahoma job, playing Alabama, UCLA, and Fresno State this year, with two out of the three playing in bowl games. I also do not believe it is fair to punish a team for losing a conference championship game, when only two conferences have such a game. But I also do not believe that a team should be rewarded for that win either. Conference championship games should not be allowed to factor into the final BCS rankings until all conferences have them. 

So, what can be done to correct the situation? Unfortunately for USC fans, nothing in time to correct the injustices they rightfully feel they were handed. Pac-10 Commission Tom Hansen showed frustration with the BCS, as this makes the second time in three years that the PAC-10 has been overlooked, and shunned by the BCS. Oregon was deprived a shot at the national championship in 2001, and now USC is suffering the same fate. “It is most unfortunate that the other elements of the BCS standings have overruled the two polls and taken USC out of the national championship game which the Pac-10 has consistently supported,” said Hansen. He finished the statement with some ominous words. “The PAC-10 conference athletic directors and officials will review this year’s results and determine whether support for the BCS series will be withdrawn or not.”

BCS Chairman Mike Tranghese admitted on Sunday that the BCS system “will have to be examined.” Basically, I believe this latest snafu by the BCS has signaled the beginning of the end of the BCS. The BCS contract expires in 2005, and at least the Pac-10 is signaling that it will not support the renewal of the BCS, and other conferences are starting to express displeasure. And with the Big East losing their national powerhouse teams, many feel that the Big East does not deserve an automatic bid anymore. If the BCS is going to survive, significant revisions are going to have to be made, and Tranghese knows it. The BCS commissioners are schedule to meet in Phoenix in April.

Revisions are already under way to open the BCS up for the non-BCS conferences, and Tranghese indicated that the newest wrinkles in the BCS will have to be discussed and dealt with if the BCS is to survive. College football fans are increasingly showing displeasure with the system. In a poll done by CBS Sports over the weekend, 61% of those questioned believe that the Rose Bowl will be the “national championship” bowl game they will be watching, while only 20% said they would be watching the Sugar Bowl.

The poll reflects opinions that coaches have been voicing for a couple of years now, that a playoff system using the current bowl system would be the best option to determine who wins the national championships in the future. There are enough bowl games out there to restructure a playoff system using the bowl games. To me, it seems that the rewards of playing in a bowl game has been diminished by the creation of so many bowl games that teams who are 6-6 on the year are now considered “bowl-eligible.” When I was playing the game, going to a bowl game was a huge honor. Teams that had less than eight wins were normally not even considered for bowl games. Not anymore, and I think that is something that could, and should be addressed when setting up a national championship playoff system inside the bowl structure.

The playoff scenario using theTop 8 teams from the national polls each year would only use up only seven bowls, and bowls like the Capital One, Cotton, and Holiday Bowls could very easily be included in the format. The national championship game could very easily be rotated among the selected bowls. Then, with the decreasing of the amount of bowl games allowed, the bowl system could once again be a rewarding finish to successful seasons.

Instead, we have bowl games like Miami vs. Florida State, a matchup that will now be played three times within 11 months, and according to polls, no one really wants to watch. If, and I mean if, the BCS is to survive, its backers will have to find ways to set up games that people will actually want to watch, or they will have problems finding networks that will broadcast the games due to fans disinterest in the matchups.  

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