The Good, the Bad, and the BCS

NCAA Football Quiz

1. BCS stands for _________________.

a) Bowl Championship Series
b) Barely Comprehensible Scheme
c) Bafflingly Complicated Situation
d) All of the above

After this past weekend’s developments, many college football fans are beginning to view this question as a toss-up. With #3 Oklahoma’s 61-41 win over #12 Oklahoma State on Saturday, the Sooners finished the regular season in a three-way tie with #2 Texas and #7 Texas Tech atop the Big 12 South Division. But since one team from each division advances to the Big 12 Championship game, only one of these three teams can play in the conference championship.

Well, that should be an easy one to choose, right? Oklahoma and Texas have a consensus lead over Texas Tech, so we’ll just take a look at what happened when the Sooners and the Longhorns squared off earlier this season, right? Wrong. In an inexplicably atrocious move, college football has turned to the BCS standings as a tiebreaker. Yesterday’s updated BCS release has Oklahoma edging out Texas, .9351 to .9223.

Suddenly the Longhorns’45-35 triumph over the then-top ranked Sooners on October 11th seems completely meaningless. Head-to-head records apparently don’t tell us anything (sarcasm). Conventional wisdom says that the way to determine which team is better is to pit them against each other, but perhaps this line of thought is too advanced for the complex calculating of computers.

In summary, we have reached the climax of the college football season, and instead of relying on what happened on the field, we are putting the entire decision in the virtual hands of computers. When it comes to tabbing the better team, computerized calculations pale in comparison to actually going out onto the field and playing a game. The fact that Texas beat Oklahoma by 10 points on a NEUTRAL FIELD should be enough to put the Longhorns in the Big 12 Championship game ahead of the Sooners. Instead, they are forced to stay at home at watch a game between two inferior teams, BOTH of which Texas has beaten this season.

It’s only a conference championship game, you may say. It’s not like it’s the national championship. Well, it might as well be. The winner of the SEC championship game between #1 Alabama and #4 Florida has a lock on one of the spots in the title game, but the other will undoubtedly come from the Big 12. Oklahoma now has the inside track to grabbing that second spot. If the Sooners beat a fading Missouri squad in the Big 12 championship, they will play in the title game as well. The only way Texas can take that spot is if Oklahoma somehow loses to Missouri in a manner that convinces voters to bump the Longhorns past the Sooners in the polls.

By the same flawed logic, then, there can never be a playoff in college football. By using the BCS rankings as tiebreakers, college football is undermining its regular season and showing that what happened on the field doesn’t matter. It’s the computers that have the final say. This is diametrically opposed to the establishment of a playoff system, which bases its rankings solely on the in-game performances of two competing teams.

This entire quagmire, however, could be solved with one simple move: abolish divisions within conferences. Because Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Tech are all in the South Division of the Big 12, only one of those three teams can play in the conference championship…even though the Sooners, Longhorns, and Red Raiders (all 11-1) combine for the same number of losses as the North Division Champs, the Missouri Tigers (9-3). The top two teams in any given conference should get to face off in the conference championship; they shouldn’t be limited by their division classification.

Besides, you can’t tell me that Oklahoma and Texas players wouldn’t lick their chops at the thought of a rematch. Their regular season meeting provided plenty of drama already. Just imagine the atmosphere if they faced off with a berth in the national title game on the line.

But is shouldn’t have to come to that. Texas deserves a spot in the Big 12 championship game, and they are being cheated out of it because of the nuances of a flawed system. College football should be ashamed of this calamity, and the Big 12 should be embarrassed by the selection.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the answer is D.

Photos courtesy of ESPN.com.