A year ago, I was pointing out how badly messed up the BCS computer system was, denying the unanimous #1 ranked team in the land a shot at the national championship game. This year, USC has gone wire to wire ranked #1 and will face the #2 Oklahoma Sooners for the national championship. Fight On!
Of course, there are those pointing out the fact that #3 Auburn went undefeated creates an “unprecedented headache for the BCS“. Excuse me? What a bunch of crap. The BCS is supposed to make sure there’s a unified national champion – something it failed to do last year I might point out - by having the top two teams play each other. USC and Oklahoma have been #1 and #2 all year, and they’re playing each other. Sure, it sucks to be Auburn, go undefeated and still come up third. But there’s no question who the top two teams are – they’ve been the same all year.
I’m sure this will revive the yearly “BCS sucks, we need a playoff” talk. Quick memo to playoff people: any college football playoff system is going to screw someone. For example, a 4 team playoff this year (using the BCS rankings) would have been USC, Oklahoma, Auburn and Texas, screwing unanimous #4 ranked Cal. An 8 team playoff would add Cal, Utah, Georgia and Va Tech, but screw Louisville who’s ranked at least 8th in both polls. Even a 16 team playoff – which is virtually infeasible – would screw unanimous #16 ranked Wisconsin. So let’s not pretend this issue will go away by playing more games.
Do I think the BCS works well now? No, even though USC didn’t get screwed this year (not exactly a ringing endorsement). Personally, I think BCS computer system should only be used when the polls don’t agree. There’s just no objective way to measure the relative records of teams that don’t play the same teams. Thus, leave it in the hands of the humans, and use the computers to break ties when they happen. It would have given us a USC vs. LSU championship last year and still had a USC vs. OU championship this year.