BCS – What a Great System We Have…Seriously

What a way to finish the bowl season. We seen two of the very best football games to close out the season with Texas winning a nail biter in Glendale, and finishing off with a thoroughly interesting national championship game.

Questions are being asked as to whom the national championship should belong to. Is it undefeated Utah, perhaps one-loss Texas or USC who didn’t get a chance to play in the big game. Let me be the first to say that we had the game we needed, and its all thanks to the wonderful BCS system.

First of all, let me abolish any thoughts that Kyle Wittingham’s Utah team deserves anything. Jeff Sagarin has the Mountain West conference ranked just slightly above the MAC; and below the service school filled Independents. Proponents say that they beat four ranked teams. Let’s not forget that their sole victory against a non-conference ranked oppenent was week 1, a 2-point win against Michigan. Their schedule strength puts them in the bottom 40% toughest in the nation. Their other two ranked wins, both in conference games against TCU and BYU.

Sure they played a great game against a Alabama team with nothing left to play for. Get over it, you’re not as good as everyone else. In fact, all-world brain-guy Jeff Sagarin has Utah ranked 10th in his predictor rating, the best rating scale for predicting an actual game. Yes, that’s behind Ohio State. To more important things.

If I flip a coin 3 times, there is a 12.5% chance it will land heads each time. If that happens, does it mean that heads is the most likely results of a coin flip? Of course not, but it happens. The point I’m trying to make is in reference to a possible playoff system.

The NCAA basketball system works for one simple reason: the shear amount of wins needed. In order to win the college basketball championship, a team needs 6 consecutive wins. The chances of flipping a coin heads 6 times in a row? 1.56%, significantly smaller.However, having a six-week football playoff is completely outrageous. People talk about 8 team playoffs, or a +1 system, which is essentially a 4 team playoff. This takes us back to the coin flip.

With such a small playoff, the odds increase that weaker team can upset and win the tournament. Does that mean that they’re better? Do we really think Utah is better than Alabama? Is Texas really only that much better than Ohio State? With the Mountain West and Western Athletic Conferences receiving annual bids to BCS games, we have a situation where at all times a mid-major is only two games away from being crowned the best in the nation. This is scary when we consider the seemingly random upsets that occur during the bowl season. Was Boise State really better than Oklahoma a few years back?

The best solution is to have all the teams play a full schedule and then try and guess who the best teams are. Typically it works well. This year there was controversy because Utah rolled some cupcakes, and there were three teams who all beat each other. However both the subjectivity and objectivity of humans and computers both decided that there are two and only two teams worthy of playing for it all.