Why the BCS Sucks

I should be thrilled.  I attended The University of Kansas, as did my wife and my brother.  I’ve owned season tickets to KU Football for several years, despite their mediocre historical performance, because I love both my alma mater and college football.  The performance KU’s team put together this season should leave me breathless with joy.

Sadly, it doesn’t, and the reason is spelled with just three letters: BCS.

Now, I’m many things, but a fool isn’t one of them.  There is no real comparison to be made between KU’s football team of overachieving, less talented kids, and the behemoths playing at most of the top schools.  The backups at USC or LSU or Ohio State could likely start at KU in most cases.  I recognize that, and I know that if college football was ever smart enough to institute a playoff system at their top level, KU would likely be knocked out in round one.

But that’s not the system in place.  Incredibly, the NCAA doesn’t seem to care if their football champion isn’t, you know, the best football team.  They are instead satisfied to let this ridiculous BCS system endure, one in which a blend of computers, coaches who don’t watch all the games (the USA Today Coaches Poll), and a third group of retired players, coaches and other fools (The Harris Poll), contrives to determine which teams should play each other to end the season.  It’s a system that’s been roundly, and rightfully, criticized ever since its inception, and has seen numerous tweaks, seemingly every season, none of which have managed to make the system work.

This year, it seems that we’re on the brink of the most ridiculous outcome yet.  It’s been almost universally conceded at this point that Ohio State will play for the national title, despite these facts:

1. Their one loss came to a (then) unranked team on their home field,
2. They played a terribly weak non-conference schedule (Youngstown State, Akron, Kent State and a crappy Washington team).
3. They play in one of the weakest top-to-bottom conferences in the BCS system,
4. They have an inherent, and unfair, advantage in that their conference doesn’t force them to play either a conference championship game or every other team in their conference, and
5. Pretty much everybody concedes that they’re not one of the two best teams in the country.

Despite these obvious problems, this is the team that basically everyone concedes not only will play for the national title, but should play for the national title under the current system.  That alone should tell you how screwed up the BCS system is.

Now here’s where I get upset – Kansas, the only other one-loss team in a BCS conference, has been universally dismissed as a viable candidate to face Ohio State for the national title.  The reasons they cite include a weak non-conference schedule, and a weak conference schedule, two factors that don’t stop them from putting Ohio State into the national title game.  They say that KU lost against the only top-notch team they faced.  True enough.  A single-digit loss on a neutral field in a rivalry game against a team that would be ranked number one in the BCS the very next day.  Gee, what an embarrassment.

All manner of two-loss teams are being talked up as potential and rightful participants in that title game, but one-loss KU is not.  Those other teams are better.  They play in tougher conferences.  They beaten better teams.  They scheduled better non-conference games.  All true.  I don’t dispute a bit of it, and readily recognize that if KU played a hundred games against Ohio State, Virginia Tech, LSU, Georgia and USC, they might win ten of them.  They’re better, I get it.

But that’s not the current system, is it?  They current system says that if you are in a BCS conference, schedule a crappy non-conference slate, and win all of your games but one, you should play for the national title unless someone else does even better.  Well, this year, no one else did any better than KU.  Only one team, Ohio State, did as well.  Why ignore all of the precedent now? After years of letting the BCS provide us with crappy title game matchups, why should that system suddenly not work for a team like KU, who played by the crappy rules that have been set up and now look like they may not only be stiffed out of the national title game, but could get stiffed out of every other big-payoff BCS game as well?

In short, in what should have been a magical year for KU fans, the BCS system may leave them all with a bitter taste in their mouths.

Thanks NCAA!!