The BCS Got it Right

16

Since the creation of the BCS, we have had our fair share of controversy and the annual cries for some kind of a playoff system. The BCS was formed as a way to have the #1 and #2 teams in the nation play each other for the National Championship at the end of each year. And I think in 2007 it did exactly that. Ohio State and LSU both deserve their chance to play for this year's National Title.

On the last day of the season we saw the top two teams get beat, Missouri lost to Oklahoma and West Virginia was upset by Pittsburgh. With both #1 and #2 going down so late in the season, a BCS "mess" was created. Why? Did people honestly think before the Big XII Championship that Missouri was the best team in the country? Would we have been satisfied with a BCS Championship Game of Missouri vs. West Virginia just because they were #1 and #2 on the last weekend? Probably the biggest point to keep in mind when analyzing the BCS is the fact it is meant to compare teams at the END of the season. Once ALL games have been played, the BCS calculates which teams are the best two. Every year this fact gets lost as ESPN and other media outlets prematurely look ahead at what Championship Games we MAY have if teams ranked 1 and 2 win out. Of course this is meaningless because the BCS is not meant to create the Championship matchup until all games have been played.

Some argue (Pete Carroll) that this is a flaw in the system since it doesn't reward teams that are playing their best at the end of the season, but rather rewards teams based on their entire season. This is exactly one thing I love about the current BCS system. It evaluates teams based on the entire body of work. You have to be great for all 12 games and not just get hot at the end of the season. This year the BCS determined Ohio State and LSU were the best two teams based on their entire body of work and I agree. I haven't heard too many complaints about the Buckeyes reaching the Championship, but some are saying other teams were more deserving than LSU. Let's take a look at the Tigers and some of those other teams that were competing for the #2 spot once West Virginia went down.

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FatManVarsity Captain

726 days ago

Score 1

The BCS did not get it right. There was no reason for LSU to leap frog the other teams who didn't lose, especially since votes were affected by the ESPN and other pundits who put on a sham campaign to gain support.

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JamesmoutonWaterboy

726 days ago

Score 2

However it happened, LSU is the best 2 loss team in the country. Their two losses came in triple overtime, and the only reason LSU was ranked so low was because their 2nd loss came later than those "other teams". Which one of the "leap frogged" teams is more deserving?

ASwaffAll-American

725 days ago

Score 2

They only leapfrogged three teams. One was idle Kansas, who took a hit after Missouri lost. I have no problem with that. They leapfrogged idle Georgia, who finished THIRD in the SEC. I have no problem with the winner of the SEC being ranked higher than the third team in the SEC.

Now, I can give you Virginia Tech. A little. See, for the first time all season, pollsters looked at where teams ACTUALLY belonged instead of just moving them up one notch after a win (with the possible exception of Hawaii). True, LSU leapfrogged a VT team that won, but you also have to go back to week two and look at LSU's 48-7 trouncing of the Hokies. LSU has a better championship resume than VT, and I think the BCS got it right. I don't believe on punishing teams because they lose late instead of early.

IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 3

The concept of the BCS is not flawed, however the way it gets to the means is. For some reason a loss at the beginning of the season hurt less then at the end even if it is to a better team. Also, certian teams are penalized because the "experts" at the start of the season decided to rank a team high then it should or lower then it should based on nothing. Why is a team that is ranked fifth to start the year and has 2 loses a better team then a team with 1 lose that has palyed a harder schedule and started the season unranked? And I am tired of hearing the this teams hould be in because they are the hot team now. The BCS is meant to determine hte best team all year, not the hot teams at the end of the year. You know what, if you want to be in the discussion, DONT LOSE TO STANDFORD!!!!! And I want to hear how someone can justify putting a team in the national championship game when a team wasnt even good enough to win its own conference. BCS is fine, its hte voters who are messed up. Fix them.

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JamesmoutonWaterboy

726 days ago

Score 3

Agreed. The biggest problem with the BCS is the Human Polls. First order of business to "fix" the BCS should be to eliminate ALL Preseason Polls.

IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 3

I ma a firm believer that no poll of any sort should be out before week 5 or six minimium. It is enough of a body of work so that people can form conclusions based on play and not hype. Here is the thing about hype, it doesnt go away. No matter how bad an over ranked team is, it requires a good 3 loses before they are removed from the top ten and it shoulnt be that way.

False ProphetAll-Star

726 days ago

Score 2

No system that doesn't let an undefeated team play for the title will ever "Get it Right"

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IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 4

Another very good point. However, that is also the flaw of hte voter. I have heard far to many people say that teams form small schools dont play anyone. Now that isnt necessarily their fault though. Hawaii and BSU and those people try to schedule the big guys. The big guys decided that they dont want to risk losing face and as a result refuse to schedule them or back out on them last minute. Why is it that the small school is punished and not the larger school for backing out?

DNLLegend

726 days ago

Score 2

"Why is it that the small school is punished and not the larger school for backing out?" That's the core of the problem. Well said.

False ProphetAll-Star

725 days ago

Score 0

exactly. In order to crown a true champion, every single team should have a shot to win the championship if they go undefeated. In the NFL, we wouldn't say that if the raiders went 10-6 and lost the division, but had the 5th best record in the AFC, that just b/c it's the raiders they don't deserve a playoff bid

FatManVarsity Captain

726 days ago

Score 3

I actually think the argument that LSU is somehow a better 2 loss team because their games have been lost in overtime is garbage. A loss is a loss. Saying they went to overtime to lose was one of the tactics they used in the press to get votes - votes that translated into higher poll seedings, which ended up manipulating the BCS standings.

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IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 2

Your right. It was a ploy by Les Miles to get his team into the championship game and it worked. At that point he had to do something to make his 2 lose team stand out from the other two loss teams. It is all semantics, but at that point it was a political election and Miles and the Tigers won. But dont blame the BCS for that. Blame the voters for falling for the act. I hear so many people berating the computer system. I for one dont know how good it is or how bad it is. But these people that criticize the computers talk about how they never watch a game and cant rate a team. Well, some of these people that are suppose to be voting on the BCS dont watch games either. They dont have enough time. They either rank the teams they like or what will help the conference or hoe many times have you heard of a coach handing over his ballot to a secretary, assistant, or some orderly to fill in for him. The entire human poll system is a joke. Humans are failable. They do make mistakes and are biased. That is the problem, wither they realize it or not, they let this biases influence how they vote. Wither it is who lost when, what team beat who, who would I like to see, or what helps our team, its never pure. It cant happen. Atleast the computers try and remove the outside influences and base there voted on what they can, tangable evidence and the football on the field. The BCS is a great idea, its to bad human nature gets in the way.

DNLLegend

726 days ago

Score 2

Which 2-loss team do you take, then?

IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 2

First off I am pro playoff. It settles things like this fairly. However, the BCS for the most part gets it right every year. Very few exceptions. Its hard for me to pick one 2 loss team over another. Especially when there is another 1 loss team and an undefeated team out there also. In my biased opinion it should be OSU and Illinois. With that being said, I think either OU or LSU were more then deserving. you really cant go wrong with either. And you know what, if OSU beats them, all this arguing is really for nothing becasue the best team won with hte best record, what else could you ask for. Does that answer the question?

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Davis21wylieMVP

726 days ago

Score 1

I would argue it gets it wrong with alarming regularity. This year is simply the latest example in a long line...

Davis21wylieMVP

726 days ago

Score 4

Just for fun, here's the updated chart from that second link:

Year    BCS "Champion"    BCS Failure? (others w/ claim)
-----------------------------------------------------------
1992    Alabama           No
1993    FSU               Yes (Notre Dame)
1994    Nebraska/Penn St. No
1995    Nebraska          No
1996    ???               Yes (FSU, Florida, ASU, Ohio St.)
1997    Nebraska/Michigan No
1998    Tennessee         Yes (Ohio State)
1999    Florida State     Yes (Nebraska)
2000    Oklahoma          Yes (Miami, Washington)
2001    Miami             Yes (Oregon, Colorado)
2002    Ohio State        No
2003    LSU               Yes (USC)
2004    USC               Yes (Auburn, Utah)
2005    Texas             No
2006	Florida		  Yes (Michigan, Boise St.)
2007	Ohio St./LSU	  Yes (VT, UGA, OU, Kansas, Mizzou, USC, WVU, Hawaii, ASU)
-----------------------------------------------------------
# BCS Successes: 6
# BCS Failures:  10
-----------------------------------------------------------

NejoshiDiv-I Stud

726 days ago

Score 0

That's a great chart, Davis

IlliniEdVarsity

725 days ago

Score 0

Good chart but somewhat misleading. Especially when we are talking about pre BCS Champions. You cant go around telling if it would have owrked or not based on who won. The things is that there was no Championship game back then. The BCS would have placed those teams against one another and it would have been determined on the field. To say that one year would have been a failure because there was another team that was worthy doesnt cut it because in the BCS format they would have played and it would have been determined on the field. And the whole point of the BCS is to determine who is the best team. Look over those years and tell me what year the BEst team didnt win it all? That would be the year that it was a failure. Not the year where you have 1 team that is undeated a few 11-1 teams that might have an arguemtn but still end up losing to the undefeated team. That is not a failure. The best team won. What else could you ask for. Your chart is a nice idea, but it is flawed.

Davis21wylieMVP

725 days ago

Score 0

If you bothered to read the links, I said I know that there was no BCS pre-1998, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to guess which teams they would have sent to the title game (and which ones would have gotten left out in the cold). As to your second point about the best team winning, how do you know? To me, the BCS fails when there are more than 2 clear-cut claimants to the national championship game, because when that happens the outcome of a season is being determined by polls and computers instead of on the field. I mean, how many times has a juggernaut been upset in the title game? You can say 2001 wasn't a failure, for instance, because Miami was undefeated, but they played a sham Nebraska team in the title game -- who knows whether they'd lose to Oregon? We can say they probably wouldn't, but we don't know for sure. In every year I call a "failure," you find that there are more teams than BCS title game slots, and in those cases we can never truly know who the champion was because they didn't take on all (legitimate) comers on the field.

IlliniEdVarsity

725 days ago

Score 1

Hey, my bad on the chart. I still think that the difinition of failure is up the person. I dont htink it has been nearly as bad as you insinuate. With that being said, I am all for a playoff. However, with a playoff, the best team might not always win. The best team in college basketball doesnt always win. That is the one fault with the playoff formatt. As this eyar has proven, the best team can have an off day and get beat. So a playoff system would only prove who was the best at that point in time. When Arizona won the title several years back in basketball, would any analysts have argued that they were the best team? How about when NCSt or Villanova won it? No. They were better at that point but it doesnt prove who is the best team. Both systems are flawed. More poeple would like a playoff though.

Davis21wylieMVP

725 days ago

Score 0

That's fair enough. I just look around and see every other reputable sport deciding their champion through a playoff, and I see college football (one of the best sports around) deciding it through some backwards, antiquated opinion poll... It just doesn't seem right. Maybe the best team won't always win, but, then again, that's why they play the games, right?

ASwaffAll-American

725 days ago

Score 0

Davis, maybe I'm slow today, but I don't understand that chart. WHO is deciding the BCS failed in those circumstances? Because I think that a bunch of those are just laughable. Colorado snubbed in 2001? They played Oregon and got CRUSHED. I can understand how you'd say Oregon got snubbed, but I don't think anyone was going to beat Miami. They got the champion right. And although I agree that Miami (not Washington - again, laughable) got snubbed in 2000, I don't think anyone was going to beat Oklahoma that year. They were dominant, and the BCS got the champion right.

2003, everyone screamed because one-loss Oklahoma got in instead of USC. Sorry, Oklahoma deserved it more. They just wanted to punish Oklahoma for losing at the end of the year. It has become very easy to ignore that USC lost to a 6-6 Cal team that year. They didn't deserve it.

2004, the case could be made for Auburn, but then it was a great lesson in the need to not play a joke of a non-conference schedule. They played in the SEC and still didn't crack the top 60 in SOS. That's embarrassing. And I'm glad Utah didn't go to the championship. Winning a BCS Bowl gave mid-majors legitimacy (funny how people now talk about Boise State like they were the first ones to do it). If they had gone to the championship and gotten CRUSHED (and they would have), people would have said "we told you so" and it would be a HUGE uphill battle for the mid-majors.

2006's complaints were equally absurd. Boise State played exactly who they deserved in Oklahoma, and again, got legitimacy by beating a storied program in a BCS bowl. And Michigan didn't deserve to go...they didn't even beat OSU.

Davis21wylieMVP

725 days ago

Score 0

I'm being very generous with the claimants, sure, but all of your rationalizations for them not being worthy are simply your opinions -- which is fine, but we really have no way of knowing what would happen if they played on the field. So I include anyone who had a quasi-legitimate beef going into the bowls, because thanks to the idiotic system we've been saddled with, we will never know what might have been if they had actually played things out on a football field instead of in some voter's mind. If there remains reasonable doubt as to whether or not both of the 2 best teams in the country faced off in the title game, then it's a failure.

The PipDiv-I Stud

726 days ago

Score 3

*sigh* part of the issue is that people who support the BCS aren't doing it very well.

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IlliniEdVarsity

726 days ago

Score 1

What isn't good about my argument?

Anonymous Fanatic #1

725 days ago

Score 0

The BCS is flawed. Ohio State is not one of the top 2 teams in the country and they should not be fight for the National Championship. They didn't beat anybody worth mentioning. I'm ok with LSU because their losses came in triple overtime and happen to play in the toughest conference in the country. There should be a playoff system. Only the top 10 teams make it into the playoffs. When will ESPN stop riding the nuts of USC? Everytime I click on college gameday, Kirk Turdstreit always makes argument for USC playing and winning the National Championship because "they're the hottest team in America." That fool has been Trojanized since Pete Carroll arrived.

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IlliniEdVarsity

725 days ago

Score 0

Why isnt OSU deserving? They beat everyone on their schedule but a very tough Illini team. They took care of a hot Michagen team. They won a very difficult Big Ten conference. Besides, I am guessing you were one of those people that felt that Florida didnt deserve to be in the championship game last year and then they smoked the supposedly unbeatable Buckeyes. They have as much of a right as any team out there. They have one lose. If OSU, or LSU want to make a claim, dont lose to COlorado. Dont lose to Kentucky or Arkansas. OSU derserves to be there. Its not like the other teams played a tough non conference schedule. Hell, LSU never left home almost all year.

IlliniEdVarsity

725 days ago

Score 0

Also, based on your argument and the system you set up, how do you determine what two teams get the byes? Anddont tell me the top two because if yo umake that arguemtn, just play those two together and you have a championship. Not having a top two is where the argument comes from to begin with.

ASwaffAll-American

725 days ago

Score 0

I agree the BCS got it right. It's the Bowl selection committees that screwed the pooch on this one by passing on more deserving teams in Missouri and Arizona State.

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IlliniEdVarsity

725 days ago

Score 0

Who would you ahve replaced to have Mizzou and ASU in?

ASwaffAll-American

725 days ago

Score 0

In an ideal world (which I'm under no delusion that we're in), I would have replaced Kansas with Missouri, and put them in the Sugar Bowl against Georgia. I would have moved Hawaii to the Rose Bowl to play USC, and replaced Illinois with Arizona State , playing in the Orange Bowl against Virginia Tech. I think those are much more interesting matchups than we ended up having, and it would put two teams who were more deserving than Kansas and Illinois, respectively, in BCS bowls.

MECUVarsity

725 days ago

Score 0

The BCS is a playoff! It's just a two-team playoff. And with 11 teams that "deserve" to have a shot this season, we've got 2 of them. What else can you do? (and if I hear playoff, I will scream. An 8-team wouldn't include all 11, and 16 includes non-worthy teams.)

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False ProphetAll-Star

725 days ago

Score 0

8 team playoff would just be a mere formality. You'd still screw over a lot of non-BCS Champion teams. 16 is better, but I'd go 16 or 12, where 12 has 4 play-in games for the bottom half of the 8 team bracket

False ProphetAll-Star

725 days ago

Score 0

and I count 6 worthy teams. Missou, Kansas, and Georgia don't belong in the picture. At least not unles we're going beyond 8 teams, bc they lost to their conference champ, hence their playoff game was an L. I think conference championships would be a good way to weed out a lot of the teams. 16 team playoff, 6 conference championships for the BCS schools, 4 at larges that pair off.

Anonymous Fanatic #2

724 days ago

Score 0

I think the BCS is great. Instead of a playoff with 1 champion, half of the schools that would participate in the hypothetical playoff, get to win a bowl and call themselves champions. What more could you want for college sports. Who cares if there is an argument for who is #1 overall. Watch every team that wins a bowl game this year and tell me those players are not happy that they won their bowl. Yes they may not be national champions, and it seems once every other year, one team, or two teams will have a legitimate reason to complain about the system... but the MAJORITY of teams benefit, schools earn extra money that is distributed evenly (not based on how well your team did), and almost a quarter of division 1 ends the year WINNING a MEANINGFUL football game. What other sport can say something to that extent.

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