Sides of the BCS Coin

For a long time, I thought the BCS was a sham. I was convinced that the mythical ranking system that the college football Gods used was flawed and didn't accurately a team's strength. I figured that if a team didn't lose a game, then there was no way that they should be ranked over teams with a loss, or even two. At the time I didn't understand the system. Nowadays people are saying that the BCS is showing its flaws more so than ever with its current rankings. Ironically, this season has lead me to appreciate at least the reasoning behind the BCS, if not the system itself.

When I hated the BCS, I didn't understand strength of schedule. I figured that schedules were picked at random among teams, like the NFL was. I didn't realize that schools schedule games between themselves, and that they have control over whom they face. With such a system in place, it's quite easy to establish a dominant schedule (Case in point, Hawaii this year.)

What does this mean? For such a league with an absurd amount of teams, one would think a complex mathematical polling system would have to be used to determine the best team. Since there's no way every team could play every other team, one has to rely on a ranking system based on stats accrued. The big deviation that people are clamoring for is a playoff system, where the season gets cut a few games short, and a 16 team playoff ensues over the course of 4 weeks. This seems good, but there must be a system in place like the BCS rankings to determine which 16 teams are worthy of the playoffs.

While fans make a large bruhaha about their team's rankings, it's important to remember that they have control over whom they play. If they want to establish themselves as the sure best team, they can play all the best teams in the league. Despite this, teams continue to schedule themselves against some of the best teams, and some of the worse teams, and as such the polling system I believe is the best direction to take. It's not perfect, but the system can always be changed, and as such I think College Football should stick with it until they get it right.