For everyone who has ever uttered the words “the BCS worked this year” - please wake up and smell the roses.  The BCS has never worked and can’t work, because it is inherently flawed.

The BCS was designed to allow #1 to play #2 each year in the title game, which is great, if you know who #1 and #2 are.  Even if there are exactly two undefeated teams out of all the 100+ Division I teams that play each other in the national title game (such as USC and Texas in 2005), there is still no guarantee that those are the best two teams in the country.  It is possible they came from weaker conferences.   Maybe Georgia and LSU (each had 2 losses in 2005 in the SEC both would have beaten either Texas or USC given the opportunity to play them).  Thus, the idea that the BCS is able to match up the true #1 vs the true #2 is a fallacy. 

Why they don’t fix such an inherently flawed system that a majority of American’s despise is anybody’s guess, but I think several factors are involved:

1.  ITS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY - The BCS has one purpose - to make money for the six BCS conferences.  All else associated with the BCS (including putting creating a championship game between the #1 and #2 teams in the country) are secondary purposes. 

For starters, the entire concept of the BCS was designed to make money.  Remember in the good old days when there were about a dozen bowl games on New Years Day that overlapped.  It was great fun channel surfing to see the best games.  The BCS changed all of that so that starting with the Rose Bowl kickoff, there are no other games on TV, the one and only choice you have is to watch the Rose Bowl, which is followed by another BCS bowl.  By creating a monopoly on college football games the afternoon and in prime time on New Years Day the BCS is able to capture 100% of the advertising revenues associated with college football on New Years Day from mid-afternoon on.

The huge revenues generated by the BCS allow the BCS to make lucrative payments to the teams playing in BCS bowl games.  I believe the BCS bowl games pay each team about $10M, whereas the top paying non-BCS bowl game is I believe only about a $1M payment.  What a great situation.  Create a monopoly to generate huge revenues, then guarantee that a huge portion of those revenues goes back to the six conferences who are members of the BCS (because the conference champion of each of these six conferences is guaranteed a spot in the bowls games).

Having established a monopoly over the time slots on New Years Day and the following few evenings, the BCS’ next motivation to maximize their advertising revenue during the games is to 1. fill the stadiums to capacity and 2. pick the most compelling match-ups.  Because the BCS is focused on ad revenue generated by full stadiums and compelling match-ups the BCS is only secondarily focused on picking the best/most deserving teams to play in BCS bowl games.  In support of my theory, I point to the fact that a great number of the BCS SNUBS over the years have been to choose teams from big markets with a national following in lieu of a smaller market team who was ranked higher and was clearly more deserving (BCS Injustices).

I have no problem with the BCS wanting to make money, but you can easily see how its objective of maximizing revenue may not be consistent with picking the best/most-deserving teams for its games.  You can also see how the BCS may even WANT some “controversy” surrounding its picks because controversy often gets additional airtime on the sports talk shows around America which the BCS might be hoping will generate additional interest in its games and thus increase the advertising dollars it will earn when more people tune-in to see how the controversial pick plays in the game.

Another reason I’m skeptical about the motivations of the BCS is the fact that any form of playoff, including the relatively simply “Plus 1” format is being absolutely stonewalled by the BCS.

I have to believe that every BCS official (who doesn’t live in a cave) knows a vast majority of college football fans strongly support a playoff.  I also have to believe that the BCS officials are extremely savvy when it comes to big business so they simply must know that a properly done sixteen team playoff could conceivably triple their profits (moving from 5 BCS bowl games to 15 playoff games).  So why is there absolutely no motivation to even consider a playoff?

The reasons the BCS sites, simply don’t make sense:

The BCS officials, in rejecting a “Plus 1” playoff format stated “The concern about a playoff among college football's leaders is that it would make football a two-semester sport and would lessen the importance of a regular season that now has a do-or-die feel to it from week to week.”  http://www.bcsfootball.org/cfb/story/8163344/Officials:-BCS-too-healthy-to-change.  The Laddie Plan addresses the first concern quite easily - simply shifting the season forward one week or eliminating the 12th game would allow for a playoff without spilling over into winter semester.  Even if they adopt some other playoff plan I would have to think with a little effort they could find a way to keep it all in one semester.  This is just a logistics problem not a fundamental flaw.  As to the second point, I honestly think a playoff would enhance, not detract from the regular season.  Conference games would be even more intense with an automatic playoff birth on the line and non-conference games would improve, because the incentive to schedule cup-cakes would be diminished - teams looking for an at large bid would want to have impressive non-conference victories to bolster their “resume” in case they weren’t able to win their conference outright.

While the two reasons listed above seem to be the “official” reasons why the BCS doesn’t want a playoff, the rest of the article provides plenty of reasons to speculate that the true motivation is related to money.  Consider these quotes as the additional reasons cited for rejecting a playoff: 

“We feel at this time the BCS is in an unprecedented state of health, we feel it's never been healthier during its first decade.”  Really?  Even though a majority of college football fans would much rather have a playoff? Here’s a simple translation that makes this statement easier to understand - replace “health” with “profit” and “healthier” with “more profitable”.

The articles goes on to say “The BCS has two years left on its current four-year, $320 million TV deal with Fox. Negotiations will likely begin in the fall on a new contract with Fox, that'll probably run through the 2013 season and lock in the current format.”  The fact that the BCS is touting is big TV contract simply re-emphasizes the BCS focus on profits.. 

A few other interesting notes from this article on the BCS’ website.  “The leaders of the Big East, Big 12, Pac-10 and Big Ten made it clear they did not want to move the BCS toward a playoff in any way.  Any change would've needed approval by university presidents.”  At least now we have some idea who is blocking the playoff - the university presidents from these four conferences.

Harm to academics is one other reason that has been sometimes cited as a reason not to have a playoff.  This one doesn’t hold water for me either.  Remember, the BCS is not the NCAA (i.e. it is not an official college athletics organization).  If the NCAA sponsors playoffs for all other divisions of college football, how can an independent organization such as the BCS really take a stand on academics?

Even trying to give the BCS the benefit of the doubt, I guess the bottom line after trying to think this all through is that the BCS is really focused on the money.  They must believe that moving towards a playoff somehow will eliminate their monopoly position on New Years Day in the afternoon and evening and the subsequent days and thereby reduce the total amount each of its six conferences will receive.  There simply is no other explanation that is plausible.

2.  THE POLL PROBLEMS - Simply stated, the polls take the determination of a national champion off the field of play and into the subjective conscious of a select group of pollsters.

Poll Problem 1 = Pre-season Polls eliminate 90% of teams from national championship contention before a game is ever played.  How often have you seen a team in the top 10 of the preseason rankings that finishes the year 8-4 or 7-5 (or worse) and is unranked by the end of the season.  It happens every year.  It also happens every year that a team that was unranked in the pre-season polls has a fantastic year - sometimes even going undefeated.  The problem is that the way the polls work, those surprise teams have ZERO CHANCE of making it to the title game.  They simply have too many teams to leapfrog to get high enough in the polls to get enough BCS points.  The most interesting polls of the year are during weeks 5 and 6, because you will see pre-season over-hyped teams still ranked #18 or #19 even with a 3-2 or 4-2 record and a surprise team at 5-0 is just barely sneaking into the rankings and #22.  ESPN had a good article on this very subject showing that if you’re not in the Pre-season top 10, your national title dreams are already over.  http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/preview07/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2980407

Pre-season polls should be banished.  Its no wonder that “signing day” in college football is getting more and more media attention - the big schools need to convince the powers that be to give them a good pre-season ranking.  Since we are stuck with the polls for now (until the Laddie Plan is adopted), they should at least ban all polls s until 4 or 5 weeks into the season to minimize the leapfrogging that surprise teams must go through.  Just for fun - consider how awful the pre-season poll was for 2007.  10 of the 25 teams in the pre-season poll but were unranked in the final AP poll:

 5. Michigan(8-4 - unranked)

10. Louisville (6-6 unranked)

12. California (6-6 unranked)

14. UCLA (6-6 unranked)

16. Rutgers (7-5 unranked)

17. Penn St. (8-4 unranked)

19. Florida St. (7-5 unranked)

20. Nebraska (5-7 unranked)

22. TCU (7-5 unranked)

25. Texas A&M (7-5 unranked)

Poll Problem 2 = The polls are biased towards the “traditional” power teams from power conferences and biased in favor of the east coast teams.  The same ESPN article cited above shows how some teams are consistently overrated year after year in the pre-season polls.  Without even looking at the article you probably already instinctively know which ones are on the list - the 3 Florida schools, Tennessee, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan.  Another problem with the polls is the East Coast bias.  I don’t think this is an intentional bias, but it is real nonetheless.  It seems to be a simple truth that pollsters more likely to vote for a team you’ve seen play and its my understanding that a majority of pollsters are located in the East.  Look at the ESPN article above for the most underrated teams.  Not surprisingly, the top 3 are all West Coast teams.  Look at the rankings of the BCS conferences - over the past 10 years the PAC-10 is by far the most underrated of the BCS conferences and the ACC is by far the most overrated of the BCS conferences.  Another group that is consistently underrated is the mid-major conferences.  I think the pollsters have it ingrained in their heads that only BCS schools get into the pre-season rankings and the mid majors need to earn their way into the rankings by winning their first 6 games of the season.  Not surprisingly 3 of the most underrated teams are from mid-major conferences (counting Louisville as a mid-major).  Bias against the mid-majors in the poll is a fundamental flaw with the BCS.  This contributes to the Mid-Major problem discussed below.  I can understand why a pollster may feel a one-loss SEC team should be ranked ahead of an undefeated Mid-Major team, but the reality is that we just don’t know which team is better unless they play.  But the bias for the big conferences is so strong, that when faced with that decision, the pollster is ALWAYS going to pick the big name school from a BCS  conference with one or two losses ahead of an undefeated Mid Major team.

Poll Problem 3 = Why should it matter who loses first?  We’ve all seen it.  Two teams finish the season with only 1 loss.  The team that lost the first weekend of the year is ultimately ranked ahead of the team that lost its last game because one of the cardinal rule of the polls is that if you lose, you move down.  By losing at the wrong time of the year, you end up ranked lower than another one-loss team and loose a chance at the national title.  Anyone else think this system is irrational and ridiculous? 

Poll Problem 4 = The polls are no longer truly independent.  Who can forget Texas coach Mack Brown lobbying pollsters in late 2004 to get more votes so his team could leapfrog Cal to get into a BCS game.  It created such a scandal that the AP poll demanded to be removed from the BCS calculations.  Since so much is riding on a BCS bowl birth (its all about the money) I’m surprised we don’t see more of this.  When its a close call, a vote in the poll these days is really the power to pick which team gets a big pay-day. 

3.  THE “MID MAJOR” PROBLEM - In my view (having attended a college in a mid-major conference) this is the single biggest flaw of the BCS and also the most under-utilized argument against the BCS.  I’ve heard in the press some mid-major conferences squawk about missing out on the big BCS pay days, but I’ve never heard anyone articulate the biggest flaw - that (regardless of whether a mid major actually gets to go to one of the lesser BCS bowls) Mid Majors are all eliminated from national title contention before the season begins. 

There are 11 Division I college conferences:  ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Big East, PAC-10, SEC (the 6 BCS conferences) and Mountain West, WAC, Conference USA,  Mid-American, Sun Belt (the 5 Mid Major conferences).  The whole structure of the BCS is based on the premises that teams from the Mid Majors simply can’t compete with teams from the BCS Conferences.  In fact by excluding the Mid Majors from participation in BCS bowls (except in rare circumstances) and excluding Mid Majors entirely from the possibility of a championship, the NCAA has allowed the BCS to relegate the Mid Majors to an unofficial Division I and a half (i.e. some no man’s land in between Division I and Division IAA). 

If the general consensus of all relevant parties is that Mid Majors can’t compete against BCS conferences then the NCAA needs to go ahead and formally create the Mid Major Division of college football and let those 5 conferences compete against each other for the Mid Major national championship (I for one believe that top teams from Mid Major conferences can compete with top teams from BCS conferences).  If however, you are going to keep the Mid Majors in Division I the system needs to be fixed so they have a chance to compete for the national championship.  As the system currently stands, they have ZERO chance to get into the national title game.  What a ridiculous situation!  The NCAA who supposedly is a defender of fair play has allowed a system to exist in which 5 of the 11 conferences in Division I are relegated to a second-class citizen status.

But what about Utah in 2004 and Boise State in 2006 you say?  YOU’VE FALLEN VICTIM TO THE BCS TRAP.  Its true these teams were invited to a BCS bowl, but WHO CARES?  Both Utah and Boise State were undefeated through their regular season and steamrolled all opponents (including every school from a BCS conference that was on their schedule).  When they were invited to a BCS bowl, everyone smiled and patted them on the head like you would your little sister and said “good job - you got invited to a BCS bowl.  Aren’t you so happy to sit at the grown-up table for the holiday dinner?  Isn’t this lovely?  Now we see its clear that the BCS system really works - even for little Mid Majors.”  WRONG.  NO.  STOP.  The goal of a college football team that goes undefeated is NOT to get to go to a fancy bowl game, the goal is to play for a national title and both Utah and Boise State were NEVER EVEN GIVEN THE REMOTEST CHANCE OF PLAYING FOR THE NATIONAL TITLE.  Why were they never given a chance?  BECAUSE MID MAJORS HAVE NO CHANCE, NO MATTER HOW GOOD THEY ARE (they were either unranked or ranked so low in the pre-season poll they couldn’t possibly make up the ground they needed) (see Poll problem #2 above).

The fact that Utah and Boise State got invited to a BCS game is not evidence that the BCS “works” - instead it is resounding evidence of how helplessly broken the system really is!  Utah and Boise State shouldn’t be glad they were invited to a BCS bowl, they should be mad as hornets that they were SNUBBED from all consideration of playing for the national title.  If I were the athletic director of Utah or Boise State, I would hang a banner in the football stadium reading “Co-National Champions” for their undefeated season just to protest the stupidity of the BCS.  Who would stop them from doing this?

The Laddie Plan (with its guaranteed playoff spots for Mid-Majors) would eliminate the mid-major problem because it would allow them to have their shot against on the field (and not in the mind of some sports writer’s looking over his votes for preseason polls).

4. 4. THE BCS SHOULD BE EMBARRASSING TO THE NCAA  The NCAA sponsors 88 national championships each year, yet it doesn’t sponsor a championship for its single biggest sport.  The NCAA somehow was convinced to allow an outside party run the entire championship process in its showcase sport.  I still don’t understand the relationship between the NCAA and the BCS.  Is the BCS paying the NCAA some sort of license fee to host this national championship?  In my opinion, the BCS directly contradicts the NCAA’s stated purposes.  In its mission statement, the NCAA says its core “purpose is to govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner” http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN4j3CQXJgFjGpvqRqCKO6AI-YRARXwN9X4_83FR9b_0A_YLc0NCIckdFALOxkFY!/delta/base64xml/L3dJdyEvUUd3QndNQSEvNElVRS82XzBfTFU!?CONTENT_URL=http://www2.ncaa.org/portal/about_ncaa/overview/mission.html
   

Dear NCAA - Please tell me what is fair, safe and equitable about allowing an outside organization focused on earning a profit to run your most popular national championship in such a manner that half of the conferences have NO CHANCE of competing in the national title game (see Mid Major problem above) and those teams in conferences that actually have a chance to get to the title game are subject to an arbitrary and biased pre-season ranking system?

Predicted NCAA Response about the Mid Major Problem:  Dear Mr. Laddie, we dispute your idea that mid majors have NO chance.  They do have a chance.  “Technically” if a mid-major team finished the prior year undefeated, and all 22 of their starters were freshmen or sophomores who were all returning to school, and they hired a big-name coach in the off-season who had formerly coached in a BCS conference, and they were on the east coast and therefore managed enough media coverage for the poll voters to know who they were, they could possibly start the next season as high as # 15 meaning that if they went undefeated for a second year in a row (including a victory in their first game of the season against a school from a BCS conference that was ranked in the top 5 in the preseason polls) they could possibly move up as high as #7 or #8 by November (by this point they would have been leapfrogged by only 5 or 6 BCS schools during the course of the season who were initially ranked lower than them), then if six or seven teams ahead of them all lost their last two games of the season, the polls would practically be forced to move them into the #1 or #2 spot and they could play for the national title.  See Mr. Laddie - it is still possible.

NCAA Response we are all hoping for (but one that could never be released publicly by the NCAA):  Dear Mr. Laddie - you’re right, there are so many contingencies and biases built into the system, for all practical intents and purposes, the Mid Major conferences have no chance of ever playing for a national title again until a tournament system is implemented.  We will adopt the Laddie Plan, because it is the best plan to save college football.

© 2007 Ladd Johnson