It's time to lose the BCS

By Ben Tate

It is a sad time of the year for sports fans: Another season of college football has come and gone. Until next fall, gone are the Saturdays where one can literally watch NCAA football games from mid-morning until long after the sun has gone down.

This season was one of the most exciting in recent years; several very talented teams fought down to the very last regular-season game for a shot at the Bowl Championship Series national title, and, once again, a team has fallen victim to the flawed BCS system.

Boise State University finished the regular season with a perfect record of 13-0 and beat a very talented Oklahoma University in the most exciting Fiesta Bowl in history, yet the university did not earn the chance to contend for the national title. There is no playoff in the BCS system, no NCAA Tournament, no Sweet Sixteen and certainly no bracketology.

In the BCS system, diehard fans are left with a complex computer system that uses teams' records, strength of schedule, margins of victory and numerous other variables to determine which two Division I-A teams will play in the BCS National Championship and the four other BCS bowl games.

Since the implementation of the Bowl Championship Series in 1998, five non-BCS conference teams (Tulane in 1998, Marshall in 1999, Utah in 2004 and Boise State in 2004 and 2006) and one BCS conference team (Auburn in 2004) have finished the regular season undefeated and not had the opportunity to contend for the national title.

In the 2003-2004 season, a split decision in the Associated Press Poll and the Coaches' Poll left two teams, Louisiana State University and University of Southern California, ranked no. 1. The result of this was a shared national title, in which USC and LSU were co-National Champions.

The list of controversies goes on and on; in fact, there has never been a controversy-free season under the BCS system. The system has received heavy criticism from the media, fans, athletes and coaches alike. So why did the NCAA sign a four-year contract extension in 2006 to continue the BCS through the 2010 college football season?

The answer is simple: money. The 2006 Rose Bowl, in which the University of Texas Longhorns defeated the USC Trojans, paid out $17 million in revenue to each school's athletic conference, the Big 12 and the Pac-10, respectively.

The conference champion in each of the six BCS conferences (Big 10, Big 12, ACC, SEC, Big East and Pac-10) automatically receives a BCS bowl bid. Therefore each school in every BCS conference receives enormous benefits from the BCS system every year, no matter which school in each conference gets the bid.

The BCS system blatantly favors these six conferences -- whose schools' football teams generate the biggest draws and the largest profits -- and marginalizes the efforts of universities outside of those conferences.

Boise State did everything that was asked of them this season, decisively beating every opponent on their schedule. How can the NCAA, whose stated core purpose is to "govern competition in a fair, safe, equitable and sportsmanlike manner," endorse a system in which an undefeated Division I-A football team is not even given a chance to compete for the national championship?

Proponents of the current BCS system believe that making the four major bowl games part of a playoff would take much of the luster away from competing in them and would not generate nearly as much attention as they do in the current format.

In light of this most recent controversy, the NCAA needs to admit that the BCS system is a total failure, and should move to playoff format, in which all Division I-A teams have an equal shot at the national title. Critics of the BCS system have suggested numerous alternatives to the status quo, several of which incorporate the major bowl games into a playoff system.

Unfortunately, these proposals have fallen on deaf ears.

By endorsing the BCS system, the NCAA is not following its stated core purpose, and, until major changes are made, it should strongly consider putting an asterisk next to its core purpose of governing college athletics in a fair and equitable manner that states, "unless the price is right."

Ben Tate is a senior economics and political science double major.