Wasn’t the BCS supposed to fix all of this?

By Bart Doan  |   Friday, December 12, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

College Football
Got something to say?

Sign Up and be the first to comment on this article!

It was January 1998. The lead actors were Michigan and Nebraska. The main villain was a quarterback-turned-NFL safety named Scott Frost, who took five minutes of his post-Orange Bowl air time to tearfully suggest to poll voters that even though No. 1 Michigan had not lost, the coaches “owed it to Tom Osborne” to have Nebraska jump the Wolverines on their ballots, giving Osborne a fifth title in his final season. At this point, the outrage finally reached a mea culpa. As we all know, the BCS was created and enacted that offseason. It gave an immediate remedy to the perceived toxin that showed just how much power the voters had over the national championship. The BCS was supposed to fix voter manipulation. Ten years later, the vaccine has apparently worn off. For the third consecutive season, a team ranked out of the top three jumped into the final BCS top two over clubs that did not lose. Texas won the bias-free computer polls by what amounts to a fairly handy margin, 0.94 to 0.89. By contrast, Oklahoma’s computer percentage was 1.0. It was the Harris and coaches' polls, however, that essentially forced a Gator leapfrog similar to two years ago. Once again, Florida reaped the benefits of voters putting the team they wanted in the title game over possibly the more deserving one.

It was even more glaring last season, when Louisiana State was ranked seventh in the BCS standings going into the final weekend and entering a game against Tennessee for the SEC title. Somehow, voted in front of LSU the week prior were Virginia Tech -- which LSU had beaten by 41 earlier that season -- and Georgia, which finished second in the SEC East. After the carnage ensued that saw both the first- and second-ranked teams fall, LSU inexplicably raised from that No. 7 spot to second in the title game.

In 2006, Michigan finished its season ranked second in the BCS standings with still two weeks left on the college football schedule. Southern Cal rose above them the next week. After USC lost, Florida jumped from fourth to second as the final polls came out. As coaches are required to release their final votes, Florida and its opponents made an incredible jump that final weekend, signifying that the voters simply wanted Ohio State versus Florida -- regardless of how they voted a week ago.

You can sit around the table all night and debate resumes, scheduling and individual team strengths to determine which club is the most righteous participant in the title game. But the fact is that the BCS was created because people got tired of voters with agendas essentially picking and choosing which team they wanted to wear the crown. If a school wins or does not play, how can it be less worthy of playing for a title? Only the individual voters know why they vote like they do. The computers have essentially tried to level out the human component, but if one is to take a look deeper, it’s much ado about nothing.

The BCS does what it sets out to do, which is to pit the top two teams together for a late-night, winner-take-all rendezvous in early January. In 1998, the idea of keeping the voters’ power at bay sounded like a fantastic idea. Crying quarterbacks politicking for national titles was just a little too “Days of Our Lives” for college football. For a moment, it seemed to work. Ten years later, the purity of the theory has indeed worn off. College football fans, coaches and teams are once again at the mercy of the almighty opinion.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For college football, that doesn’t happen to be a good thing unless you’re a Gator.
Got something to say?

Sign Up and be the first to comment on this article! (0)

About Bart Doan

Bart has been with Realfootball365.com for about six months and thoroughly enjoys writing for the site. He has been featured for his writings on college football in The Sporting News, The Indianapolis Star, Sports Illustrated, and on CBS Sportsline.com. When he's not drowning himself in the...
read more
Article Tools Share!   |  RSS  |  Bleacher Report About Bleacher Report