BCS Mess

Thursday night is the NCAA Bowl Championship Series championship game between the Oklahoma Sooners and Florida Gators. The games participants were decided by a mix of a computer program, media and coaches voting to decide who are the two best teams in the NCAA. Want to know what the real formula is? Don't lose late in the season! The top 5 teams will all end with one loss, which leads to the debate of who is really the best team.

The teams that lost at the start of the season have time to work their way back up the polls, while teams who lose late in the year, like in a conference championship game, have no opportunity to gain the places back with more impressive wins. This year, that means Alabama (before they lost in their bowl game), Texas, USC and the undefeated Utah Utes all could have clamis to the shiny trophy.

Many, if not all college football fans, those in the media, coaches and players dislike the BCS system. It leaves too much power in the hands of a computer program and coaches that vote for themselves even though they shouldn't (see Mack Brown) to decide the best squad each January. What can be done about it though - Barack Obama even wants a college playoff, so let me help him out (lol) and offer my own version of the BCS playoff formula.

Most would like to see a static number of teams in a bracket style tournament, think "March Madness" for football. The big issue with this scenario is how many teams enter the bracket? Is it four, eight, or even twelve? Since there will always be that odd year that has five, nine or thirteen teams that could be deserving of being in the playoffs having a static number of entrants will not work.

My vision has only those teams with 0 or 1 loss enter in a bracket style tournament, and it doesn't matter if they come from a non-BCS conference. The seedings will be determined by the last poll. The tournament will start the week after the conference championship games. In this version the games would have played out as follows;

Round 1
Oklahoma - BYE
Florida - BYE
Texas vs. Boise State
USC vs. Utah

Round 2
Oklahoma vs. USC
Florida vs. Texas (fixed)

Round 3
Oklahoma vs. Florida

and voila - we have the same title game with three weeks of great football. As for the game going on Thursday night, my pick;

Florida 35 vs. Oklahoma 17