In his convincing argument for scrapping the BCS system, Dan Wetzel left out the most compelling reason for doing so: nearly half of the teams playing at the highest level of college football have absolutely no chance of ever playing for the league’s title no matter how good they are or how many games they win.
Everyone knows about Utah and Boise State. Both have completed unbeaten seasons at the highest level of college football recently and had no chance to win the title. Nowhere else in sport can this happen. The Detroit Lions, if they surprise everyone and go undefeated, certainly make the NFL playoffs, and no one would ever say that they didn’t deserve to be there. If the Pirates decided finally to keep a few good players, and they won enough games, they would make the playoffs. No one would say, oh, well, they’re not really good enough to compete for the World Series title; we’ll just give them a consolation game against the Nationals, throw it on national TV, and call it good. Leave the World Series to big-name teams like the Yankees. This sounds absurd and stupid, yes, but it’s the system in college football.
The standard response to this argument is always something like, "You don’t actually believe that on a neutral field, Boise State or Utah would have any shot against Florida or USC, do you?" This question is the whole problem. It’s asking people to speculate on hype, silly rankings, and imaginary match-ups rather than determining a champion based on actual on-the-field performance. And for the record, yes, I do think that Boise State or Utah would have a chance in a game like that. Aren’t both programs undefeated in BCS games? Weren’t Boise State and Utah big underdogs to Oklahoma and Alabama, respectively? Despite that, both teams won. That’s why they play the games. They don’t just say, well, Lee Corso doesn’t think Boise State has a chance against Oklahoma, so we’ll just chalk up the win to the Sooners and not bother to play the game.
The bottom line is that not one of the arguments for the current system makes any sense. Like Wetzel says, the BCS is the clever scheme of a series of money-grubbing assholes who are depriving us fans, and nearly half of all college football teams, of a legit system so that they can line their pockets.
