With the final game of the college football season due to be played tomorrow, I have taken it upon myself to trace through the history of the BCS and how we've arrived at this point. Whether Florida or Oklahoma win tomorrow, it is sure to be a wild ride into the future either way. Below you can find a short excerpt from a piece written to the title The History of the BCS National Championship at Helium; if you wish to read the longer piece, it can be found here...
The Bowl Championship Series was the culmination of several efforts through the 1990s to bring together the top teams from across the nation to the biggest bowl games. Coming on the heels of the Bowl Coalition (1992-1994) and the Bowl Alliance (1995-1997), the BCS emerged in 1998 as the widest-ranging attempt to date to determine a national champion in college football. The history of college football is one of multiple dominant teams being sorted out by a poll of experts - whether sportswriters, coaches or a computer tabulating the results of each contest. The NCAA, born out of an effort to restrict encroaching professionalism in collegiate football following the MacCracken conferences of nearly sixty universities in 1905-1906, has never officially crowned a champion in Division I-A football... and thus the BCS is only the most recent step in attempting to determine the top teams at the end of the season.
The BCS is the most wide-reaching attempt to unite the traditionally strongest six Division I-A conferences with the top four bowl games. Traditionally, conferences have locked in guaranteed bids to bowl games. For instance, the Rose Bowl since 1947 has contractually matched the Pac-10 champion with the Big Ten champion. While this has inevitably led to exciting contests, it has not always led to there being a clear-cut number one team at the end of the season. Following the 1991 season, when the Miami Hurricanes and Washington Huskies split the AP and Coaches Polls for the de facto national crown, the Bowl Coalition united five power conferences (minus both the Big Ten and Pac-10) in an effort to force a final matchup between the number-one and number-two teams in the polls and allow a champion to be determined on the field. As conferences consolidated and expanded through the end of the century, the Coalition gave way to a new configuration in the Bowl Alliance. But without two of the biggest conferences in the fold, the Alliance suffered the same lack of legitimacy which plagued the Coalition....
Many questions still exist regarding the legitimacy of the BCS. In a move reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt's White House conferences with the Big Three (Yale, Harvard and Princeton) football schools back in 1905 to push for better safety and rules standards and amateur ideals, we might yet see incoming president Barack Obama helping in his spare time to negotiate a route toward a Division I-A playoff. After all, we've already seen Utah's attorney general open a probe into potential antitrust violations by the confederation...
But whatever the future holds, the BCS has proven to be the longest-standing and most expansive national-championship formula to date. The first alliance to include the Big Ten and Pac-10, we must at least tip our hats to the fact that the BCS has attempted to include schools from the midwest and west coast and that it has opened the route in current big-money college football for small-conference schools to rise to prominence.
Leave your thoughts below. What do you think about the BCS? (I imagine most fans will speak out against it in some way... but I could be surprised.) How do you think the game will end tomorrow? Was your team slighted? Should we see a split national title this season once again -- and if so, who should take the AP poll? Anything and everything... now is your chance to sound off...
Cheney Larschied
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nice work zach...and to avoid sounding like a whiny Texas fan...i am going to keep my thoughts about this season out of the discussion
i will say...i do think that the current system needs and overhaul, and maybe a playoff format would be the best way to accomplish that...although when the BCS came along it was supposed to be the answer to all the problems
Tha Fizz
Austin, TX
Total Comments (11518)
The current BCS is based on several false premises. I will examine only two of the principle ones here.
First, there is the assumption that there will be agreement on exactly two contenders for the national title. This has not happened since the BCS system was implemented nor is it likely to occur in the future.
Secondly, there is the assumption that somehow statistics can determine a ranking. But rankings are linear while team comparisons are multidimensional. Statistics cannot deal with this situation any more than human opinion can. The statistical methodology is invoked in order to give an appearance of impartiality to the selection process, but in fact that methodology is only a formal implementation of personal opinions. Statistics should be used as one of a number of tools for understanding, but is not suited for use as a weapon.
Appleseed
Detroit, MI
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Excellent writing, Zach.
I've always been a fan of the playoff idea for college football. Quite frankly, it's silly that three 11-1 teams, two 12-1 teams, and two 12-0 teams had absolutely no shot at a national championship because two other 12-1 teams were somehow judged better. Then again, a suitable playoff would be ridiculously time-consuming and taxing thanks to the nature of football itself. Even despite the risks of a playoff, it is the only fair option. It'll never happen, but I can dream...
Redwing19: retired
Halifax, NS
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I'm not sure who said it but there is a quote:
"Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the other ones."
I feel that's similar to what we have in the BCS. Through the history of college football it is undoubtedly the best way to determine a champion the sport has ever had. A lot of people tend to overlook that when complaining about the BCS.
Where the analogy falls short, is that there is a superior form of "government" out there that no one will wrestle into place.
The Ram
Pittsburgh, PA
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thanks for this history.
How 'bout 'em
Marietta, GA
Total Comments (2070)
The BCS is probably as good a way as any to rank and seed teams for some form of a playoff. I am a die-hard Gator fan and I certainly hope they win tonight, but even then I won't have any way to know for sure that Utah is not the best team in the country. I watched Utah win 7 or 8 times this year and I was impressed every time. Then they beat Alabama as convincingly as Florida did. Only a playoff would resolve the issue for me.
ChiefBroom
Johns Creek, GA
Total Comments (55)
I believe the quote comes from Winnie Churchill, uttered when he was Prime Minister of England during the Second World War. He was responding to criticism of "decadent" democratic powers by the Axis nations and their allies.
But I might argue that the current BCS is better than what we had before. Then it was possible for two good teams who never met to both be champions. Now we must have a single "champion" even when it is very debatable whether that team is really the champion.
Something is seriously wrong with a system when people are instructed on how to mark their ballot. Coaches for schools which participate in the BCS must vote for the winner of the national championship game whether they agree with it or not. This is, in my opinion, worse than the way things were done before the BCS was instituted.
Appleseed
Detroit, MI
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Thank you for such relevant comments, all of you... as for the comparisons between government and sport (something which fascinates me to no end), systems in all realms are always being refined. Football over the ages has been evolving as a sport from the scrum-and-wedge-filled rugby-style days of the 1880s and 1890s through to the first revolution from 1910-12, just as democratic systems of governance have evolved and been refined...
The key is never to become complacent in the system which we presently have. The BCS works precisely because it is constantly being altered and tweaked to better serve its intended purpose; much like the American (and other) Constitutions are malleable documents which can prudently be altered to operate as a more effective system for the society it governs. No system -- neither the early days when Ivy League schools dominated the landscape; to the era when the forerunner of the Big Ten grew in stature; through many split national championships to the nascent days of conference alliances; and on into our present situation; nor even a playoff, should it ever come into being -- will ever be perfect...
And we must not strive for perfection. The beauty of athletics is that there is always going to be an imperfection. Governance is a constant struggle against the imperfections of our society. It is how we deal with these adversities which defines us as a common people. Remember our history, for we see how much we will need to grow to get through the next year, decade, century...
Bigalke
Springfield, OR
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Great job Bigalke. That took a lot of time and effort to create, and you did a wonderful job as usual.
People have been proclaiming that Utah should be crowned as the Best Team in NCAA Division 1-A Football, but I disagree because we don't know what they could've done against USC, Florida, Oklahoma or Texas.
Dyhard- Stop…
Germantown, WI
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