End of 2016 College Football Season Proof the BCS Had it All Wrong
The end of the 2016 college football season is approaching, and as we look at how these last two weeks of regular season are unfolding, it’s clear the BCS was way off target.
I’d like to take you back on a trip through time; a time when iPhones were still almost a decade away from being introduced; a time when Barack Obama was still merely a member of the Illinois State senate; and a time when college football fans were introduced to a ghastly system for deciding a national champion…
Yes, in 1998 – after the failed attempts at moving past the polls by the Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance – the corporate sponsors, overlords of the bowl games and NCAA gave us a computer-driven rankings device that would “take all the guesswork out” of choosing a national college football champion.
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The BCS arrived on the scene and almost immediately drew the ire of fans and the media for it’s method of ranking and grim prospects for teams changing their lot in the rankings life through the course of a season.
There was hardly a season when there wasn’t an obvious flaw in the system, and fans are still bitter about the championship pairings and bowl matchups from seasons like 2004 and 2011. It was ugly, and it brought out ugliness in fans only rivaled by the 2016 presidential election.
Skip ahead to 2013, when it was finally time to wave goodbye to the algorithm of college football doom, and the BCS still had supporters and apologists who maintained that the use of a postseason playoff would kill the sacred meaning of the regular season and would remove the drama from the season.
Balderdash, I say.
Beginning in 2014, the first two years of the College Football Playoff showed there was still plenty of drama and surprise in store for fans. The 2016 season has stomped a Stone Cold mudhole in the idea that the BCS was even a pretty good idea, less yet the system we needed.
Dec 5, 2015; Atlanta, GA, USA; Alabama Crimson Tide running back Derrick Henry (2) shoes the SEC banner following their win 29-15 over the Florida Gators in the 2015 SEC Championship Game at the Georgia Dome. Mandatory Credit: Butch Dill-USA TODAY Sports
Hang on to your seats as we approach the penultimate week of the 2016 season. We have some of the most exciting finishes to a regular season we’ve ever seen. Of all the Power-5 conferences, only the SEC has decided both participants in its title game.
The Apple Cup – an annual rivalry game between Washington and Washington State – will be played on the day after Thanksgiving and will decide who from the Pac-12 North will advance to the conference championship game.
Another age-old rivarly – USC vs Notre Dame – will play a part in whether USC or Colorado make their way to the Pac-12 title game (a USC win and Colorado loss against Utah clinches for the Trojans).
The Game – known to most outside the midwest as Michigan vs Ohio State – will decide who represents the Big Ten East in the conference championship game, depending on what Penn State does in their season finale against Michigan State. The other half of the Big Ten will be decided in the final week based on a head-to-head result between Wisconsin and Nebraska from October 29.
Two in-state ACC rivalries – Virginia Tech vs Virginia and North Carolina vs NC State – will decide who has the right to face Clemson in the ACC Championship game.
That enough drama for you? No? Well how about adding this.
The annual bitter rivalry between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State known as Bedlam will crown the outright 2016 Big 12 champion.
Caught your breath yet? Because there’s more.
While all of these games will either decide participants in a conference championship game or a conference championship, they will also have huge impact on the all-important College Football Playoff rankings.
Of the 17 teams mentioned above, three of them are currently ranked in the top four, and five more are in a position to possibly be moved into that top four at the end of the season.
We never, ever saw anything like this during the 16-year tyrannical reign of the BCS.
Bottom line, the BCS got it wrong. Oh sure, maybe it seemed as though we had the “two best teams” at the end of each season most years. But did we…did we really? Would the current playoff system have allowed for more movement and excitement down the stretch?
You betcha.
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The cold, computer-dominated rankings were a calculated sabermetric-like nightmare for a sport which thrives on chaos and unexpected greatness as its lifeblood.
This isn’t to say that the current playoff system is perfect. It’s far from it. There is always room for improvement, and the system will be adjusted and tweaked as needed. But goodness, to have so many classic rivalries play a part – a big part – in who is our eventual national champion will be is like a dream come true – and the BCS would have never allowed for this to happen.
Now it’s about more than numbers crunched by a microchip. Winning your conference matters. Your strength of schedule matters. Your wins and losses matter. How you go about winning or losing matters, and where teams you beat or lost to are ranked now (as opposed to when you played them) matter.
College football is all about rivalries, and having games like these matter for more than just bragging rights is the way it should be.
Revel in this final two weeks of the regular season, fans. Because once Bedlam is over on December 3rd, we will undoubtedly know who our potential conference champions are and whether or not the Big 12 has once again possibly dealt themselves out of the playoff picture by opting out of a conference title game.
Rest in peace, BCS…we’re just wondering what you would have done if Florida were to defeat Alabama in the SEC championship game this year.