http://www.foxsports.com/named/FS/CFB/Polls/BCS
This page explains exactly how the BCS rankings work.
IMO, the BCS sucks and has to go after the contract is up in 2 years. From everything I’ve heard seen and read, USC will be co-champions regardles of the LSU-Oklahoma game.
Just how subjective are the polls? I remember reading years ago that Knute Rockne’s real genius was in having all the Notre Dame journalism students compelled to cover the football games. When they spread out to papers all across America, with their fond memories of the Fighting Irish, it allowed Notre Dame to receive press unrelated to their actual achievements. The author felt that the tradition continued.
My roomie pointed out that the BCS system assumes that teams don’t improve. He’s saying that USC lost once early, but has really kicked butt from then on, and it seems at the end of the season that they’re best.
I think you HAVE to have some flexible human judgemen in this kind of thing, period, or a 2-3 game playoff among the top teams. Then no one can really argue. If #5 fights its way through at the end, well, that’s called life.
Another factor, apart from the all-important dollars, mitigates against college football ever having a playoff: apart from Pete Carroll (in other years, there will be other coaches), no college football coach wants one!
Look at it this way: if there were a playoff system, only ONE college team could end the season on a high note. With the current bowl system, 20+ teams get to end the season on a high note.
So, if you’re a mediocre coach at a mid-level college, and a win in the Poulan Weedeater Bowl* might be just the thing to save your job for one more season, the bowl system is a godsend, and the LAST thing you want is a playoff that you probably can’t qualify for (let alone win).
Presently there are 28 bowl games. The 27th is being played today, the Humanitarian Bowl in Boise. It is matching Tulsa and Georgia Tech.
The problem with using existing bowls as part of a playoff is that bowls were not designed for playoffs. They were designed to attract people to visit a city during the holidays.
If you tell fans of Miami, that they need to go first to a place like New Orleans for the semifinals and then possibly to a place like Pasadena for the final, you won’t get a lot of people who can make the trip to both games.
Joe Paterno’s been calling for a playoff since at least 1973. He laid out a potential system in Football My Way–I think that was published around 1975, back when even the idea of a “Bowl Championship Series” would have been considered far too radical.
I’ve always thought if the money was right, a playoff system could be put together. I wonder whether a few more years of the BCS might tilt the economics of college football that way. One of the arguments of the bowl chairmen has always been that a playoff would diminish interest in lower-tier bowls, because they wouldn’t be as “important” under a playoff system. But that doesn’t appear to be happening now under the BCS system, even though the lower-tier bowls are all but meaningless. I’ve seen several playoff proposals that keep the “small bowls” (as a kind of NIT-style “consolation prize”), while 4 to 8 teams play in a mini-bracket culminating in a championship game the week prior to the Super Bowl. If the NCAA bean-counters got together and figured out that system would make more money–it would happen, guaranteed. 'Till then, never.
After last season I found a good website to decode the BCS. It’s just a Geocities webpage but it contains more information on the BCS than any other website I’ve been to. This site also displays the unofficial BCS rankings weeks before the official poll comes out. RT’s BCS website (unofficial) Check it out. The webmaster also offers information on the changes to the poll each year and even has his own computer poll that he feels is more accurate.
BobT,
No, college basketball teams go from losing the conference tourney into the first game of the NCAA tourney, which is still five games from the championship game. They still earn their way back after a loss. They don't go straight from a loss to the championship game and a shot at the title.