This article asks four experts what one change they would make to the BCS system. My thoughts:
Change 1: Make strength of schedule one-quarter of the formula, decrease the human polls to half, and the computers to a fourth.
I couldn’t agree more. I love that non-BCS teams play in the BCS but Hawaii did not belong last year and Utah is the only team left that should be considered this year, and even they don’t have as strong a resume as the other schools ranked around them. Give props to some of these teams taking it to pretty good BCS-conf. opponents but remember these teams don’t have to deal with week-in-week-out tough games. Utah played Weber State before and Wyoming after beating Oregon State and Boise State played Bowling Green and LA Tech around their Oregon Win. In my opinion non-BCS teams, even if they play in the Mountain West, need to schedule Fresno State style to get into a BCS game (to Utah’s credit they did play two BCS teams including Michigan, but also played Weber State and Utah State as OOC games). The problem right now is there’s no penalty for not playing a tougher schedule as voters have given them the benefit of the doubt.
It’s not just these non-BCS teams getting away with weak schedules either. Many teams, including Kansas last year and Texas Tech this year have played truly embarrassing OOC schedules. This has happened all through the BCS era and needs to come to an end.
Change 2: Scrap the current method of selecting schools for the five bowl games and simply hand out invites to the top 10 teams.
Uh, no. I will say that if a third team from a conference is ranked in the top 8, they should be eligible for a BCS bowl (ie, one of the Big-12 south teams if they finish 11-1 or Missouri wins the Big-12 championship game). But, I also believe that each conference champion should have a BCS game as their reward. If this is not the case it gives the polls way to much credit. We all think the Big-12 and SEC are great and the other conferences as a whole are lagging but the only way to know is to play the games. Do we really think both Utah and Boise State are better than an ACC, Big East and potentially a Pac-10 champ?
Change 3: The insertion of a requirement that all teams involved in the BCS debate play 13 games.
This is kind of confusing as there are many points he makes. SEC fans love to dog on conferences that don’t play a championship game but they also unanimously agree that Georgia was at the least the second best team in the SEC last year. Problem? Georgia didn’t play in the SEC championship game AND they are in a different division than LSU. It just doesn’t make sense that “the only way to decide a champion is to have a championship game” if it doesnt put the two best teams together (if they’re from different divisions).
On the other hand I do agree there is an odd dynamic between the conferences who don’t have a championship and those who do. Personally I feel the conferences should be able to make some of their own rules, like how they crown a champion. Obviously I feel the Pac-10 is in the clear because they play a round robin schedule, as does the Big East. But, in all honestly I would love to see Utah and BYU in the Pac-10 so it could split into North and South divisions.
Anyway, isnt his point moot as even a two-loss LSU, a Nebraska that didnt play in the Big-12 champ. and an Oklahoma who lost the Big-12 champ. all made the National Championship game? Or is his point that that wouldnt have happened had some of the other teams played a thirteenth game?
In the end the article isn’t all that clear on the 13th games we should play outside of conference championships.
Change 4: Get rid of the automatic bids for the six conferences and allow the other leagues more into the mix.
This argument is based on the assumption that the top 10 teams in the BCS are the 10 best teams in the country. That is a foolish assumption. There are 5 teams in the top-25 that I would take without thinking twice over Utah and Boise State. I would also put my $134 life savings on the fact that none of the non-BCS teams in contention would be undefeated in any of the six auto-conferences. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if those teams didn’t score one point playing against the South Carolina defense (#25 in BCS), but alas, that too is an assumption. The point here is that non-BCS teams do well against BCS teams sometimes but by and large they still lose most of the time. We also tend to sensationalize when these teams do win, even though as I said earlier they don’t deal with difficult schedules week-in-week-out. The ONLY way I could get behind this is if strength of schedule were a big part of the BCS, basically forcing the little guys to play 3 or 4 BCS teams.
The flip side of this is, again, a lot of these teams have extremely strong programs. Who knows if a BYU, Boise State, Utah or TCU could win some of these conferences with one or two losses. Another thing, I just called these teams the “little guys” but in reality they have bigger fan bases and better run programs than many BCS schools. Utah and BYU consistently sell out 45,000 and 65,000 seat stadiums, which would match up well with most Pac-10 schools. The main thing here is prove your mettle with scheduling. You cant blame BYU for playing Washington and UCLA or Utah for playing Michigan (I’m a firm believer in the intentions of a schedule) but you can blame them for playing Utah State, Northern Iowa, Weber State, etc… while also playing in a weaker conference full of teams most schools consider “cup cakes”.
