by Dan Greenland

Created on: February 06, 2009

In deciding whether the BCS system is fair we must first figure out what "fair" is and how it pertains to college football. I looked up the word "fair" in Webster's dictionary. The meaning I liked best stated, "Marked by impartiality and honesty: free of self-interest, prejudice, and favoritism." These are great guidelines; if the BCS follows these guidelines then it is fair.

I then researched how the BCS actually determines its rankings. There are four components that determine where a team is ranked: 1. Subjective polls (Associated Press poll and coaches poll) 2. Computer Rankings 3. Strength of Schedule 4. Number of losses. The interesting thing here is that the subjective polls are the first determinant and the computer rankings use these polls (among other factors) to mathematically rank the teams.

Going back to our definition which states, "...free of...prejudice, and favoritism" it becomes quite clear that the BCS system is not fair. Since the polls of the media and coaches are the first determinant, the system is actually based on prejudice and favoritism.

The proof of this is resounding. Every year there is at least one stand out team (usually from a "less talented conference") that goes undefeated or has one loss and gets no respect. They do not get to play for the national championship and instead beat a team in their bowl game that means nothing. This year that team was Utah. Undefeated all season long, they put the cherry on top by convincingly beating an Alabama team who had been ranked 1st for part of the year and was in many people's opinion the 3rd or 4th best team in the nation going into the bowl games. Utah had every reason to be mad about this. They were undefeated, Florida and Oklahoma (who played for the national championship) each had one loss. This is where prejudice and favoritism come into play. It has been believed that the SEC and Big 12 Conferences have been the strongest football conferences for the past few years, this prejudice helped Florida and Oklahoma (the winning teams of those two conferences) into the championship and forced other teams out.

This is an old debate. The BCS was formed to try to improve the situation...I think it has. When the championship game was set this year I thought they got it right (although Texas had a legitimate argument). It was the match up I wanted to see. If Utah had lost to Alabama I would have felt like the BCS system actually worked this year. But Utah didn't lose to Alabama, and because this happens so often the BCS system is not working, and will never work.

Though this is not a political issue, I agree completely with President Obama, "It's about time we had a playoff in college football." I also agree with his thought that we should take the top 8 teams and have them play off for the championship. There is enough time between the regular season and the BCS bowl games, it would only take 4 weeks to complete an eight team playoff.

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