Can the BCS be fixed?

This question of course will be asked, and answered, every year until the BCS is actually fixed, or some new acronym assumes top rank in the bureaucracy of college football, but since I haven't written any run-on sentences (much less actual blog posts) in some time I feel that I should make some public comment.

Paragraph two should begin the reasons for a BCS change. The reasons are manifold but the most obvious are the lack of clarity in the crowning a national champion and the fact that every other NCAA sport uses a tournament or olympic-style championship system (including the other NCAA football divisions, which I've blahgged about here.)

So can the BCS be fixed? Probably only when pride and money move over, which will not be soon, or when we have a legitimate contender left out of the championship game enough times to create an irreversible stir. Remember that this happened in 2003 when USC won a share of the national title despite not playing in the championship game and 2004 when Auburn was undefeated but without the chance of playing for the title when USC played Oklahoma (both undefeated, as was Urban Meyer's Utah and now-fan favorite Boise State). And it's possible, though unlikely, that four heavyweights (USC, LSU, Oklahoma, and West Virginia) could finish this season undefeated. That would be enough of a stir, I think, to cause an immediate BCS amendment (for 2008). But what we need is a permanent fix.

A common suggestion is a simple four-team playoff. This would solve most of the problems and add a few new bowls (and bowl revenue), but this really only delays more anger and conflict. It would have seemed to work last year, pitting favorites Ohio State, Florida, LSU, and Michigan against each other, but simple reflection shows this to be a false solution. Remember that these teams had already faced each other previously in the year (Ohio State and Michigan in the final game of the year) and that LSU only gained its rank because Arkansas lost in the SEC championship game. An Arkansas win would have kicked Florida out (last year's national champions) and would have likely re-matched Ohio State and Michigan. Both of these teams lost bowls. Michigan lost handily to USC, which was ranked 5 in the BCS and clearly one of the elite. So the headache continues, but don't forget that this BCS solution would last year have only pitted teams from two BCS conferences in the championship. The other three conferences would have none of that.

The null hypothesis (or second null, I suppose) is the 64-team tournament bracket, but this is obviously too large since only 120 teams play I-A football. A 32-team bracket may work, but this would be 5 games more to win the championship--an impossibly difficult task. In any case, certain teams would require an off week as a benefit of the top-ranking and incentive to make the season interesting but even a 24-team playoff with 8 teams taking a free week leaves 5 weeks of playoffs.

If four is too few teams and thirty-two is too many then we're left with eight to sixteen teams to play for the national championship. Since it seems reasonable that some teams deserve a free week in addition to their top seed we're left at twelve teams, four weeks, eleven games, and one champion. But not all problems are yet solved.

This reduces the number of bowl games drastically (from 27, I think, to now 11) and decreases revenue substantially for teams until drastic restructuring occurs. Since schools use bowl money to fund football it only makes sense that television revenue from the playoff tournament is divided among the conferences represented in each game, each participant taking an equal share of the games value. This works well since the winning team then contributes more money in the next matchup. Conferences then could (should) distribute this money across all teams with bonuses to the teams that played in the tournament.

Certainly this format leaves out smaller teams and smaller conferences, which are unlikely to have a presence in the tournament most years. It may be possible to create a format that guarantees each conference's champion a tournament birth as a play-in should they not meet the requirements for tournament selection, but with 11 conferences that would mean as many as 6 play-in teams in some years and that would be a tricky system. In that case, a 5-week 24-team playoff seems most desirable.

In any case, the season must be shortened so that conference championships occur earlier. With a maximum of ten regular season games, 4 weeks of playoffs would not be any more games than most bowl teams play presently. Even with 10 games +/- a conference championship the twelve team playoff tournament seems both a feasible and reasonable alternative to our current system.

So why hasn't Myles Brand thought of this? Actually I'm sure Myles Brand has considered this and many other alternative formats. The real question we want answered is why hasn't he taken the necessary action? Is it money or power? He's the head of the NCAA. No journalist, team, or conference has power over him because they are members of his organization. He can, if he wishes, simply enact whatever is necessary to crown an appropriate champion for Division I-A college football.

So maybe instead of talking about how we think the college football champion should be decided, petition me to the NCAA as a replacement to Myles. I promise I would use that power for good and a more clear picture of which team is really the best in college football.