BCS works __% of the time? 27%

Alot of what you're saying is based on the outcome of the Championship game itself, which is a terrible way to judge it. Just because Ohio State got blown out by Florida and LSU doesn't mean they shouldn't have been there. Also, by that reasoning, CU shouldn't have been in the Championship game instead of Nebraska, because they got beat in their bowl game.

The BCS makes some mistakes but it's better than the alternative.

I think you are unclear on what the BCS is supposed to do. It exists only to select the best two teams out of a myriad field of competitors. As such, it does its job rather well. To wit:

1998 - Tenn and FSU played. K-State was 3 and OSU, who you said was left out, did not even win the Big11Ten. Tennessee and FSU were the best two teams.
1999 - FSU and VT. Best two teams, period
2000 - OU and FSU. Everyone likes to say that Miami was shafted, but they lost to Washington, who was #4 in the final BCS. Here it was a hard choice, and this would have been a perfect year for a 4-team playoff.
2001 - Miami and Nebraka. Agreed. Nebraska should not have been in. It should have been Oregon.
2002 - Miami and OSU. Two best teams
2003 - LSU and OU. Agreed. OU, again, as a team that didn't win its conference, should not have been in.
2004 - USC and OU. The BCS had to make a determination to pick 2 out of 3 undefeated teams, and based on the information and data we had, it made the right choice. Auburn played absolutely no one OOC that year.
2005 - USC and Texas. Again, two best teams,
2006 - OSU and UF. They clearly got this one right as well. Pretty sure USC had 2 losses this season.
2007 - OSU and LSU. LSU was the clear choice among 2-loss teams. Georgia did not win their conference, and USC's schedule did not measure up. Don't forget VT had two losses, but one was to LSU.
2008 - OU and UF. Texas did not get left out. They did not win their conference, and justly so. Althoug they beat Oklahoma, they lost to Texas Tech. Texas Tech had just as much claim to be playing in the Big XII CG as Texas. Get over it.

So although we would have liked to see MORE teams competing for a championship, in all but two cases, the BCS has selected the best TWO teams, based on the information presented and available at the time. The BCS works. It really does.

Agreed. The biggest "problem" with the BCS is non-conference champions making the National Championship game. But currently that's not an official requirement of the BCS.

Flawed way to analyze the BCS. Certainly it can be criticized, but it is certainly better than the system that gave the NC to BYU some years back when BYU's toughest opponent of the year was a 6-5 Michigan in the Holiday Bowl. The BCS is set up to put the no. 1 v. no. 2. It has done that. Are no. 1 and no. 2 selections always perfect (USC probably should have been in the game in 2003, for example and the system very nearly left LSU out)? No, but it is still significantly better over the old system.

A full scale playoff isn't going to happen. Why would the big boy conferences agree to it? It actually would cost most big conference teams a lot of revenue, despite protestations that a playoff would generate more revenue. It might do so, but teams that don't make the playoff will make less if they have to give up at least one home game per year, because the extra playoff revenue will be distributed by some formula to all of the Div. 1A football conferences, but you can bet that a team like LSU or Ohio State will get less money than from loss of revenue from a home game. I don't think extending the season (without cutting at least one game per year) is going to fly with the universities. Thus, there will be no serious support for anything more than a plus 1 or 4 game playoff that will not shorten the regular season.


Just because a team is undefeated (i.e., Utah or Hawaii in 2007), doesn't mean that the team deserves to be in the championship, or even in a 4 team playoff. Not a genuine basis for criticism on that point by itself.

2004- Yes Auburn was undefeated, but somebody gets left out. Maybe Auburn could have gotten in over OU, but I don't really think it had that compelling a case over OU. Utah has no argument at all.

2005- Of course they got it right. There is no serious argument otherwise. If LSU had been undefeated (and may well have been without Katrina), I still think that USC and Texas would have been right, but it would have been very painful, and I would have had my doubts that it was right to leave out LSU.

In 2006, can anybody argue with a straight face that USC deserved to be in the over Florida after USC played in a weaker conference and lost to a very mediocre UCLA in its last game of the regular season? (You left out a 1 loss Michigan). OSU was undefeated in a BCS conference. The BCS got it just right.

In 2007, the system worked just fine. UGA didn't win its conference championship, nor play in its conference championship game, and USC's losses were worse than LSU's and it played in a weaker conference. There was no really legitimate argument for either team over LSU in the BCS championship. OSU was a one-loss team in a BCS conference. It would have made no real sense to put a 2 loss team in a BCS conference in the game over a 1 loss BCS conference champion. Again the BCS got it right.

In 2008, so what that TX was left out? They lost to Oklahoma; they didn't play for a conference championship. USC lost to a weak team in a weak conference. What is the problem? The BCS got it right.

There will always be someone who gets left thinks they are deserving, so if you use that criteria, the BCS works vitually never. But that is not the criteria. A plus one game or a 4 game playoff might be workable, and probably could work. And then you will have the same arguments. Which of several one loss teams or an undefeated non-BCS team gets left out of the four teams competing for the NC? Again the BCS is not perfect, but a larger playoff will not fly for a variety of reasons - money (not the boon that some think to big schools that control the system), makes it too expensive for fans to go to games, devalues the regular season (which is now more like a 12 game playoff and puts a premium on winning your conference), etc.

I don't support a large scale playoff. It will devalue the regular season, devalue conference championships and conference play, making conference championships more like basketball and baseball ("who cares as long as you get into the playoffs"). It will ruin the bowl system, which, while it has it flaws, has a lot of charm and benefit. It will will change things for the worse about Div 1A college football that make it the best sport in America, all for that part of the American fan base and media that is more oriented toward professional, not college, sports. It won't actually improve anything that makes Div. 1A football so compelling.

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there were at least two other teams with 2 losses (USC & GA)

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USC lost to stanford, at home.

georgia didn't win their division.

Regardless, my original point was about Oklahoma being just as deserving as USC if not more that year. USC lost to a bad Cal team. Oklahoma lost to a good Kansas St. team.

I

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Regardless, my original point was about Oklahoma being just as deserving as USC if not more that year. USC lost to a bad Cal team. Oklahoma lost to a good Kansas St. team.

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I understand your point on that, and don't really disagree, except to point out that OU was absolutely slaughtered by a good team, whereas USC was on the road and lost in overtime. (Cal wasn't great, but wasn't that bad). (Ugh, defending USC ) If the OU loss had not been so ugly, the OU argument would have been more compelling, but it was really, really ugly and in the last game of the season. In general, however, I think a BCS conference champion should get the nod over a team that doesn't win its conference. In some views when you lose shouldn't matter, but a late season loss by a huge margin probably should matter. There shouldn't be a hard and fast rule requiring a team to be a conference champion to get a NC game bid, but it should be a strong preference.

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2006 - USC and FL one loss, and OSU didn't look like it shouldn't been in it

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wrong, SC had two losses that year that took us out. that year the controversy was FL over michigan which obviously was the right call.