What Is Wrong With The BCS?

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For years I too shared this popular sentiment until I was overcome with a recent revelation. For once in sports, it’s not about the average fan.


To the people in college football that really matter, the players, students, and die-hard fans, the chance to take part in a bowl game is the ultimate reward for a successful season. The teams are given the keys to cities around the country. They are treated to exclusive tours; they dine at the best restaurants, attend parties in their honor, and are given gifts from the bowl sponsor. They have the chance to end their season as champions, and do it on national TV, so that all their friends, family, and all the people who have supported them over the years can watch. Whether the school is a perennial top ten power, or not, the experience for the players is the same, they are treated like royalty.


One of the most beautiful things about the bowl season is that the scheduling allows for the smaller, often uncelebrated schools to receive national spotlight, if only for a night. For once, their game gets the national hype. For once, their highlights are on ESPN, and for once, the national media talks about them. For the players on these smaller teams who may not be destined for pro sports, the bowl season is the opportunity of a lifetime.

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If the average fan knew what a bowl game experience was like for a player at a non-traditional power, they'd never want to do anything that could take away from that experience.

They truly do deserve it, and the bowl system without question is such a huge part of what makes college football so special.

And the regular season undeniably means more in college (spare us the rematch means those games don't matter bullshite too).

Anyone who's a fan of both LSU and the Saints like I am can't tell me that a Saints regular season loss hurts as much as an LSU regular season loss. It just can't.

The games literally don't mean as much.

It's simple mathematics.

There isn't that much wrong with the BCS system. The reason why there's always a controversy over who gets into the title game is that the regular season isn't really testing enough to sort out the top two teams. It might be different if we had an all-play-all regular season of LSU, Bama, Okie State, Oklahoma, Stanford, Oregon, etc. LSU doesn't play Western Kentucky and Bama doesn't play Kent State.

A lot like soccer leagues, in other words. Each year the bottom couple of teams move down and the top two from the next level move up.

And even then you might have a season where there just aren't two clear best teams. Maybe four of them are really just as good as each other.

There really isn't a definitive solution but BCS is not the problem people think it is. It's the regular season.