It’s that time of year again: November is here and the college football season is winding down. Teams will be making a last push to make a case for being included in the Bowl Champion Series (BCS) National Championship Game.
For some teams, like the Oklahoma Sooners and the South Carolina Gamecocks, the dream has ended and the best they can hope for is getting invited to a decent bowl game. But for other teams, especially those in the top four of the BCS standings, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal and let the chips shake themselves out.
The BCS is a selection system that creates five bowl match-ups involving 10 of the top ranked teams in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision. It also allows for the top two teams to compete in the BCS National Championship Game.
But thankfully, this season will be the second to last season of what many people consider to be one of the greatest mishaps in college sports.
The BCS system is about to be euthanized; may it soon rest in peace. Gone are the ridiculous polls, the computer standings, and the automatic qualifier status extended to favored conferences like the Southeastern Conference (SEC) and the Big Ten.
Starting in 2014, there will be a new four team playoffs. The new landscape of college football will be very different from what is today.
The new playoff system will work like this: the No. 1 team will play the No. 4 team on Dec. 31, and the No. 2 team will play the No. 3 team on Jan. 1. The sites of those games will rotate among the four current BCS bowls — Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar — with two more to be determined at a later date.
The playoffs will function like a semi-final, similar to the ones we see in college basketball’s March Madness. The winners of the playoffs will advance to the championship game, which will be held on the first Monday in January that is six or more days after the last semifinal.
This system is better than the arbitrary computer rankings that are currently being used. Everything about the 2014 version of post-season college football is going to be an improvement over what we have now. A final four of football is better than a final two, especially when the final two were determined by a computer model. The appointment of a committee of football professionals will be the determinant.
Of course, no system is perfect. There will be seasons when the differences between the ranked teams are small, but the way we determine those differences will make more sense. The doubt will no longer exist like it did for the 2012 BCS Championship. Many people involved in professional sports viewed the move of having two SEC teams, the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Louisiana State University Tigers, play each other to be unfair and exclusionary.
With the doubt removed from the process, the attention can return to the game, where it belongs.
