Enjoy it while you can, because the BCS bowl system is leaving us. Might as well start the goodbyes now, waving the hands in approval of a new system.
By Cameron Jacobs
Since 1998, the well-established BCS system has been under much scrutiny over who gets in and who doesn’t and year after year we hear again and again of how one team is more deserving of another and at the end of the day, we aren’t left with a true national champion by most standards. Just two teams selected by a flawed system to duke it out for a trophy and be called national champion for a year.
Now, a new system, a new opportunity to pick a national champion, and just like every other sport played, we have a playoff. Other sports don’t get as much scrutiny and controversy with their way of selecting a national champion, unlike college football which has been the topic of disagreements around the nation since the very beginning. With the implementation of a college football playoff, even with only a four-team playoff, we now have four teams playing it out for the national championship which is a lot better than a computer telling us that two teams are the best in the nation and should playing. We have the new selection committee to tell us the four teams that need to fight it out for the biggest title in college football, “National Champions.”
An outdated BCS system just wasn’t cutting it for college football, too much controversy year after year. In 2003 the country didn’t have two national champions, but there was actually a split national champion. The AP ranked the University of Southern California (USC) number one, but in the BCS rankings Louisiana State University (LSU) and Oklahoma were number one and two, meaning they would face off in the national championship game. In the end, LSU would win the national championship game, the AP still ranked USC as the number one team in the country after their 28-14 win over Michigan, leading to a split in the title of national champions. Then you have the 2011 national championship rematch between LSU and Alabama. LSU would beat Alabama 9-6 in a regularly scheduled game during the season, but the good people wanted to see it again and put it on display again, but this time in the national championship game, in which Alabama won in convincing fashion beating LSU 21-0.
The new system will have its own group of skeptics and its own band of supporters, but in an ever increasingly violent sport, there isn’t a lot the NCAA can do in terms of a playoff. The NFL and college basketball have bigger fields of teams in their playoffs, but with the players of any college football team being as young as 18 years old, they can’t subject them to that much physical violence in one period of time. Now, the number five team in the nation and their fans will be complaining about how they should have had a spot in the playoff, instead of how the number 3 team complaining about not being put into national championship game. New system, same problems and there isn’t going to be less arguments about who should have been in or who could have won, just a new thing to complain about in a different light.
Here’s to the final BCS bowl season as we have known it for the past decade and beyond, and here’s to ushering in a new era of college football, one with what the critics have been asking for and what the fans have been hoping for.