BCS Ignores the Little Guy

College football does not have a playoff system leading to a championship game. Instead, there is a panel of football "experts" called the BCS, that get together and rank the college teams and ultimately decide which teams head to bowl games and the coveted championship bowl game.

The BCS primarily considers the schedules of all NCAA teams to determine who has the best record after playing the best competition. The problem with this analysis is that it punishes those football teams that are unable to join the best football conferences, such as the SEC, where teams are forced to play against their conference opponents. Therefore, a vicious cycle is created where the outsiders can't get good competition, because they cannot play within the other conferences and the teams in the tough conferences are forced to continuously play good teams in their conference, hurting their records.

So the BCS contends that that you are only as good as who you play against - bogus! This is like saying that an aspiring artist in NYC is better than one in Idaho, because the NYC artist gets more exposure within tougher competition. It is possible that the NYC artist is superior to the one in Idaho, but there is no way to know that without having the two artists face off against one another. (This is why we depend on shows like Project Runway and Top Chef to assist middle of nowhere talent get a fair chance!)

Case and point is the football team at Boise State. Boise State has a weak schedule since it is not in a major football conference. To combat their critics, the school suped up its schedule this year with some heavy hitters, but it still has a much inferior schedule to those teams in the SEC or Big Ten, for example. Boise State currently is ranked number 2 in the BCS rankings, but only because Texas (previously ranked number 2) had an embarrassing loss to UCLA this past weekend. Unfortunately, even with a win, Boise State should drop in the rankings this weekend behind teams like Oklahoma or Oregon. In addition to having to win all its games, Boise State needs to pray for other teams to lose in order for a chance at the national championship title, because within the BCS system, Boise State's wins will never have an equal value to those of the schools in tougher conferences.

Boise State should hope for Alabama. the defending champs and current number 1 seed, to run the table and all others to lose two-three games. Then Boise State may finally have a chance to compete for a title, and against the best, the Alabama Crimson Tide.