In the first segment of the “Fixing the BCS” series, the case was made that several changes needed to be made to the Bowl Championship Series. People are not happy with it. They have not been happy with it since it started in 1998. If significant changes are not made to the Bowl Championship Series, people will continue to be unhappy with it.
We’ve all heard the term, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Obviously, this implies that if it is broke, do fix it. Well, the BCS is broken and these changes can act like Gorilla Glue, Duct Tape, and bungee cords all rolled into one.
The first rule change for the BCS called for all Automatic Qualifier conferences to expand to at least twelve teams and play a championship game. The argument and reason for the inclusion of this rule can be seen in the first installment of the series.
Clearly, that rule isn’t enough. We need more, and so here is proposal number two.
Rule Two
No team, including conference champions from Automatic Qualifier conferences, shall play in a BCS affiliated game if they fall outside the top 16 in the Bowl Championship Series standings during the time of the BCS selection process.
Sorry, UConn, but you are the clear cut example of why this rule should be added. The Huskies lost to Michigan, Temple, Rutgers, and Louisville. Connecticut is nowhere to be seen in the top 25 of the BCS. Clearly, they did not deserve a BCS bowl bid. And unfortunately for the Big East, nobody in that conference did this year.
Yet, there the Huskies sit in a matchup against Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl.
I know the BCS uses the term “Automatic Qualifier,” and this rule obviously states that they would not be as automatic as the term implies. Yet, all the conference has to do to get that automatic bid is have their champion finish in the top 16 of the BCS standings. The vast majority of times, this is not a problem for the AQ conferences. This year is the clear exception.
Because the Big East was so horrible this year, and because their unranked champion isn’t the result of a fluke conference championship game, it’s hard to find sympathy for the UConn and Big East argument this year. However, with conferences that do have championship games, it is understandable how a team from a weak division sneaks up and beats a deserving team from an extremely difficult division.
Other rules could (and likely would) be added to supplement this addition to the BCS rules. If a conference’s champion falls outside the top 16, I have no issue with using a forced BCS replacement from that conference if that conference does have a team within the top 14 in the BCS standings. The top 14 would be a good cutoff as the schools in the top 14 of the BCS rankings are eligible for at-large consideration.
In other words, under this scenario, if (22) West Virginia had been ranked eight spots higher, UConn would not be playing in the BCS. West Virginia would have been forced as a chosen option. As it stands, West Virginia barely cracked the top 25 and the Big East would have been left out this year.
That’s the breaks.
A conference like the Big East would never agree to this sort of rule change because they are clearly the one AQ conference that is in danger of not meeting those expectations. In order for this to fly, the conferences need to be guaranteed something.
It makes sense that as conferences are contractually linked with the BCS, they should prosper as the BCS prospers. In the case that an AQ conference does not have an eligible team under these rules, half of the bowl revenue would be split between that conference and the team that replaced their own in the BCS.
For this year, it could have been Boise.
Boise would have split the nearly 18 million dollars with the Big East. For Boise State, it’s a much better deal than taking the one million dollar payout that comes with the Las Vegas Bowl. For the Big East, they would be out nearly nine million dollars, but they would not have to live with the tongue lashing that started as soon as UConn won the conference and won’t end until some weeks after Oklahoma drops half a hundred on them in the Fiesta Bowl. In addition, they get the money that UConn would earn in their other bowl game.
The BCS will rarely put the ten best teams into the bowl games against each other. The human voters are imperfect and biased. The computer formulas can’t take common sense and football IQ into consideration. But the BCS rules can assure that ten of the best teams play in bowl games against each other.
This rule change goes a long way to assuring that we see exactly that. The BCS bowls that pay millions upon millions of dollars to have two of the best teams in the nation deserve to be rewarded with two of the best teams in the nation.
But most importantly, I think the fans deserve it.
