The Bowl Championship Series has drawn a lot of criticism over the years. It has undergone a major facelift with a fifth BCS game added. It has seen split champions and controversial title games. And it leaves Division I-A as the only division without a playoff system to decide its champion. Something must be amiss, right?
While I hate to disappoint proponents of a playoff system, there is no reason to abandon the BCS. Tweak the system if you'd like, I couldn't care less as to what makes a team rise or fall in the rankings. Let's just trust that hundreds of bright minds have worked tirelessly to ensure that the system is as fair as possible. See, those are the key words: as fair as possible. Would a playoff be any more fair? Consider the BCS's biggest flaw: When three teams finish undefeated, one gets left in the cold. Okay, so the solution there would seem to be a four-team playoff. I could live with that. But what happens when teams four and five have the same record? Do we expand the playoff to include eight teams? Sixteen? How about 65 like March Madness? The problem with a playoff in college football is that it would require too many teams to be any more "fair" than the BCS system, which would, as a consequence, devalue the regular season.
College football can stake a claim to having the most compelling season in American sports. With apologies to the PBA, no other sport rivals college football when it comes to each game's significance. College's biggest challenger in this regard, the NFL, suffers from a lack of significance once teams have clinched playoff berths. Oftentimes, late-season NFL games are meaningless placeholders. Late-season college games, on the other hand, are some of the most exciting games of the year. Would you rather watch a regular season finale featuring Michigan and Ohio State if both teams have already clinched spots in a potential college football playoff system, or, conversely, a game that pitted the two against each other for their BCS-lives?
But a playoff works so well for college basketball; surely we could find a way to make it work in all college sports, couldn't we? Basketball and football are different beasts. College basketball teams play three times as many games as their football counterparts. Each game has less significance, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The reverse is true for football. Basketball teams are able to play many games in short timespans. Simply put, it's a sport that is far more conducive to a large playoff format.
The BCS is far from perfect. But at the same time, it's the perfect system for college football. It wouldn't be right to extend the college football season, putting student-athletes at risk of injury and placing the sport ahead of academic performance. All that for the sake of a playoff system that still wouldn't satisfy all of its critics? Please. College football has its flaws. You want to fix one? Eliminate some of the meaningless bowl games. But when it comes to the BCS, leave it as is.
