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I was reading another article that had a similar theme and was extremely well written. I started to write a comment, but then it started to get so long that I decided to just write my own article.

In essence his article mentioned the Utah Attorney General’s anti-trust lawsuit against the BCS that should take place sometime this summer. To fully make sense of what I am saying you will need to read Jeremy’s article as well as the comments. Hopefully it will make some sense either way.

Do I think the BCS is unfair, absolutely.
Do I think this lawsuit will result in a playoff, or even a better system, no.

But, this is the best laid argument I have seen. Every other attempt to take down the BCS has been nothing more than a cryfest about how our team got left out and we should have gotten in, blah blah blah. The huge factor that continues to grow is that the Major BCS schools, meaning the ones that consistently have a title shot like USC, are saying we need a playoff.

What that says to me is that this is no longer simply a question of who should play in a BCS bowl, but that it has sincerely become a question of crowning a TRUE national champion. That is the argument that has needed to be raised to create change.

Let’s face it, the big conferences and networks are going to get their money one way or another. What I have really started to take issue with is declaring a national champion when there is a legitimate case for multiple other teams. If any major sport were to simply pick two teams based on polls and they played one game to determine the Super Bowl Champion, or the winner of the Stanley Cup, then there would be outrage. Why is college football the only exception to the rule in the world?

Of all the sporting events in the world, from pee wee sports, to the high school, to professional sports, and even to the Olympics, there is a playoff in place. Sure there is debate over what teams should make it, but now that I think about it, when was the last time you heard a country cry about not making it into the World Cup, or even the playoffs in major US sports? There is a system in place that makes sense and ultimately crowns a true champion.

While there will always be people making excuses about why their team didn’t win or why their rival did. However, there is no legitimate argument to take away their title.

Now the idea of sending the 11 conference champions plus 5 at-large bids to a playoff is completely stupid to me. There is no even remotely decent argument that the conference champion of C-USA, WAC, Ivy League, MAC, or even in some years the MWC champions have any place playing for a national champion. Last year evidenced that even the BCS conferences don’t always warrant a BCS bid. There is no reason to make it even that complicated.

I have written this before, but it could be very simple. You take the top 8, or 16 though I prefer 8, and put them against each other with their ranks as seeds. Add the Cotton and Holiday bowls, or others if you prefer, to the original 4 BCS bowls. They rotate yearly through first round games and the seminfinal games. Then you pick an entirely separate place, picked just like the Super Bowl and most leauges’ all-star games for the National Championship.

This creates even more money to spread around, and the major conferences would still get their cut because their teams would be the ones making it regularly. At the same time, smaller conferences would have just as much chance. There would be no argument that smaller teams don’t deserve it, because they would HAVE to schedule better teams to get ranked in the top 8. Going undefeated would not be enough for a non-BCS school.

I really don’t understand why they make it so complicated. Everyone in the world knows it is about money and nothing else. Don’t give me the time argument, because the national championship is already more than a week later than it used to be.

This may not be the best answer, but it seems like a legitimate one for me.

As a true BYU fan it is impossible for me to congratulate the heathen university to the north for anything, so let me thank Alabama for getting completely manhandled by a supposedly inferior opponent. Not only did you give me another win in my office pool, which I am sure no one else won, but you exposed the BCS yet again.

While I did not expect Bama to play that terribly, I knew that they were not the 10.5 point favorite that many expected. What was even more pathetic was how much the refs tried to help them win calling crappy pass interference calls throughout the game, and refusing to call anything on Bama.

I just love it when the better team wins despite having the odds, the fans, the refs, and the vast majority of America against them. It was truly an impressive showing, earned by a team that I truly hate.

What surprised me even more was all of the comments on the internet this morning in support of Utah as the number one team in the country. There were over 400 comments on one webiste, the vast majority of which agreed that Utah should be number one.

While it would be stupid to think they would kill USC, Texas, OU, or Florida, it would be difficult to argue that they wouldn’t at least give them a good game. Unfortunately the current system makes that impossible.

The case is actually quite simple for Utah: they are the only undefeated team in the country.

Some might say their schedule is weak. While the Michigan win lost its luster, no one would have expected that. Oregon St. beat USC, and while you could argue every team has an off week, apparently Utah didn’t, or at least they found a way to win on their “off” week. They also beat 3 teams that were in the final BCS standings (BYU, TCU, Alabama).

You could argue that the rankings were not accurate, but those same rankings that ranked those three teams, and kept Utah from a national title shot are the same rankings that put two teams with more losses than Utah into the national championship game.

Unfortunately, we are talking ourselves in circles because the powers that be don’t care about crowning a true national champion, they care about money. If the fans truly wanted to invoke change, they would boycott one or all of the BCS games. If the BCS lost all of that money they would be forced to make some changes. But that will never happen.

One comment I read asked how long the “mid-majors” like Utah, Boise St., BYU, and TCU would do nothing about changing the current system. This person obviously has no clue that all the non-bcs conferences have been begging for a long time for change, but the BCS refuses to budge.

What I really don’t understand is why the BCS is so afraid. If these other conferences are truly so inferior, they would never be ranked high enough to play in a BCS game, their “power conferences” would keep all of the money, and it would cease to be an issue. The reality is that just like in college basketball the playing field is leveling, and they want to keep their greedy little fingers on as much of the money as possible.

I place the blame on the NCAA for allowing a few money hungry people to control the biggest money maker in college sports. But, like everything else, I am sure the NCAA leaders get their cut and so they sit idly by letting someone else run their sport. Shame on them for letting the beautiful nature of sport and competition get taken away.

Let us all hope that someday they see the error of their ways and create a playoff system. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and it shouldn’t take an act of congress to make it happen.

The top 8 teams in the final standings of the season are selected regardless of conference affiliation, and regardless of how many times their universtiy presidents have gone fishing together. Their should be no automatic bids because some years you don’t deserve one (the ACC and Big East this year for example).

These four games are played at the four current BCS bowls (or you could add the Cotton Bowl and one more to save the bigger games for the “holy” BCS bowls).

The two semi-final games could be played at the remaining BCS bowls, if you chose to add the Cotton and one more.

The championship game location is selected just like the Super Bowl and gets played all over the country spreading the wealth and building the health of the sport as not only four cities in-turn get to profit from the game.

Once again we have seen that, just like the goverment, the BCS system is broken. Unfortunately, also like the government, the people that are in a position to make change care only about the money, and refuse to make a change. Thank you Bama for exposing them once again.