Beyond Criminally Stupid

Today is the day that Auburn University and their Heisman trophy winning quarterback, Cameron Newton meet the University of Oregon in Glendale, Arizona to play for a crystal football in the Bowl Championship Series "championship" game. I hesitate to call this game the National Championship, or even a championship at all, because the way that it selects its "champion." Throughout history, the United States and the world have seen cases of greed, corruption, and just plain evil, but aside of the choke hold that DeBeers has on the diamond industry and *MAYBE* OPEC's control of petroleum, this country has never seen a cartel quite like the cartel that burdens college football's postseason.

In case you're not familiar with the current scheme of college football's "championship," it goes something like this. All 120 Division 1-A (the division for the largest schools) football teams play 12 games during the regular season. After that season, a few groups of pollsters (from the coach's and Harris polls) and an undisclosed computer ranking system rank the top 25 teams in the nation. The number 1 and 2 teams in the country play each other in the BCS "championship" game and others go to various bowl games. The 4 oldest and most prestigious bowls are the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange bowls. These bowls combined with the BCS "championship" actually have contractual obligations to the six oldest and richest college football conferences to invite the conference champion to one of these bowl games. There are eleven conferences in Division 1-A college football. The six "Automatic Qualifying" (AQ) conferences are the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the Big Ten Conference, the Big XII Conference, the Pacific 10 Conference (Pac 10), the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), and the Big East Conference. The five non-automatic qualifying (non-AQ) conferences are the Mountain West Conference, the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), Conference USA (C-USA), the Mid-American Conference (MAC), and the Sun Belt Conference. The AQ conferences send their champions to the most prestigious and well-paying bowls, while the non-AQ schools get sent to the likes of the papajohns.com bowl.

If you haven't discerned it yet, the Bowl Championship Series, and by default the entire Division 1-A college football postseason is governed by who has the stranglehold on the power that there is, and not who legitimately has the most competitive college football team. In recent years, teams like Boise State, Texas Christian, Utah, Brigham Young, Houston, and others have demonstrated that they can beat just about any other team in college football and should have the opportunity to play for a national championship. However, they have been denied because they do have a long and storied football program and don't come from one of the richest conferences in the system. In the 13 years of BCS postseason football from 1998 to 2010, only 12 teams in the country had the opportunity to play for the "championship." Keep in mind that two teams meet every year for the game, and thus there would be a maximum of 26 teams that would have been able to play in that game. Only the most storied football programs from the richest conferences actually make it to the "championship" game. Even the teams in the "Big Six" conferences that are a little lower on the totem pole haven't gotten a chance to play for the title.

I'll admit 2 things: 1) The BCS is slightly better than the previous system. 2) The trend that I just mentioned did change a little this year. The previous system for college football's Division 1-A championship was to have the bowls select whoever they wanted, then have pollsters choose who they thought was best after the bowl season. This system was terrible because the top-ranked teams in the country wouldn't necessarily have to play each other. However, I feel pretty confident in saying that matching the two highest-ranked teams at the end of the season is not sufficient in crowning a true champion. Saying the BCS is better that the previous system is like saying that the frying pan is better than the fire: It may be a little bit cooler, but it still sucks.

This year Oregon and Auburn face each other in the BCS "championship" game. These two teams have never been to the BCS championship and have usually been considered second-tier in their conferences. However, this only goes to the incriminate the BCS further because it exemplifies the parity that exists in Division 1-A college football. No longer do USC, Texas, and Florida dominate every team they play and walk to an easy national "championship." Now, every team has to fight for its conference because players have easy access to information and aren't willing to sit for years at a historic program when they could play at a less historic one. Now teams like Auburn and Oregon can contend for their conference championships and teams like Boise State, TCU and Utah can contend that they deserve a shot at the national championship.

Part of the reason that I feel this way toward the BCS is that I have recently read the book Death to the BCS by Yahoo! Sports writers Dan Wetzel, Jeff Passan, and Josh Peter. The subtitle to this book is "The Definitive Case Against the BCS," and I don't think that this could be any more true. The authors of this book went into painstaking detail, investigating the financial reports of universities and incorporated bowl games to discover the truth about the BCS and to develop probably the best alternative that anyone has conceived so far. This book has changed that way that I see college football and I strongly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the sport.


The alternative that Death to the BCS suggests is a 16-team playoff in which the highest-ranked teams get home field advantage. Under this scenario, the 11 conference champions would all get a seed in the playoff bracket and the 5 remaining seeds would be chosen at large by a selection committee, similar to NCAA basketball tournament. Most of the bowls would continue to exist, but would not be quite as obscenely profitable as they are now. Bowls like the GoDaddy.com Bowl and the Insight Bowl would probably perish, and I say "good riddance," to them. However, the large bowls would survive and the fans and schools would get to have an actual championship instead of the imitation that the BCS is putting on.

Now, I've saved the most incriminating evidence against the BCS for last; and trust me, it's incriminating. Anyone who pays taxes in the United States ends up subsidizing the college and universities in their state of residence. I currently live in Colorado, so my tax dollars go to the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and others. The bowl games in the current system claim that they pay out hundreds of thousands or millions of dollar to participants in their bowl games, however this comes with a catch. Teams that play in these bowl games have to pay (usually in the form of a decreased payout) for tickets for that bowl. The teams have to pay full price for these tickets, and usually one sell a fraction of them for less than face value. Even though I'm a die-hard fan of my alma-mater, I'm not going to pay $155 dollars for a Fiesta Bowl ticket when they're going to $30 on StubHub. Universities also have to pay for travel and accommodations for their team as well as for cheerleaders and band, if they choose to bring them, with no help from the bowl. Bowl games end up paying their participants almost nothing, and in many cases end up costing the university money. This deficit in the athletic budget has to be made up somewhere; usually from the university coffers, and at least in part by the tax dollars of the people. If you pay state taxes, you are subsidizing the Bowl Championship Series.

Lest you go preaching that college football is a waste of money, let me assure that the alternative playoff system would be much more profitable for universities. First of all, schools would be able to sell their own tickets, and make their own revenue instead of paying someone else to host a bowl game at a random neutral site. This money could be shared with traveling schools so that no one has to lose money on college football. Secondly, television ratings and conversely, commercial revenue for playoff games would skyrocket, leading to manifold more money that is had in the Bowl Championship Series, and much more money for the schools. With a playoff system, college football could subsidize your tax dollar instead of the other way around.

The book Death to the BCS is currently selling on Amazon for $13.50, which is a ridiculously low price considering the valuable information that's available therein. If you enjoy college football, let me urge to read this book and to know what I and many others know about the cartel that is the BCS. Boo payoffs, hooray playoffs!