The BCS is not the Problem [UPDATED]

Lucky kid.

When the BCS was formed the idea was to take the power in choosing the national champion out of the hands of fallible humans so much. Too many times the AP Poll and the USA Today/Coaches Poll disagreed on who the best team in the nation was upon the conclusion of all the bowl games.

So, in theory, coming up with a system that would take into account the human polls while also factoring in a whole slew of other factors was a great idea, right?

The creation of the up-coming four team playoff system answers that question.

A lot of the cry for a playoff system stemmed from the belief that the BCS still got it wrong; that it was just as faulty as the previous system. Of course it is—it still uses the old system!

The AP is no longer a part of (thank goodness since they tend to mess things up the most). The current formula uses the Harris Interactive Poll (which was created to replace the AP), the Coaches Poll, and the computer rankings. Each of the three is equally weighted with the average of them used to decide who is ranked where.

When the BCS first came out I was against it for one reason and one reason only—it broke away from tradition. I liked how it was done. I liked the fact that there could conceivably be two national champs. It meant that there was always something that could be discussed and debated with football since the selection of the top dog was pretty much left to a handful of people to decide (58 coaches and 114 different people for the Harris Poll; the AP was decided by writers working for the Associated Press).

It was the way it had been done for years, and me personally—I was okay with it. The exact designation of “national champion” wasn’t so important that it had to be given to just one. I thought the possibility of two added something to college football that no other sport had.

Now the BCS was created because most people aren’t like me in that regard. However, there were enough folks that wanted the human polls to mean something that they are the most significant factor in the poll.

All the complaints about the BCS are in my mind a little unjust because it is still the human element that is messing it up.

I don’t say this to disparage any of the top teams in the BCS. In fact, I think that the BCS is as close as we are going to get in getting the truly best teams recognized for what they are. Notre Dame absolutely deserves to be the No. 1 team in the nation, and I’m glad that it is in all three polls. It’s the rest of the top 10 I have issues with.

Alabama deserved to be knocked back to No. 4 after losing to Texas A&M. Kansas State deserved its promotion as did Oregon. It’s what happened after that that I find rather crappy.

Kansas State and Oregon lose to Baylor and a ranked Stanford team and drop to No. 6 and No. 5 respectively. Georgia defeats a poor Georgia Southern team and jumps up to No. 3. Florida plays its third lackluster game in a row beating Jacksonville State and gets bumped up to No. 4.

What the--?

There is no way that Florida and Georgia should have been able to leap frog  Oregon and Kansas State. Both lost to good teams; Kansas State did get trounced so maybe I could see them being No. 4 rather than No. 2 or 3, especially considering the weak schedule of Georgia and Florida.

This week doesn’t look any better for the AP. Why does Oregon lose a spot after dominating a ranked Oregon State? LSU and Texas A&M both win and drop a spot; LSU can see since Arkansas did take it to them. However, when it is to make room for Stanford to jump three spots after they beat UCLA it doesn’t make sense.

It’s good that the Harris Poll is the one that used for the BCS now and not the AP. However, it still has the same problem—people and people are fallible.

UPDATED: I just saw the latest BCS standings. The top 9 remained the same. Well done BCS.