It's no secret that most people in the world of college football cannot stand the BCS ranking system. Every year there seems to be somebody left out, or just completely screwed over, for lack of a better term, by the BCS. This year, we've only had one poll brought out by the BCS, and there is already controversy.
Even though they are ranked #3 by both of the "important" human polls, Oklahoma has managed to grab the #1 ranking in the BCS system, with Oregon #2 (but #1 in both important human polls), and Boise State (#2 in both important human polls) rounding out the top 3. People say it every single year, but this BCS system makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and people have been calling for its head almost since it began! The original intent was that it would get rid of the controversy and provide a clear cut national champion every single year. Well, that hasn't happened.
Why does this happen, you might ask. Well, that's a fantastic question. I've actually been trying to pay attention to college football this year so that I can be a better informed sports writer, and I've looked into the whole system for creating the BCS ranking. If you dare read on, I warn you, you will be confused by the end of this.
As best as I can understand it, the BCS ranking is figured by averaging 3 rankings. One coming from the Harris Interactive Poll. The second coming from the coaches poll. The third from the computer ranking system. They will then take all 3 of those rankings, and average them. Seems straight forward enough, I suppose, but here's the problem, none of the 3 of these use the same criteria. Some of these polls are influenced by things like margin of victory, or rank of your opponent. Others are not.
Then, the big issue that jumps out at me with this is that the computer rankings take 6 other people's ranking systems, which are also not the same, and use those to calculate its rank. Plus, the explanation for it is ridiculous and incredibly difficult to follow. Here is the explanation I got from a web page saying it was explaining all of this for us all to understand.
"The computer rankings percentage is calculated by dropping the highest and lowest ranking for each team and then dividing the remaining total by 100, the maximum possible points. (Example: the 6 rankers have Team A ranked 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, and 4. Take away the 2 and 4 which leaves an average of 3rd place. The BCS quotient of this component would be 0.92. (23 / 25 = 0.92)."
Here's what I understand. Each rank has a qualifying number of points to go along with it, 1-25. Rank #1 has 25 points, and the points descend by 1 until they get to the #25 team, which only gets one point. So, how does this relate to the BCS computer formula. Well, let's look at it this way. Back to the same problem. We have the ranks as follows from our 6 computer guys. 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4. 2 & 4 get dropped for an average of 3. Meaning out of the 25 possible voter points, they get 23. 23/25 = .92. Then we get to average the others out here. So if they are #1 in the other polls, they would get the solution of 25/25, which is 1. So, 1 + 1 + .92 / 3 = .973. Then, whoever has the highest point total is the #1 rank.
Now I know what you're thinking. How can something this clear possibly cause any type of controversy whatsoever? Seriously, this thing is insane!!! How can anybody possibly understand this!? There are far too many cooks in this kitchen! 3 polls, with multiple pollsters in each of them using different criteria to rank the teams. There is no way this can match up.
Solution? There's a few. First, since college football will almost never go to a playoff system, which would be the clearest way to fix this, means there just needs to be a better way of ranking these. Now, I have no idea why there are so many polls, but one of the simplest solutions, to me anyways, seems like we should just get rid of, or at least not recognize officially, some of these polls. For years there was the Coaches Poll and the AP Poll, which created several split championships. Why not just trust the coaches? Aren't they the ones that know the most about all of this? If you just went by the coaches poll, then you only have one team to recognize. You can keep the whole national title game where #1 plays #2, but that way there aren't any convoluted formulas, which vary by person and computer, to screw you up. Or maybe just go with the AP, but come on, people want a clear cut, no questions asked, national champion. You could even throw a special clause in for a just in case and 1 game.
All I know is that fans of college football, and of sports in general, are sick and tired of the garbage that the BCS has put us through several times. The BCS will never, EVER, give love to teams that deserve legit shots at the national title like Boise State and TCU and others because it doesn't take into account things it should. So let's get something that is straight forward, transparent, can be understood by everybody, and that gives all schools an equal shot at things. Come on NCAA, it's long past time.
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