With the first Bowl Championship Series standings coming out Monday, it provides me the perfect opportunity to again advocate one of the best things ever to happen to the game of college football.
The BCS is the biggest money-maker for college football programs and the sport itself. Uniting the six major conferences in the country and also Notre Dame, the BCS is the best way to go about matching the two best teams against each other in the national championship while still having quality football contests in the other bowl games. The BCS is meant to take the top six teams in the final rankings and then two others at large and allot them to the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta Bowls.
On top of that, for those who think that the BCS rankings are a joke, you should know that its standings are the most complete and accurate rankings of the top college football teams in the nation. Taking into consideration the AP and coaches' polls, seven computer rankings, strength of schedule, losses and a bonus-point system for quality wins, the BCS allows the best method of separating the contenders from the pretenders.
Take this year's standings for example. The talk of the college football world is how \useless"" the BCS would be if the Northern Illinois Huskies and the Texas Christian Horned Frogs (yes, the Horned Frogs) were not placed in a BCS bowl game. To that I say, as impressive as going undefeated is, doing that in a mid-major conference amidst the likes of Eastern, Northern and Western Michigan, frankly is not very impressive. For a Northern Illinois team that has the 100th-ranked strength of schedule-and its schedule contains these three Michigan schools and not even one versus the other two Division I schools-nothing against your team, but you have no business playing in January. The BCS takes good recognition of the valor of competition and recognizes who battles for wins over who have them handed to them.
Although I am a man of tradition, once it was thrown out the window in '98 with the first BCS, it is hard not to acknowledge now that this system works and it is another fabulous way of creating new rivalries and bringing more stars to the brightest stage in college football.
With the amount of sponsors attracted by the BCS and college football bowl games in general, everyone wins the system.
So those who think that the BCS is a worthless sham, think again.
