If you watched Florida State’s win against Auburn in the National Championship game last week, you witnessed history, and perhaps more importantly, the end of the Bowl Championship Series-era that has plagued college football for 16 tumultuous years.
There have been plenty of quality bowl games during that span, but it’s no secret that the College Football Playoff, to be introduced next season, is the postseason format many fans have long been clamoring for.
The BCS was born in 1998, but it made a blunder that would tarnish its reputation well before it reached 10 years old. The 2003 National Championship was split between the Associated Press and coaches’ poll No. 1 teams: USC and LSU.
The algorithm responsible for calculating the top teams in the country fell short despite its overcomplicated criteria. To the typical sports fan, it might as well have been calculated using hieroglyphics.
“Many of these schemes are sufficiently complicated mathematically that it is virtually impossible for lay sports enthusiasts to understand them,” according to a journal published by the American Mathematical Society.
That is all gone with the rollout of playoffs. Now, a panel of athletic directors, former coaches and players, a retired member of the media, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (her spot on the panel must have been calculated using the BCS formula) will select the playoff teams.
The Plus-One system, where schools will compete in a play-in game for the title game, seeks to ease the picking of the top two teams in the country by selecting the top four teams.
Five mid-major conferences — Mid-American Conference included — will receive an automatic berth into one of six so-called “access bowls,” like the Cotton Bowl.
The bids will boost publicity for the MAC and will keep its top teams from vying for at-large bids, as they did in the BCS.
The BCS was hailed as the end-all to college football rankings confusion and postseason upheaval, but the College Football Playoff is poised to actually solve the problems the BCS was unable to. Whether it all goes according to plan is another matter.
@colinhanner
ch115710@ohiou.edu
