The Bcs

The BCS

The Bowl Championship series all so known as the (BCS) is the current ranking system that is used in college football. It decides what team will playing in the bowl game, and which two teams will be playing for the national championship. There has been a controversy surrounding the BCS for several years. The BCS would have been the down fall of college football, if it would not have change.

I have chose to argue against the BCS. When the final BCS rankings were announced in December of 2003, Oklahoma was ranked 1st with 5.11 points, LSU was ranked 2nd with 5.99 points, and USC was ranked 3rd with 6.15 points (2003 Final BCS Standings). These numbers were formulated by the 2003 BCS system. How did the BCS rank teams in 2003? Well it was actually quite complicated. Standings were determined by 2 human polls, 7 computer polls, strength of schedule, teams' records, and quality wins. Each of these factors calculates into the point system used by the BCS. The two human polls that were used were the AP poll and the USA Today/ESPN Coaches Poll. The way the BCS got these points was by taking the average ranking between the two polls. Therefore a team that was ranked first in one poll and second in the other received 1.5 points. The same format was used for the seven computer polls, except the poll that had a team ranked the lowest was excluded from the average. The way strength of schedule was calculated was very complex. Two-thirds of this calculation depended on the records of the teams' opponents, and the other one-third depended on the records of their opponents' opponents. After that was calculated, all NCAA teams' records were ranked according to those calculations from 1-100. Points were calculated from this stage by dividing the teams' strength of schedule rank by 25, so if a team's schedule was ranked 25th they received one point. To compute the points for the teams' records was simple. Each loss counted as one point; therefore a point was added to their total every time the they + lost. Quality wins were also simple to solve. If a team beat a top 10 team that was ranked any spot higher than them, points were deducted from their total. If a team defeated a number one ranked team, one point was deducted from their total. If a team defeated a number 10 team, one-tenth (0.1) of a point was deducted from their total. A team could only be awarded once for beating a top 10 team. After the total of points from all five of these factors was calculated, the team with the lowest score was ranked number one in the nation (2003 & 2004 BCS Information and Rules).

When the final BCS poll came out in December of 2003 OU, LSU, and USC each had one loss, and it put a big damper on college football. The factors that separated these three teams were strength of schedule, the polls, and quality wins. OU had a stronger schedule (ranked 11th in the nation), and they had one quality win which subtracted .05 of a point from their total. Neither LSU nor USC had a quality win to their credit, but LSU schedule (ranked 29th in the nation) was ranked higher than USC schedule (ranked 37th in the nation). After the Bowl games were over, LSU and USC had very similar records. LSU finished the season 12-1, and USC finished 11-1. The reason USC played one less game is because their conference, the Pac-10, doesn't have a conference championship game.

Even though