THE BCS: 15 YARD PENALTY FOR ILLEGAL USE OF THE COMPUTER

Author: David S. Lefere
Date: 01/12/2010

Now that we are past the holidays, we have an opportunity to reflect on the numerous college football bowl games that were played over the holiday season. Many of the games included teams that throughout the season had no opportunity to win college football’s prized national title. In fact, many small conferences, the MAC (Mid American Conference) for example, have little or no chance to win a national title even if they go undefeated through the regular season.
This year, going into the bowl season, there were 5 undefeated college football teams. However, only two teams, the University of Alabama and the University of Texas, were chosen to play in the championship game. University of Cincinnati, Texas Christian University and Boise State University, while all going to bowl games, did not have an opportunity to win a national championship even though each team was undefeated.
The Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, was created a few years back in the hopes of eliminating any controversy as to who the national champion is in college football. The BCS uses a complex mathematical system through the use of computers to determine which teams should vie for a chance at the national championship. It’s a system that critics say is tilted against nearly half the colleges and universities that are playing big time Division I college football. Critics complain that the road to the college football national championship illegally favors big time conferences, such as the Big Ten and SEC, with their long, storied football histories over smaller ones with the up and coming programs.
Recently, representatives of small conferences asked that the BCS be penalized for keeping them out of the national title game. In fact, there has been serious talk about taking the BCS to court to force it to provide more playing opportunities and money to conferences whose chances of having teams reach major bowls are slim at best. This would not be the first time that college football has an issue taken to Court. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court held that college football’s attempts to limit television broadcasts of its games ran afoul of antitrust law. The question today is, is the BCS a monopoly when it comes to crowning a national champion? This is not an argument that will go away quickly, considering how every year there are numerous college football teams with records sufficient enough to allow them to compete for the national championship, if it weren’t for the BCS standing in their way.