System Unfair to More Than USC

For the third time in four years, the ill-conceived bowl championship series has failed to achieve its goal of determining college football’s national champion.

BCS computers designated Oklahoma and Louisiana State as the teams to play for the championship, whereas human polls -- one using coaches pledged to support the computers’ findings -- selected USC as the nation’s best. However, because the computers’ work is done, and the Trojans will be absent from the title game, BCS bigwigs are looking even more foolish than usual.

Still, it is difficult to feel sympathy for USC. Predictably, both the school and the Pacific 10 Conference are calling for changes in the system. But it is disingenuous for the Trojans or, for that matter, anyone else connected with the BCS, to bemoan a format they created, with no regard for the Division I programs outside their ranks.

This year’s fiasco is another reminder that college football has not developed a legitimate process for determining the national champion. We have gone from a bowl alliance to a bowl coalition to what is now the BCS, which combines polls and ratings to determine which teams ought to play for the national title. Despite BCS claims to the contrary, it brings us no closer to determining a true champion than we were 50 years ago, when independent news services, the AP and UPI, voted separate winners.

One of the victims of this convoluted arrangement is Division I-A football itself. Bowl championship series access and revenue are reserved for only six conferences and Notre Dame, 63 schools overall. The NCAA is expanding championship brackets and opportunities in almost all other sports, but Division I-A football is limiting such experiences. Fifty-four of the 117 schools that play Division I-A football have been disenfranchised by the BCS, Division I-A football being the only NCAA sport in which a team cannot automatically qualify to play for the national championship by winning its conference title.

Forget poor USC. The victims here are the non-BCS leagues. Two years ago, Brigham Young of the Mountain West Conference was 12-0 before its final regular-season game when the Cougars were “released” by the BCS to explore other bowl opportunities. And three years earlier, BYU was left out of the BCS mix -- then called “the coalition” -- even though the team was ranked sixth in the country.

The situation cries out for a playoff that accommodates the champions of the 10 Division I-A football conferences and six at-large selections. Any plan limited to the 16 highest-ranked teams in a poll would be just as unfair as the BCS system, and would be inconsistent with the philosophical guidelines governing other NCAA championships.

The issue here is fairness. The NCAA has established criteria for a conference to be in Division I-A. If so qualified, that conference’s teams should not be denied a chance to play for the national championship. There should be no phony outcries about the longer season affecting academic achievement. Divisions I-AA, II and III all have 16 to 28 team playoffs, with some schools playing 14, 15 or even 16 games. Even without a Division I-A playoff, Kansas State will have played 15 games this season. Five other schools will have played 14.

Nor should there be hand wringing over a playoff’s dismantling the bowl system. Certainly, a playoff will significantly affect the bowls. Some will perish, deservedly so. But the best second-tier bowls could probably weather a playoff. An early loser in the playoff could still go to a bowl, just as the loser in a conference championship game does now.

Many coaches support the current system simply because more bowls mean more opportunities for money, and a chance to label a 6-6 season a success because of a bowl appearance. It is wrong, though, to oppose a playoff that allows a legitimate Division I-A conference champion the chance to play for the national title, simply to protect an opportunity for an eighth-place team in a BCS conference to play in a third-tier bowl game.

Maybe the BCS is worried about having to share the money a playoff would generate. But the bet here is that a playoff would yield more revenue for everyone. CBS, for instance, is paying an average of $545 million a year for the television and marketing rights to the NCAA basketball tournament through 2013. ISL, a Swiss sports marketing and licensing firm, once estimated that a playoff could earn $350 million annually for Division I-A, or at least three times what the BCS is generating.

This windfall would not be entirely incremental to the overall bowl payout pool -- second-tier bowls not included in the playoff would probably be forced to reduce payouts, if they survived at all -- but the guess here is that the BCS conferences would earn more than they do now, and the rest of Division I-A would benefit substantially, as well.

We will never know the value of a Division I-A playoff, though, unless there is competitive bidding. CBS paid a premium for NCAA basketball because other networks were at the table, but ABC doesn’t have that problem with the BCS. Because ABC’s Rose Bowl contract goes through 2005, there cannot be competitive bidding for a BCS package that includes the Rose Bowl until 2006. Thus, with no competition, ABC reportedly is paying the BCS a relatively modest $110 million a year for exclusive control of the games that determine college football’s national champion. And no one knows what is being left on the table that would bolster all of Division I-A.

Finally, there is the implied threat that if the NCAA membership outside the BCS conferences makes too big a fuss, the BCS schools could secede and establish their own organization. Some would say this has already happened, that the “group of six” is now firmly in charge of everything. This has left many schools feeling isolated from their national organization and discouraged that any concern for the greater good has given way to the special interests of the BCS conferences.

But today, the BCS is an easy target, its system not only shamelessly self-serving but also so inept that its own members feel victimized. If that were the worst of it, perhaps we could just add another computer and move on. But there is a much bigger problem: The most major of college championships is being conducted outside the authority of the NCAA and, thus is denying thousands of Division I-A football players fair access to competing for the national title in their sport.

Sorry, USC, but at least you had your chance.

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Rick Bay is a former athletic director at San Diego State, Ohio State, Minnesota and Oregon.