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This past weekend, the BCS was once again saved from having a huge egg on its face when Michigan beat Ohio State. Had it gone the other way around, what I perceive as a travesty would have occurred. Ohio State would have gone to the national championship game ahead of Southern Cal. The reason they would have gone? Computers. Those things that make our everyday lives so much easier only make college football so much more complicated. These computers had TCU ranked at #3 in one poll before they lost last week, ahead of USC. TCU is also a matter that concerns the stupidity of the BCS -- but we'll deal with that later.
Instead of margin of victory, the current BCS equation relies more heavily on those computer polls put out by the likes of the NY Times. ( I hope they cover football more accurately than they did the Iraq War.) But anyway, these computer rankings are inherently flawed. The only thing they could agree on was that Oklahoma was #1; after that it was all chaos. Off the field it appeared OSU had the advantage. On the field, it would not have even been close. Ohio State would have about as much chance of beating USC as Mississippi State does of beating Ole Miss this Thursday. You know that's not much of a chance if you've been following MSU this year.
Of course, the simple solution to all of this is to have a 16 team playoff system: six conference champions and ten at-large spots. This solution is apparently too simple for the bigheads that control college football. You give all the top notch teams a chance to win with a playoff system. Teams that are on a roll like LSU and Michigan will have a chance to stay on that roll and win a national championship instead of settling for a top 5 final ranking. You can even throw in teams like TCU if you are so-inclined. If you want to keep the bowl system intact, you can have the first round games as minor bowls like the Independence, Las Vegas, Peach etc. Then, in the second round you can have the major bowls like the Cotton, Outback, Gator, and Citrus. In the Final Four and Championship you can have 3 of the BCS Bowls. But of course I doubt the suits will ever think clearly enough to come to this conclusion.
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Taylor is one of the three new columnists joining SCS.com. His weekly feature, titled Time-Out with Taylor, will begin this week. Though he will cover a wide range of topics, the first edition focuses on his opinion of today's current BCS system.
