Why_the_Bcs_Should_Have_a_Playoff_System

Playoffs vs. BCS Should College Football replace the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) with a playoff System' 1. Introduction a. In 2004, the football teams from the university of Utah and Boise State University were excluded from the national championship game despite being undefeated all season long. While other teams that had one or more losses played for the national title in 2003. I don’t know about you but that comes off a little discouraging to me and is directly related to the BCS Standings and ranking system that has been effective in college football since 1998. The BCS was formed to put the top two ranked college football teams against each other in a national championship, while eight other top teams play in four major bowl games. b. How many of you filled out a bracket for the march madness college basketball tournament that has just recently ended' This playoff system is one of many in college sports and is one of the most exciting and widely viewed sporting event in America. Wouldn’t it be nice if a big tournament like this was implemented into college football as well' Not only would the overall best team be chosen by a simple win or loss system, but the disputes over the BCS ways of ranking teams would be obsolete. c. Many football fans are pushing to get a playoff system to take effect in the next few years in college football to replace the BCS. They contend that it is the only fair way to determine a national champion and that the BCS method of ranking teams is subjective, profit-motivated, and frequently leaves the best teams out of the championship game. According to www.collegefootball.procon.org 43% of Americans say that Football is their favorite sport to watch, more than 3 times any other sport. In 2008 alone, a record 37.5 million people attend college football games. With all the supporters and fans of college football, it seems funny to me that it’s the only sport in college that hasn’t chosen to utilize a playoff system. d. There are significant differences between the ways that the Bowl Championship series picks the top teams and the ways that a playoff system would pick a champion. e. Today I will compare the differences between a college football playoff system and the current BCS ways of choosing a champion. I will first talk about the various fallacies in the BCS, then move on to the pros of implementing a playoff system. Transition: Let’s start out by discussing the negatives of the BCS. 2. Body a. One major problem with the BCS comes from the way it ranks it’s teams. Two thirds of the rankings come from “human polls” which are subject to bias opinions. These human polls have even been cited as one reason the University of Utah was kept out of the 2008 championship game. One third of the standings are based on how the coaches rank the teams, which assumes that coaches have time to watch every football game while also preparing their own teams for upcoming games. Coaches are by far the busiest people during NCAA football and clearly don’t have the time to sit down and analyze every game, a playoff system, used by most other sports would eliminate the controversy. Another major problem college football teams face with the BCS is the fact that if a team loses one game, it is most likely out of contention for the national championship; if it loses twice there is little chance that the team will qualify for any bowl game at all. So in short, if a team loses early in the season then the rest of the games can sometimes lack excitement. This problem sometimes leads football teams to try and get a