Annual rant on the BCS

Well I went off about the BCS last year (even though I will admit the championship game was decent) and now its time for me to have at it again.

Ohio State leads the standings and has since they first came out a couple weeks ago. This year they have teh 4 BCS bowl games plus one "national championship game after the BCS bowls which will be played in Glendale AZ in the Arizona Cardinals' new football stadium.

Now this is a step in the right direction but I still think that the national champion should not be determined by a bunch of biased sportswriters and computers. The national championship in I-A football should be determined just like with any other national championship sport: on the field of play. a playoff system has worked in Div I-AA (of excuse me, the "Championship Division"...oh brother...), Div II, and Div III for as far back as I can remember. The only reason that Div I-A football does not use a playoff system (even though every OTHER NCAA sport uses some competition based sort of playoff or tournament or something) is one thing: $$$$$ All these guys want to do is line their pockets with the green stuff. Once they go to a playoff system, these guys lose one of their biggest cash cows, so they want to maintain teh status quo, even if it leads to more BS matchups like Oklahoma and LSU. Now as it stands right now, there are 7 undefeated teams in all of I-A football: Louisville, Rutgers, West Virginia (from the Big East), Michigan, Ohio State (from the Big 10, which actually has 11 teams but who's counting...), USC (from the Pac-10 ) and Boise State (from the WAC) Chances are if more than 2 of these teams in undefeated (Lousiville and West Virginia square off this weekend), that could lead to some very interesting discussions as to jsut who deserves to play for the national championship.

I have a better idea. How about we just go to a 16 team playoff. Have the 11 conference champions and use a formula similar to the BCS used to decide the 5 at large. the formula would focus on strength of schedule, number of wins, quality of wins, opponents strength of schedule, and rankings.

As things stand right now here are my 16 teams for the mythical playoff (based on overall and conference record):

Clemson (ACC Champion)
Texas (Big 12 Champion)
Louisville (Big East Champion)
Michigan (Big 10 Champion)
Tulsa (Conference USA Champion)
Central Michigan (Mid-American Conference Champion)
BYU (Mountain West Conference Champion)
California (Pac-10 Champion)
Arkansas (SEC Champion)
Arkansas State (Sun Belt Champion)
Boise State (Western Athletic Conference Champion)
USC (Pac-10 At Large)
Florida (SEC At-Large)
Auburn (SEC At Large)
West Virginia (Big East At Large)
Ohio State (Big 10 At Large)

Which would then be reorganized this way:

Texas vs. Arkansas St.
Florida vs. Boise St.
Arkansas vs. Tulsa
West Virginia vs. Central Michigan
USC vs. BYU
California vs. Ohio State
Auburn vs. Michigan
Louisville vs. Clemson

Watch this space next month for the first round winners