The BCS Works(at least this year)

The BCS served its purpose for the 2005 season; the two top teams are playing for the national title, and the rest of the games will be interesting to watch.

Virtually all of the teams playing in the four BCS games are deserving of their appearance. One could argue that Florida State has no business playing against Penn State in the Orange Bowl, but they won the right to get there fair and square.

The other bowl games wound up with intriguing matchups too: Oregon/Oklahoma in the Holiday Bowl, Louisville/Virginia Tech in the Gator, and Alabama/Texas Tech in the Cotton and Auburn/Wisconsin in the CapitalOne are all outstanding games.

Would it be as intriguing as a college football playoff? I am not so sure. The one thing proponents of a playoff fail to consider is that to be fair, they have to include the conference champions from all of Division I-A Conferences; that means 11 automatic bids, and more than likely only five at-large bids. Using the BCS as a seeding template, what would the first round of the 2005 tournament look like? Something like this:

# 1 USC(Pac-10 Champ) vs # 16 Arkansas State(Sun Belt Champ)
# 8 Miami-FL(at-large) vs # 9 Auburn(at-large)
# 4 Ohio State(at-large) vs # 13 Boise State(WAC Champ)
# 5 Oregon(at-large) vs # 12 Florida State (ACC Champ)
# 2 Texas(Big 12 Champ) vs # 15 Akron(MAC Champ)
# 7 Georgia(SEC Champ) vs # 10 West Virginia(Big East Champ)
# 3 Penn State(Big 10 Champ) vs # 14 Central Florida(C-USA Champ)
# 6 Notre Dame(at-large) vs # 11 TCU(MWC Champ)

The Second-round matchups look a lot more intriguing than the first.

Needless to say, with so much money in bowls, polls, and television contracts, the playoff system is a long, long way in the future of College Football, if it ever happens ever. At least this year, there will be no controversy as to who the national champion truly is.