Its crystal clear... THE BCS ISN'T PERFECT BUT IT WORKS!
I repeat…. I’m the biggest fan of the BCS.
Why do schools like Boise St feel they deserve the spot in the National Title game? You have to beat the best to be the best, so does playing a weak schedule that you just roll through give you the right to be a champion? How are we so sure that a playoff system will work??
I wrote a speech on it for a class, I think this pretty much sums up my ideas.
[Persuasive Speech: BCS bowls should remain
Coach of the Indianapolis Colts Jim Mora says it best. Courtesy of YouTube accessed right now. [Jim Mora sound byte] Yes Jim, playoffs. College football has used the BCS, Bowl Championship Series, for the last 12 years. Many people, including our president, thinks that a playoff system is needed. Allow the wide support among this class and many others I believe the BCS system should remain in place. There are 3 reasons why this is the case: #1 the system to decide the rankings are as accurate as we can get, #2 money is the most influential reason playoffs won’t happen, #3 why break down the most passionate sport, college football.
People think the BCS is faulty but in fact it’s actually is accurate as you can get. According to www.bcsfootball.com accessed on October 27, 2009 last updated in 2006 it says that the rankings that is used to determine who goes to what bowl and their overall ranking is based on 3 separate polls that each contribute 1/3 of the overall vote. One is the Harris poll which consists of a committee from each conference that vote on the rankings, overall 114 people participate. The next poll is the Coaches poll who takes votes from coaches across the nation to individually select who they think the best team in the nation is. The final factor is the computers where many people think the system is flawed. There are 6 separate equation thought up by math whizzes that use raw data; they use some but not all points, points against, home field advantage, strength of schedule, margin. Once each computer has made its poll, the highest and lowest ranking is dropped and the rest makes up the last third of the polls. So actually the polls are not the ones that are flawed. They only contribute small amounts of votes to the larger rankings that occur. And allow we like to think as people that our votes are better than the computers, number don’t lie.
Next, and probably the most important factor of all of this is the money side of things. In a USA Today Article by Thomas O’Toole published on December 6, 2006 that each BCS bowl game pays out 17 million dollars to both teams regardless of outcome. This money doesn’t go directly to them either, the money goes to the conference of the team which in turn distributes the money equally throughout the entire conference. The money does drop slightly when you move through the other bowls. The lowest payout that occurs in the PapaJohns.com Bowl where it only pays out 300 thousand dollars to each team, and conference. A total of 220 million dollars will be paid out to schools this year alone. Taking away these bowl games takes away a large lump of the revenue stream that the schools get from the conference. And this money doesn’t all go to the athletic department, it is used at the school discretion. Money not only contributes to the schools but to the venue at which they are playing. According to www.outbackbowl.com accessed on November 30, 2009 the communities in which host a bowl game will bring in an average of 1.3 billion dollars of economic impact for their communities. Not only this but most bowls are non-profit organizations which, on average, contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity each year during the bowl season. Removing the bowl system and putting the playoff system in place would be crazy due to the fact that we, as a country, would lose millions of dollars that could be used in so many productive ways. Although we might not like it, the money is a huge contributor to the reason the bowl still exist and should remain intact for years to come.
Enough with the money, it’s for the fans. Again according to the Outback Bowl webstie 1.7 million fans across the nation attend these 27 bowl games. The stadiums had a 87% capacity, and of the bowls that had been around longer than 8 years, which are 20 bowls, there was a 97% capacity. But for the fans that didn’t make it to the game there was a combined TV audience average of 134 million houldholds. The fans are the most important factor to all sports and getting rid of the bowls we would be getting rid of the fans. And the fans have made traditions. According to www.cfreference.net accessed on October 27, 2009 says that the Rose Bowl was first played in 1901, and has seen 95 bowls games played. The Orange and Sugar Bowls have both been played for 75 years. All 3 of these bowls were played before the first Heisman Trophy was given out. Would we get rid of the Heisman Trophy? These bowls have been around longer, are we willing to get rid of all this tradition?
As a die hard sports fan there is nothing better than bowl season. For the last 12 years the BCS has governed college football and the end of the season bowls. There has been controversy; Auburn going undefeated in a BCS conference only to not get a chance to win a National Title, Boise State and their miracle runs, and Hawaii getting blown out of the water. The BCS system isn’t perfect by any means but getting rid of the bowl system and putting in the playoff system would only hurt the most passionate sport in the country, college football. In the latest issue of Sports Illistrated on November 30, 2009 Bill Hancock, the new executive director of the BCS says about the bowl system in place today, “So many teams have such great experiences with the bowl games. It’s an awesome thing. We need to keep that.”]
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