Undefeated Utah Utes highlight BCS flaws

As the college football season ends and the book closes on another exciting year of football, the usual offseason festivities begin. Players announce their returns or departures, the combine gets underway, scouts are recruited, and the majority of people who participate, coach, write about or just watch are left wondering in the back of their minds if the right winner was crowned. We are left to debate, analyze and discuss the team we feel should have been given the opportunity to be crowned the best college football team in the world. We look at game film and connect the dots of who won, by how much and where for weeks on end, never really satisfied until next August comes around.

As usual, a few teams feel left out and robbed of what they feel they deserved - a shot at the National Championship. Some teams work all season to prove themselves and do everything right, but in the end fall short for reasons unbeknownst to the common man. This season, that team was the Utah Utes. The Utes are a young team, with only 19 seniors on their 102 man roster and boasted an undefeated season, beating four ranked teams including the Alabama Crimson Tide, which was ranked number one for five weeks until losing to eventual consensus National Champion Florida Gators in the SEC Championship by 11 points. Two weeks later in the Sugar Bowl, Utah beat them 31-17 to complete the only undefeated season in all of college football.

In what twisted and crazy world can the single perfect and undoubtedly supreme team in the land not only fail to be crowned the king but not even get a chance to play for their crown? The answer is the Bowl Championship Series, more commonly known as the BCS, system. The BCS works in three parts --The Harris Interactive Poll, The Coach's Poll and the Computer Rankings, all of which combine to determine teams' rankings and ultimately who gets to play for the BCS National Championship at the end of the year.

In each of the human polls, voters rank teams with points; each team gets one to 25 points in reverse order of their ranking. The number one team would receive 25 points, number two would receive 24 points, and number three would receive 23 points and so on. In the computer ranking six computers "participate" and the highest and lowest ranking of each team is thrown out while the remaining four are averaged. Why we have computers "participating" in college football ranking, as if they could possibly know what a team should be ranked, and why the highest and lowest scores are thrown out doesn't make much sense. Sorry, LeBron, but no matter who you are, traveling is traveling.

Notice that in that explanation of the system in place, nowhere do you see a sentence that suggests that what happens on the field means anything. It isn't the play of the teams or the coaches who directly influence what their fate is or how they will be remembered. They merely go to court, plead their case week after week and pray that a bunch of computers and a jury of old guys decide they liked how many points they put up that week. If you ask me, that is garbage, period. In this flawed and bogus system created to generate as much money as possible for television ratings and BMW's, players can play four or five years, complete every qualification and beat every team put in their way and still come up short of the chance to ever play for the most prestigious award at their level. What kind of arrogance does it take to deny the players, coaches, alumni and fans of a chance to be able to finally see what it would be like to name a team a champion without any ifs, ands or buts about it? Entire games go unnoticed; they're forgotten. Texas, then number five, beat then-number-one-ranked Oklahoma 45-35 at a mutual playing site. However, this team beat that team, so and so lost to that team and at the end of the day Oklahoma ended up playing for the National Championship. We have become so accustomed to these kinds of situations that no longer are we remembering games like Texas vs. Oklahoma and demanding that someone put an end to this nonsense.

What is my proposal? Well, it's simple - it is the same argument countless journalists, coaches, players and even the newest president-to-be has had a chance to chime in twice about a playoff system. The top 12 teams in "National Championship Series," or NCS, conferences with the highest rankings at the end of the year based on who they played, and the caliber of the teams they beat, play in a four-game, single-elimination playoff at the end of the year to determine who is the National Champion. Forget the garbage about style points and margin of victory, a win means you keep playing and a loss means you go home. It is that simple. Is that really too much to ask, even for one year to just see how it would work? What is the harm in simply using the idea for a year and silencing everyone about it? Is the BCS that power hungry or are they just scared that a team like Boise State with a smaller fan base than Oklahoma just might make it to the National Championship game? I think both are true. As long as we remain silent about this annual travesty, a travesty it will remain. I extend my sympathies to the players, coaches and fans of Utah as well as Texas football. You were robbed.