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Maybe We Should Just Let the Computers Figure out the BCS Standings

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Maybe We Should Just Let the Computers Figure out the BCS Standings
Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

Is the BCS getting it right?

Right now, the BCS has an agreement with the USA Today Coaches' Poll where the winner of the BCS Championship Game will be voted the No. 1 team in college football.

It's absurd that this agreement with the BCS even exists in the first place—a predetermined vote isn't a vote, it's a mandate. It's actually worse than that.

It's election day in North Korea. 

And with the way that things are going in college football, we could have another split championship this year. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Ohio State. 

Everything depends on the final BCS standings in a few weeks. Everything depends on whether or not voters have paid attention to what's going on in the college football landscape. And what information the BCS bots spit out. And how rebellious the AP voters are feeling. 

The non-human polls—a collection of computers that counts as one-third of the total BCS standings—don't always get things right, but at least they use pure logic in formulating an analysis.

The BCS threw logic out a long time ago. How legitimate is a ranking when voters are forced by agreement to vote in a particular fashion when the two teams vying for the championship may not be the two best teams in the first place?

What if the winner of the BCS title game just stinks less than the loser? What if the No. 3 team playing in another BCS bowl looks like a world-beater? Too bad the voters in the Coaches' Poll don't get to, you know...exercise their vote in a true democratic fashion. 

Without coercion. 

Moreover, the BCS, steeping in its own failure, admits that it doesn't even pit the two "best teams" against each other in its Championship game. From the BCS official website:


"Top rated" simply means that the two teams with the most votes get in—they still may not be the two best teams. Moreover, creating "exciting and competitive matchups" does not mean "pitting the No. 3 through No. 10 teams against each other."

"Exciting and competitive matchups" does mean selecting No. 25 UConn—a team that lost to Michigan, Temple, Rutgers and Louisville in 2010—to play Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl and being thoroughly surprised at the lopsided 48-20 outcome. 

It also means that an 8-4 team can go to a BCS Bowl, get its ass handed to it on a platter, fail to make the BCS' own Top 25 final standings and yet somehow garner a "highly regarded" status. No offense, UConn, but you got abused by the BCS and even more abused when you had to pay that $1.8 million whopper of a bill from the BCS

The computers would have saved UConn from the embarrassment and the debt.

All of this hypocrisy won't go away with the new four-team playoff coming in two years. The 12 highly regarded teams selected to play in the six bowls probably won't be the top 12 teams in the country, either. They'll be "highly regarded." And five will have guaranteed bowl tie-ins. 

The good news: No more BCS teams. The bad news: Welcome to the Group of Five. 

Computers don't have to answer to stuffed suits. Computers don't have to wade through the politicking of conference bowl tie-ins. Computers don't care which team travels best nor do they have to listen to a coach's pandering for votes. 

If a computer can guide a smart bomb to hit a doorknob from 60 nautical miles away, maybe we should just let the computers figure everything out.

There would be less collateral damage.

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