Finally! The BCS does something smart and creates a BCS title game for the number one and two teams in the nation after each has played its respective bowl game. Sure it has pushed the title game to the second week of January, but at least we have the closest thing we’re going to get to a true champ… What’s that? You say the extra game was added so two more at-large teams could be thrown into the BCS mix, and that’s the reason the title game won’t be until the spring!?! Oh…that makes sense, because everyone knows the biggest problem with the BCS is that teams like Fresno State and Boise State don’t get enough recognition when it comes to at-large bids. 

Once again, the BCS shows how cosmically inept are the powers that be. College football fans will now wait until January 8th to watch the de facto National Championship game, so that the BCS can add two more teams, another game, and bickering from the #11 team in the country about how they got left out. This has all the earmarks of a BCS money grab. Of all the complaints hurled at the BCS, the one that finally sticks is that not enough teams are part of it? 

BlueFan knows there are tradionalists that believe any BCS idea is wrong…and they’re right. However, let’s take for granted that the BCS was going to make a big decision like adding another game and pushing the championship back to January 8th. Doesn’t it seem the only situation where this would be acceptable is if the added game was a match-up of #1 versus #2 (a “plus one” game)? Well…that would be the case if the new scenario created the game that many fans having been calling for since there were three very good one-loss teams in 2003, and three undefeated teams in 2004. Instead, we get a bowl game in which a TCU, or Boise State gets a better shot at playing. BlueFan thought the primary problem with the BCS was evident in 2003 when Oklahoma, which was ranked no higher than third in the human polls, played for the BCS championship. Or when the 2001 Nebraska Cornhuskers, ranked no higher than fourth in the human polls, played for the BCS championship. Nope. Negative. Forget it. It turns out that the BCS’ highest priority was adding more at-large bids.

Why?

Well…another BCS bowl game means more money. But wouldn’t the BCS make more money from a “plus one” game, too? In years like 2003 and 2004, undoubtedly. But in a year like 2005, it would have meant undefeated Texas matching up with Ohio State or Penn State; pretty anti-climatic after slaying the beast of Southern California. While such a game would have been followed closely by each school’s fans and college football fans, its broad appeal would’ve been hurt. 

Take an Ohio State-Texas “plus one” BCS Championship Game, for instance. Texas had already beaten Ohio State in the opening month of the season, and Ohio State was a two-loss team, so there was potential to have a BCS champion with more losses than the team it beat in the Championship game, and to whom they had already lost earlier in the season. Sounds a lot like a playoff, and we all know that isn’t going to happen.

January of 2006 did bring fans some rare match-ups, though. Notre Dame met Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, and there was the Cocoon reunion when Joe Pa’s Nittany Lions locked up with Bobby Bowden’s Seminoles in the Orange Bowl. BlueFan will concede that the BCS has gone to great lengths to give fans some appealing games we wouldn’t normally see, but the important question is why. It’s clear these decisions are being made entirely on potential audience and appeal, which really means money. 

To wit, Penn State finished the season 10-1, and as the BCS’ third-ranked team. The Lions only loss came with no time remaining on the clock (at the hands of their masters in Ann Arbor). Why then did PSU end up playing four-loss—and twenty-second ranked—Florida State? Shouldn’t they have re-matched with Ohio State, or met Notre Dame, both of whom were much higher in the BCS rankings? After all, FSU only earned the automatic birth by winning the ACC title game. There definitely would not have been a re-match between Penn State and Ohio State, but why not PSU-Notre Dame? Well…because it was easier for the BCS to sell an FSU-PSU match-up, by focusing on the legends of two of the game’s most successful (and aged) coaches. You can’t sell Jim Tressel against Bobby Bowden…unless it’s billed as ‘which coach runs a more questionably ethical program’. Basically, the BCS was stuck with Florida State and they had to sell it some way, so their opponent became Penn State almost by default. 

The BCS does not want re-matches, and BlueFan isn’t sure he does either. The college football season already seems too short and there are so many great programs, which rarely play one another, that it would seem wrong to not seize the opportunity for a Texas-Michigan Rose Bowl, or a Notre Dame-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl. Re-matches are also more difficult to sell to the casual and passing fan, which will hurt ratings and the bottom line. 

The BCS missed a golden opportunity to do something good—or even something that makes sense—for college football, when they added another game without addressing the issue of what happens when the top three teams in the country all have the same record entering the bowl season. Instead, they brought another game under the tent and showed that the only consistency with the BCS is that it will do what makes the most financial sense, fans and athletes be damned. 

Go Blue!