From the Sidelines

Trying to make sense of the BCS

In last week's Herald [YH, 10/27/00], Yale football Coach Jack Siedlecki said, "There are many who would argue that [the Ivy] League is the most competitive league in the country." Within Division I-AA, perhaps that's true. While most of the Ivy League may play at the same level, creating a logjam at the top of the standings, at least there's no doubt about one thing—if any of them played a team from a real conference like the Big Ten, the groundskeepers would be picking up shredded Ivy for weeks. This is not to belittle the Ivies; different divisions exist to separate teams at vastly different talent levels. But when dealing with the really good teams—and I don't just mean the ones at the top of the haphazard Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings—there currently exists no way to definitively tell if a team is better than any other.

JASON COHN/NEWSMAKERS The Michigan Wolverines are one of several Big Ten teams shortchanged by a ranking system that unfairly penalizes them for playing other top national schools.

Theoretically, national polls and the BCS should be able to tell a college football fan whether his team really is the best in the nation. But as anyone who follows the sport can tell you, they don't—and their inaccuracy has gotten worse in recent years. For God's sake, look at TCU, ranked ninth in all the major polls. Sure, they're 7-0, but their schedule, packed with teams like Fresno State and Texas-El Paso, includes only one team that's been anywhere near the rankings this year. They've never been tested against a real team because they play too many games against teams in their weak conference.

What if the Ivies became D-I and Yale football returned to the glory days of '60s? We'd be unbeaten, sure, but still undeserving of a good ranking. If, however, we walked all over the Ivies and then upset Purdue, I'd agree that the team deserved a high ranking. But unless we played real games, against ranked opponents from outside our conference, no one would ever know how good we were, or whether we stacked up against other ranked teams.

Playing too many in-conference games can have an adverse effect as well. Case in point: the Big Ten. Of the 11 teams in the conference, nine have been ranked by the Associated Press at some point this season, and three have been in the top 10 for extended periods of time. So according to the pundits, this is a pretty damn good football conference this year.

But look at the polls now and you'd never know it, because each of these "great" teams now has at least one loss from playing against the other equally "great" conference teams. It could just be that the entire conference is mediocre this year, and therefore the lack of top standing would be justified. But no one can tell whether that's true, because whenever these squads venture out of their conference, it's to play teams like Rice or Kent.

The clear solution is to require teams to either play more out-of-conference games, thus lengthening the season, or swiss-pairing the previous season's top teams. The former would also address a situation that most football fans find ludicrous—in conferences without a playoff tournament, teams have a month and a half off until the bowls on New Year's Day. An extra game could easily fit into their schedules without having a negative impact on their preparation time.

But the best solution may be for college football to take a cue from its professional counterparts. In the NFL, a team's schedule is based on how it did the previous season. If a college team's out-of-conference games were chosen based on the previous season's ranking, Nebraska would not be playing gimmee games against San Jose State. While it would be impractical for the NCAA to require teams to use this system, colleges could be given a choice—either adhere to the new method or take a penalty in the BCS rankings that could hurt their chances at a national championship. If teams are too chicken to agree to play a real game, then they deserve to move down in the rankings.

The end result would be fairer, more accurate polls that actually tell fans which team is the best. Teams would no longer be hindered or hurt by the strength of their conferences and would instead be judged by their abilities. So if, for some strange reason, the Ivies were ever to go D-I, beating Harvard might still be the culmination of the Yale season. But they would still get a chance at beating Penn State.

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