In defense of the BCS

Slagging the Bowl Championship Series these days is like being a fan of Nirvana in 1992. Rarely has trying to be a rebel looked so mainstream. Yeah, kid, you want a playoff. Woo. But, really, the bowl system and the BCS is pretty, pretty, pretty good for major college football.

Hey, we aren’t big fans of basketball or baseball, but it seems like a waste of a season to kick ass, do well and then get knocked out in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight or whathaveyou. Oh, your team got to the Final Four last year? Did it win? No? Losers. Let’s say you, like us, are a fan of a team in the Top 8 of the BCS standings. If there was an eight-team playoff, or 16-team playoff, and Alabama lost before the championship game, the season would be a major disappointment. It would be on the level of, “The Tide went undefeated in the regular season for this bullshit?”

Sure, with a playoff, you’d have the rest of the bowl structure open to teams who didn’t make the field. But it truly would suck if a good team, seven or 15 of them, ended the season with a loss. College football fans have been brought up on the notion that if your team is good enough to make it to a bowl game, there is the possibility of ending the season with a win. The BCS keeps this in effect, while — though it isn’t perfect — coming up with a good way to have a No. 1 v. No. 2 national championship game.

OK. The BCS has its flaws. So does the goddamn Electoral College, but we’ve yet to scrap that in over 200 years.