Ncaa Football Playoff System

Ryan Jerzy Jerzy 1

Cady

English 103

26 May 2003

"NCAA Football Playoff System"

Thesis: The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula has been used to determine the top twenty-five teams in NCAA Division I college since 1998. Many think this system is inadequate and should be changed. The alternative is a playoff system that would give more of the top teams a chance to be named the NCAA football National Champion.

I. BCS formula

A. Computers

1. Where they're from

2. How they work

B. Polls

1. Where they're from

2. How they work

C. Schedule strength

D. Team losses

E. Putting the formula together

II. Why the BCS formula should be changed

A. BCS is inadequate

1. How it's unfair

2. Problems within

B. Give top teams a chance

C. Fans, players, and coaches views

III. Playoff format

A. Determining teams playoff seed

1. BCS formula

2. Conference leaders

B. How playoff would work

1. 8 team playoff

2. 16 team playoff

C. Why a playoff would be better

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"NCAA Football Playoff System"

The end of the NCAA Division I college football seasons is near and there are still five undefeated teams in the nation, how can five teams play for top honors in the sport? The answer is easy, a football playoff system to crown the champion. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula has been used to determine the top twenty-five teams in NCAA Division I college since 1998. Many think this system is inadequate and should be changed. The alternative is a playoff system that would give more of the top teams a chance to be named the NCAA football national champion. A playoff system would give the NCAA Division I football postseason a little more than twenty meaningless bowl games and a national championship game to wrap up the season, but to get to that I should first explain how the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula works to determine the top twenty-five teams in the nation.

First there are eight computers that are used in the BCS computer system today to determine this part of the ranking system. Out of the eight computers only the seven highest rankings are used for one team, then the seven rankings (worst ranking dropped) are averaged out respectively. All of these computer rankings are determined through eight newspapers and sports specialists. These computer rankings are how these eight sources rank the top twenty-five teams in the nation.

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The eight rankings come from these computers, Richard Billingsley (Bill.), Dunkel Index (Dunk.), Kenneth Massey (Mass.), New York Times (NYT),

David Rothman (Roth.), Jeff Sagarin's USA Today (Sag.),

Matthews/Scripps-Howard (S.H.), and The Anderson & Hester/Seattle Times (S.T.). Brad Edwards, a writer for ESPN.com, has this to say about the computer system: "Though this may be the weakest part of the (BCS) equation, it can still make a difference. Last year, pollsters eventually overlooked Wisconsin's loss to Cincinnati, but the computers didn't. The result: the Badgers had an average computer ranking of 7.71 despite ranking fourth in both polls." 7.71 is the average of where the team is in the rankings among the top twenty-five teams in the nation according to the seven computers.

The second part of the Bowl Championship Series formula is the two polls. One comes from the associated press and the other comes from coaches around the league. The Associated Press polls are organized by a number of different newspapers, magazines, and media. While the NCAA football coaches put together the Coaches poll. "This is probably the most critical element of the four because it has only two subsets (the media and coaches polls) to be averaged"

(Edwards). The polls are run similarly to the computers; the two ranking are simply averaged together. "The impact held by each poll

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is greater than that of any one computer or any one opponent. It is no coincidence that the top two poll teams have played for the national title in both years of the BCS" (Edwards).

Teams one year can have an effortless schedule and the next have the toughest schedule in the division. That is why the strength of a teams schedule had to be incorporated into the BCS. " Within the schedule strength component itself, teams are ranked 1 through 115 based on the winning percentages of their opponents and their opponents' opponents. Each ranking is multiplied by .04 to give the teams a point value for schedule strength" (Edwards). Non-conference games affects the strength of schedule the most, "The key is finding opponents that won't beat you but will beat almost everyone else they play" (Edwards).

The last part of the BCS formula is the number of team losses. Team losses obviously hurt a team in both the computer and poll rankings, but for each loss the BCS formula also adds another point to a teams BCS total. This makes it very hard but not impossible for a team that has lost only one game to move ahead of an undefeated team in the rankings.

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To put all the parts of the BCS formula together simply add together the computer rankings average, the polls average, the schedule ranking points, and the number of team losses. Once these numbers are added together each team will have their BCS ranking number, which most of the time is a number