College football: Born in controversy, BCS led to even more

Source: The Columbus Dispatch, OhioAug.新蒲崗迷你倉 25--The Bowl Championship Series was intended to provide answers, but more often than not it has generated questions that have inflamed the world of college football for the past 15 years.Why? How? What the...?"It probably kept more radio call-in shows going than anything in the history of the game," Roy Kramer said with a chuckle.The Dr. Frankenstein of the BCS is 83 years old, a recent widower, retired in the small town of Vonore, Tenn. His days are quieter than when he was Southeastern Conference commissioner and came up with the idea for a system to pair teams in a national championship game.Kramer's BCS monster was adopted by college football's stewards for the 1998 season, soon broke its chains and stalked the land, causing controversy from sea to shining sea. Within two years, Kramer even received a letter from a man in prison who was upset about the BCS."He had a whole new system for picking the two teams. I didn't quite understand it," Kramer said.College football fans never fully grasped the convoluted BCS, which dominated an era in which the sport reached unprecedented heights of popularity. For that, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany gives credit to Kramer and his much debated system."Nobody could have speculated on the extent to which (the BCS) took us forth," Delany said. "(College football) was regionally popular, for the most part, and sometimes nationally of interest. It now is a sport that is as nationally powerful as it is within its own region."Ultimately, however, unified outrage against the BCS led to the demise of its use of computers and polls. This is the 16th and final season that the BCS will pair teams in the national championship game, on Jan. 6 in Pasadena, Calif., as well as the Rose, Sugar, Orange and Fiesta bowls. Ohio State's fate won't hinge on a decimal point next year."We listened to the public, who wanted more football and wanted a bracket," BCS executive director Bill Hancock said.The College Football Playoff, with Hancock at the helm, will be implemented in the 2014 season and will consist of four teams picked by a selection committee (not yet determined) using specific criteria."There isn't a cure-all," Kramer said. "All we've done is add one game and two teams. The (playoff) system is relatively the same. It really hasn't changed a whole lot, when you look at it. We're still going to have a selection process."Any time you have any type of selection process, you're going to have controversy. So we're going to have a selection committee. Well, good luck. You think it was controversial trying to pick one and two, try picking between four and five."Hancock knows the end of the BCS won't mean the end of complaints about how the NCAA's Football Bowl Subdivision determines its champion."Going to a playoff is certainly not going to change that in football," he said. "We didn't implement the playoff to eliminate contention."The BCS was the third system to try to pair the top two ranked teams in the postseason, replacing the Bowl Coalition, which originated in 1992 and gave way to the Bowl Alliance in 1995.In the 29 years before the Bowl Coalition, there had been only eight bowl games that matched No. 1 against a No. 2. An outcry for determining the national champion on the field hit a crescendo after the 1997 season when the coaches poll named Nebraska national champion but the writers' poll voted Michigan No. 1. The BCS was welcomed in a year later."People wanted it, they got it, they were excited about it for a little while," Hancock said, "and then they started complaining about it."Kramer's idea to use a mix of two human polls and an average of six computer ratings to determine weekly BCS rankings was adopted by his fellow commissioners of the five other most powerful conferences, including the Big Ten, which reluctantly gave up its tradition of only sending its champion to the Rose Bowl."It was never perfect, and we knew that from day one," Kramer said. "Everybody wants perfect, but there is no perfect system."Responding to criticism from fans and media, BCS administrators tweaked the system's formula five times in its first seven years. Public support suffered."In hindsight, making changes every year in how teams were selected made it better," Hancock said, "but it maybe wasn't the right thing to do because people didn't come to understand how it works."All critics knew is that Auburn went undefeated in 2004 but was left out of the championship game, a year after Southern California was also jilted despite being No. 1 in both polls at the end of the regular season. The Trojans won the Associated Press national title in 2003, while the BCS title went to LSU, which beat Oklahoma in the title game. Those two years of controversy prompted the AP to ask that its poll of writers no longer be used in the BCS formula. It was replaced by a new human poll created just for the BCS, the Harris Interactive.Still, the mini storagecintillating 2006 Rose Bowl -- in which Texas quarterback Vince Young put on a one-man show in a win over No. 1 USC -- stands as an example of when the BCS worked the way it was designed."Most of the years, it put together the game people wanted to see," Kramer said.He pointed to the 2002 season when Ohio State won the national championship by pulling out a double-overtime upset victory over the University of Miami in the Fiesta Bowl."Now there was a great college football game," Kramer said. "That game would have never occurred without the BCS. Miami probably would have been in the Orange Bowl and Ohio State would have played in the Rose. People forget that."As years progressed, the BCS was called a cartel and a monopoly. Kramer still marvels at how he was called to Washington to testify before Congress about possible antitrust implications of the BCS system."Here we were trying to decide what to do in Iraq, and we had senators sitting there upset at the BCS because their school got left out," he said.The BCS enters its final season tethered to a question: How will the system be remembered?"I believe history will look on the BCS positively," Hancock said. "You can make a case that this is the golden age of college football, and the BCS played a part in that."I hope after the dust settles that people realize the BCS did a lot of things to help the overall scope of the game."tjones@dispatch.com@Todd_JonesA look at the first 15 seasons of the Bowl Championship Series1998: Tennessee (1) 23,Florida State (2) 16Controversy: One-loss Kansas State was passed over for a BCS game in favor of better-traveling teams, namely Ohio State and Florida.1999: Florida State (1) 46,Virginia Tech (2) 29Controversy: One-loss Kansas State finished sixth but again was passed over for a BCS game.2000: Oklahoma (1) 13,Florida State (2) 2Controversy: One-loss Miami ranked second in the human polls (and had defeated Florida State) but was edged by the Seminoles in the computers. Miami's loss was to one-loss Washington.2001: Miami (1) 37,Nebraska (2) 14Controversy: Nebraska was beaten 62-36 by Colorado in its regular-season finale and didn't play in the Big 12 championship, yet edged Colorado and Oregon in the computers.2002: Ohio State (2) 31,Miami 24 (1), 2 OTControversy: Quirky rules left the Rose Bowl with an Oklahoma-Washington State matchup while Big Ten co-champion Iowa met Pac-10 co-champion USC in the Orange Bowl.2003: LSU (2) 21,Oklahoma (1) 14Controversy: No team finished unbeaten, and three had one loss. Shut out was USC, which was No. 1 in the human polls but weak in computer points. The AP named the Trojans national champions after their Rose Bowl win over Michigan.2004: USC (1) 55,Oklahoma (2) 19Controversy: Another worst-case scenario, this time with five unbeaten teams; the others were Auburn, Utah and Boise State. Auburn finished 13-0 with a Sugar Bowl win.2005: Texas (2) 41, USC (1) 38Controversy: None2006: Florida (2) 41,Ohio State (1) 14Controversy: Ohio State was unbeaten, but one-loss Florida earned a spot by only the slimmest of margins over one-loss Michigan, which had lost to the Buckeyes 42-39 in a classic regular-season finale.2007: LSU (2) 38,Ohio State (1) 24Controversy: Chaos was more evident than controversy as top-ranked teams were summarily dispatched in the final weeks of the regular season, opening the door for LSU to become the first two-loss champion.2008: Florida (2) 24,Oklahoma (1) 14Controversy: The big issue was which one-loss team (Oklahoma, Texas or Texas Tech) would represent the South Division in the Big 12 championship game. The Sooners won out. Unbeatens Utah and Boise State brought "non-AQ conferences" into the lexicon. Utah got a Sugar Bowl spot, but Boise State had to settle for the Poinsettia Bowl.2009: Alabama (1) 37,Texas (2) 21Controversy: Nothing over the championship matchup, but there was plenty of howling when unbeatens Boise State and TCU were shuttled off to the Fiesta Bowl.2010: Auburn (1) 22,Oregon (2) 19Controversy: While the SEC and Pac-10 sent their unbeaten champions to the title game, TCU went to the Rose Bowl and scored a victory for the "Little Sisters of the Poor" by beating Wisconsin.2011: Alabama (2) 21, LSU (1) 0Controversy: Ohio State and Michigan couldn't have a rematch in 2006, but LSU and Alabama were allowed to tango a second time, much to the chagrin of Oklahoma State. The Cowboys, like Bama a one-loss team, had a better computer rating, but the polls liked the Crimson Tide.2012: Alabama (2) 42,Notre Dame (1) 14Controversy: No complaints at the top, especially after Alabama beat Georgia in an SEC championship game that served as a de-facto national semifinal. Northern Illinois making the Orange Bowl ruffled some feathers, though.-- Ray Stein rstein@dispatch.comCopyright: ___ (c)2013 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) Visit The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) at .dispatch.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesself storage