The Unfairness of the BCS Is Now Showing

The University of Hawaii is the only undefeated team in major college football with only weekend left in the regular season. So why are eleven one-loss and two-teams currently ranked ahead of them in the BCS standings? If the Rainbow Warriors defeat the Washington Huskies in their final regular season game, by all rights they should play for the BCS championship in January. Unfortunately, even if they do win that game, they’ll probably have to settle for one of the lesser BCS bowl games as a reward for having the best record in the country (and that’s assuming they maintain their position in the BCS top twelve this weekend).

Of course, the reality is that Missouri and West Virginia, two teams with one loss each, will be playing for the title if they both win their final games. If one of them loses, that team will likely be replaced in the championship game by Ohio State, another one-loss team. However, if they both lose, Kansas, the only other one-loss team among the elite of college football, will curiously be passed over in favor of a two-loss team like Georgia or Oklahoma. If a two-loss team does indeed play for the title, I’ll personally boycott that game.

The BCS has no business jumping one-loss teams over undefeated teams or two-loss teams over one-loss teams. Instead, it should consider strength of schedule to fill the role of a tiebreaker among teams with identical records. For example, if the season ends with three undefeated teams, the BCS should select which two get to play for the championship. If there are exactly two undefeated teams, then the BCS wouldn’t have anything to decide – those two teams would automatically play for the title. If there is one undefeated team and a bunch of one-loss teams, the former would automatically get a bid to the championship game and the BCS would select their opponent among the latter. And so on and so forth. 

Some would argue that this record-based pecking order of selecting teams for the BCS championship would discourage them from scheduling tough non-conference opponents. Not so. Since no school would ever know when they would finish with the same record as others, they would still need to maintain their strength of schedule, as that would be the main factor considered by the BCS in breaking ties.  While some regular seasons in college football end with exactly two undefeated teams, or even three, there is usually no more than one – with a horde of one-loss teams.