Comment & Debate
Michael Shull. “BCS No More: College Football Needs Playoffs to eliminate the BS.” College Sports Fans.: “I have chosen the 16-team format for one reason and one reason alone. FAIRNESS, something that has long been neglected by the NCAA for Division I-A Football Bowl Subdivision football. You see, the whole idea of the BCS basically limits any real chance at any kind of a fair chance for 45 of the 120 Division I-A college football programs in 2009. With 65 teams in BCS Conferences and over 90% of the BCS Bowl Game bids (and the $17 million payout for playing in those games, win or lose), the deck is stacked against the non-BCS teams in the WAC, Mountain West, MAC, Conference USA & Sun Belt. Add in the whole Notre Dame special name recognition and money clause and the deal is even more corrupt. So we start with 16 teams – 11 conference champions and 5 at-large bids.”
Republican Utah Senator Orin Hatch said in December of 2009, in the context of a piece of legislation he was sponsoring in the Senate called the College Football Playoff Act of 2009, and in the context of Hatch’s home state Utah Utes, which played in the small Mountain West Conference, going undefeated in 2008 yet still failing to receive a bid to play in the BCS National Championship game: “[The BCS is] just not fair, it’s not a fair…It’s just terrible, just plain terrible.”[1]