BCS Non-Sense

The jerseys in blue this season are going for history. Anything less than a BCS game likely will be viewed by many as a major disappointment (hence "The Quest") among Cougar fans. With the hype and talk of BCS now is as good of time to make sense of the BCS. The BCS (Bowl Championship Series) is the current selective system in place configured to give supposedly the top two teams in the NCAA an opportunity to compete for the National Championship. The BCS relies on a combination of polls and computer selection methods to calculate team rankings while narrowing down the field to the apparent two best teams to play in the BCS Championship game held after the other games. This contest victor is crowned the BCS champion and guaranteed at minimum a share of the national championship. The "system" is used not only for the BCS game itself but for the rest of the remaining biggie BCS bowl games. The teams selected in the current method include the conference chamion from each of the six BCS conferences plus four other also known as "at large" bids.

The BCS was given its creation by formal agreement among the six major conferences and has progressed to allow other "mid-majors" to participate. Those BCS bowl games include the following: Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl and the Orange Bowl. Certain teams are given automatic berths depending on their BCS ranking and conference as follows (man this is a mess and seems like something out of a law book)...

-The overall top two teams are given automatic berths in the BCS National Championship Game
-The champion from each major BCS conference (ACC, Big12, Big10, Big East, Pac10 and SEC) are guaranteed BCS bowl bids unless two other teams from their own conference finish #1 and #2 in the final BCS rankings.
-The highest ranked champion of a non-BCS conference will receive an auto bid if it is ranked in the top twelve or ranked in the top 16 AND higher than another BCS conference champ.
-A special pass is made for independent Notre Dame which receives an auto bid if it finishes in the top eight.
-No more than two teams from any one conference may receive berths in BCS games
-The third ranked team receives an auto berth if it hasn't already received one and if that team is already a BCS conference member.
-If the third ranked team did not require a at-large bid then the fourth ranked team will receive an auto bid if it hasn't already received one and if it is already a member of the club (whups I meant BCS).

After all the auto berths have been passed around to everyone present the remaining at-large bids are dispersed from a pool of teams ranked in the top fourteen and must have minimum nine wins. The actual at-large teams chosen are determined by individual bowl committee representatives. If fewer than 10 teams are bowl eligible for selection then the at-large bowl eligible team (also must have won 9 regular season games) and is among the top 18 teams in the final BCS standings. This process is continued until the ten slots are taken.

In other words in making sense of the goobled up wordage the Cougs must take care of business one game at a time since the jerseys in blue aren't a member of "the club". They can only control of the games ahead of them particularly whatever matchup is next on the slate. That my friends is currently Washington. Gotta take care of business on the field first one game at a time.

For those interested after the first week of college football for rankings as follows...

BYU#14 CBSSportsline
BYU#15 Associated Press Top 25
BYU#15 Coaches Poll
BYU#15 ESPN Power Rankings

As a sidenote from ESPN the bottom 10 (not good to be on...) San Diego State was listed #1 and at #6 listed was Utah State (two matchups definately not likely to help the Cougs ranking). Not trying to point out the obvious but after all that fine print BCS documentation above wouldn't it just be so much easier and not leave any question if a playoff was used instead? Thoughts?