Boise State BCS Controversy

It's a long season, but the Boise State Broncos took a big first step forward by defeating highly-ranked Virginia Tech. This raises the possibility of another unbeaten season, and all of the controversy that will occur if once again they are denied a place in the BCS Championship Game due to overall weakness of schedule.

A lot of people think that college football needs a playoff system to decide the national champion--which team is #1--and I agree. The current system is flawed because, though it's called the Bowl Championship Series, all it really involves is the two top-ranked teams playing each other in a championship game. When is one game a "series"?

Solving the problem seems simple enough: include either the top-4 or top-8 teams, seed them 1 through 4, or 1 through 8 and have a standard playoff like every other sport does. It's not rocket science!

However, an 8-team playoff might be too inclusive, and it would take too long. But a 4-team playoff seems too exclusive because there's a good chance it would leave out an undefeated minor conference champion or two--such as Boise State or Utah in recent years.

So I would like to suggest a compromise between a 4-team and an 8-team playoff. Call it a 4-team-plus playoff. The "plus" would include any other team that wins all its games--call them "wild cards" (WC). If there's one such team (WC-1) then they would play the #4 team in what the NCAA basketball tournament refers to as a "play-in" game. If there are two such teams, the lesser-ranked team (WC-2) would be matched against the #3 team, and so on.

This proposed playoff system would not extend the season at all. The #1 vs #4/WC-1 and the #2 vs #3/WC-2 games would be alternated among the major bowl games, and the BCS championship game would be played the following week--same as now--only the participants would be the victors of those two designated bowl games.

This system would give teams like Boise State a shot at the title, but they'd have to earn it---by beating the #4, #1 and #2 or #3 (or an undefeated team that had beaten #2 and #3)in consecutive weeks.