BCS revises rating system for title game

USA Today

The Bowl Championship Series has adjusted its formula for selecting teams for college football's national championship game — enough that it would have changed last season's Oklahoma-Florida State matchup in the Orange Bowl, had the measures then been in effect.

The revisions, to be announced today, give teams a bump in the BCS' mathematical ratings for playing and beating other teams in the ratings' Top 15. They also diminish the importance of margin of victory in the ratings, addressing concerns that coaches have been compelled to run up scores.

The revised formula would have provided undefeated Oklahoma with a different opponent in the 2000 championship game last January. Miami, not FSU, would have finished No. 2 behind the Sooners in the BCS standings and captured the second Orange Bowl berth, its rating bolstered by regular-season victories over Florida State and No. 5 Virginia Tech.

Both Miami and the Seminoles finished the regular season with a single loss. Critics squawked when FSU got the title-game nod, despite the loss to Miami.

The four-year-old BCS factors the USA TODAY/ESPN coaches' and Associated Press media polls, eight different computer ratings, strength-of-schedule ratings and won-lost records into its overall ratings.