Football bowl series hurt by computers
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Staff Columnist
It has been three months now since the Bowl Championship Series served up that Miami blowout of Nebraska in the Rose Bowl for the national championship.
Enough time, you suspect, to even wipe the most recent carton of eggs off the BCS' face.
But will it be enough for the powers that be to finally get serious enough to put the selection back where it belongs, in the hands of humans, and pull the plug on the increasingly controversial, convoluted computer component to its formula?
It should be. But as the commissioners of the six power conferences that make up the BCS huddle in Phoenix this week, where a review of the formula is on the agenda, it is anybody's guess whether ComputerBall will end and real, meaningful reform will come of it.
Their inclination through the first four years of the BCS' run has been to deny the existence of fundamental problems in favor of an annual cosmetic "tweaking" of the formulas.
To date, this "tweaking" has produced some of the most curious results this side of Olympic figure-skating judging.
Two years ago, a 10-1 Miami team that had beaten Florida State in head-to-head competition was excluded from the championship game in favor of the Seminoles.
Last season, Oregon, which won the Pac-10 and was No. 2 in the major polls at 10-1, was left out in favor of Nebraska, which not only didn't even win its division in the conference, but also lost by nearly four touchdowns in its last regular-season game.
As for what is in store for the coming season, one can only wonder and shudder.
But with a computer component that the BCS is hard-pressed to explain and few can fathom, there should be little doubt that changes are needed or where they should begin.
When half of the eight computers the BCS employs had Oregon no better than the No. 6 team in the nation and Colorado, which whipped up on Nebraska, several spots behind the Cornhuskers, it is time to turn off the computers.
It is time to give the human element more of a voice in the process if not the whole say in the selection of the pairings. At least then there would be some much-needed accountability.
Ideally, of course, there would be a real championship tournament as exists in every other major sport and in football on every other NCAA level.
But since the BCS cartel is loathe to give up control of such lucrative purse strings — nearly $140 million of the $150 million that went to schools making postseason appearances went into BCS member pockets — a tournament is probably too much to hope for anytime soon.
In the meantime, there is something the BCS can do to give itself some credibility: pull the plug on the computers.
