12-0 Hawaii's Low Ranking Proves That The BCS is Completley Out of WAC

The college football season is over, and that can mean only one thing: it's time for me to start complaining about the BCS. The Bowl Championship Series, for those of you who don't know, is the illegitimate child of a utopian idea. That idea was a way of ranking college football teams using a computer ranking system to determine the teams that are statistically the best.
At the end of the season, the two "best" teams (according to the BCS) get to play for the national title. Sometimes, it works out fine. Sometimes. Usually, it spits out a controversial match up that may leave the best teams out of the title game.

This year is no different.

The "championship" game pits the 11-1 Ohio State Buckeyes against the 10-2 Louisiana State Tigers. Normally, losing one game in the regular season eliminates a team from the national championship game. Normally. Normally losing two games drops a team out of the top ten. Normally. (Then again, normally Notre Dame's football team could beat a Pop Warner team...)

Anyway, this year, there is an undefeated team, although they have the weakest schedule in the nation (this means that while they have won all their games, they have not beat any notable opponents). So, at 12-0, the University of Hawaii Warriors are the 10th best team in the country according to all major college football polls, legitimate and BCS.

Okay, so I get it that Louisiana State and Ohio State have played much tougher competition than the junior varsity teams Hawaii has played most of the year. But the Buckeyes of Ohio State and the Tigers of Louisiana State did manage to do one thing that the Warriors did not, namely lose a game.

But it’s not as if Hawaii has squeaked by. The Warriors averaged over 40 points a game, never scored fewer than 28 (and even that it did only once) scored over 40 points eight times, scored over 50 points four times and broke the 60 point threshold twice. The Warriors average margin of victory: 22 points.

To translate that for those who don't speak football: they scored a lot of points and also usually won by a lot.

A similar situation happened last year. The Boise State Broncos, (who play in the same conference as the Warriors) finished off the year undefeated and were not in the title game also because of their weak schedule.

But last year, they (Boise State) were not the only undefeated team, so it was less absurd that they didn't play for the title game, although they were one of two undefeateds. But then again, Florida, the one-loss team that leapfrogged the Broncos last year did breeze past Ohio State to take the National Championship.

Hawaii can't entirely be blamed for their (lack of a) schedule. First of all, since they play in Hawaii, it’s hard for them to persuade other schools to make the flight out. If Hawaii had more national respect, they would be more successful getting teams to come out, but because they are five hours-plus from the West Coast, it’s a rather hard sell. Also, since they have no national respect, teams do not want to waste a home game. (Although I do suspect scheduling is slightly easier now that the school dropped “Rainbow” from its nickname).

Another thing, it's not as if Hawaii hasn't tried to schedule tough opponents. In fact, they had scheduled to play the Michigan Wolverines, but Michigan paid quarter of a million dollar fine to cancel the game and replace the Warriors with 1-AA Appalachian State, the equivalent of Venice scheduling a game against Mark Twain. If you follow college football you'll remember that that turned out to be a very stupid move when Appalachian State pulled off the upset of the century.

Maybe Hawaii will be blown out by Georgia in the Sugar Bowl on New Years Day. Maybe their first game against talented competition will be their first loss.

But what if Hawaii wins? What if the national champion is not undefeated and doesn’t have the best record in the country? For the second year in a row.

We need a playoff system in college football. Period. But what do we have? We have Bowl Games. The arguments for the 85 trillion bowl games are legitimate ideas, like the BCS, but also like the BCS, are pointless. People will tell you that having bowl games give more teams the opportunity for success, and this is definitely true, but if there was a tournament in college football it would be the mark of a successful season to reach the tournament. (Like it is in basketball). Playoffs would also crown a more legitimate national champ (like they do in basketball). But the idea of a national champion in football is largely token, given that teams only play 13 or 14 games at most, and flukes can ruin a season.