EL PASO — In college football you have the top 25 NCAA rankings and all 119 teams dream of being ranked number one and winning the national championship. But only two teams get to play for it at the end of the year.
The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is changing that.
The BCS is a system set up with conference commissioners who take about a year to put the playoff games together. In 2014 four of the top teams will get the right to play for the title instead of only the two teams of previous years. Keep in mind the last system of the BCS – picking only two finalists – worked, but some people believe that there were cracks in a system that left teams out who should have had a chance to play in the big game.
Former college player and coach Brooke Stafford said, “This should be put in place; that way two teams don’t get picked as national champs like in years past.”
In previous years the BCS had four major bowl games that didn’t crown a national champion, but gave fans something to watch. These four games were set up for the top teams in each big conference – the SEC, BIG IIX, BIG 10, Big East, ACC, PAC 12 and an at large school not in a major conference that can surprise the NCAA by having an undefeated season. The four games lead to the final shebang, which leaves the top two teams to face off after a week of compelling match ups.
The new system will include seven games, which will also include two semifinals and end with a finalist that will be the national champion for the year. While the other four games still remain as they did in the past, this time around there will no longer be automatic bids for six conference champions. Now five conferences have a spot guaranteed once one wins their conference, but only one team from the conference can play in one of those seven games. This allows a guaranteed spot for the best team in the smaller conference to see if they stack up against those big schools.
Asking college football fans what they think about the new system, there were some confused faces. Local college fan Steve Mays thought on the new system “I think it’s going to be more confusing because the teams not getting picked out will be upset that they were left out.”
The selection committee will pick the match ups. It will seed the top four teams in the country at the end of the seasons by setting up the semifinals. No. 1 will play No. 4. No. 2 will play No. 3.
The selection committee will also set some of the matchups in the bowl games, but the key for the committee is to get the highest ranked teams available for the remaining games.
The games will rotate from six bowl games: the Rose (Pasadena), Orange (Miami), Sugar (New Orleans), Fiesta (Glendale, Ariz.), Cotton (Arlington, Texas) and Chick-Fil-A (Atlanta). Those games that don’t host the semifinal then they will put on one of the four leftover games bowls.
The new change will come with the title game that will be bid out just as it is in the NFL for the Super Bowl and move place to place over the country. But, the first one will be played at Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
The idea of the committee was to make the series similar to the one that puts together the NCAA basketball tournament, made up of athletic directors and conference commissioners. But make no mistake, this will be much tougher to put together, and the commissioners know that. So fans should get ready for another headache ending to a season next year.
Former Oklahoma football player Jamarkus McFarland said that he believes the system will workout for the better but it will just need time.
