Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series [Hardcover]

Awesome book! Well written and captivating! I've always known I didnt agree with the BCS, nor did I understand how it worked, nor did I believe that it was the best system for determining college football's champion. Unfortunately, I couldn't put together a persuasive argument that held much weight. After reading Death to the BCS, not only can I make a valid case, but I believe the time is very near that a playoff will be coming college football's way.

This book lays out all the reasons I couldnt fully explain before, and also provides me the reasons I didnt even know existed, as well as providing the evidence behind them. The detail that the authors delve into is so overwhelmingly precise, and in many ways, sickening, in that we, as the fan base, have been so misled by college football's elite leaders. The authors take us step by step into how we've been lied to over and over again by those college football decision makers. Those same decision makers exploit our desires as fans by tricking us into believing that they've created the best scenario for us. They also told us that the coaches, athletic directors, boosters, and players believe the BCS is the best way. They told us that college football cant afford the financial downfall of a playoff. They told us everything we thought was necessary to make a football playoff happen would be the beginning of the end for college football.

Read this book, and then make your own decision. If nothing else, you'll come away with a real understanding of the bowl system, and how it effects every team, and you'll be armed with the knowledge that those football decision makers dont want you to know. You'll be able to punch holes in their rationale, and offer critical evaluation of the current system. From the opening remarks to the last page (I even read the credits), my attention was held, and I cant wait to see the splash that this book will make in college football.

Now is the beginning of the end for the BCS, and the beginning of a new dawn of enlightenment for college football fans.

In almost every sport outside of gymnastics and figure skating, players and teams compete on the field. The winner is judged the best. And the sport continues to the next game or contest. Ultimately the top teams play each other and the winner is the champion. But college football is more like gymnastics and less like any other team sport. At the highest level, teams compete for recognition from mostly anonymous judges and various computers (with mostly hidden programs). The "winners" are then invited to immensely profitable bowl games with two dubbed the best in the country, while everyone else tends to lose money. It is a strange system, largely anti-competitive, and it promotes tremendous disagreement every year among fans. This book lays out precisely what is wrong with the BCS, and how it can be changed.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is not an NCAA sanctioned championship. It is in fact a collusion created by the most powerful conferences in college football to monopolize the revenue generated by giant bowl games. The premise of the BCS is that polls and computers decide which teams are the top teams in the nation and the championship game is played among the two selected. Other top teams are admitted to other high paying bowl games. But there is more to this process than meets the eye. Nearly all college football teams are affiliated with one of eleven conferences. Six of these eleven "automatically" qualify for a bid into the big money games. The other five conferences do not. This is an obvious instance of collusion and suggests a violation of anti-trust laws. It is all the more odious because the money for all the schools involved comes largely from the government itself. They are, for the most part, state sponsored institutions and even the private universities still receive government grants, student loans, etc to fund their business.

This situation could be almost forgiven if indeed the teams that came out of these six power conferences were in fact the best teams. As the book reveals, however, they are not always the best and indeed, one of the major purposes of the BCS is to exclude teams who might pose a threat to them, most notably Boise State. A small university in a Pacific Northwest state, Boise State is not what many fans think of when they think, football powerhouse. But Boise has quietly built a program the old fashioned way (winning games) and does so with a budget that is but a fraction of what the schools in major conferences make. So the BCS tries every strategy under the sun to keep Boise out. As early as 2001 Boise was already highly ranked in the computer programs that make up 1/3 of the polls. So the BCS ordered the computer ranking services to discount margin of victory in order to weaken Boise's standing. When the venerable Associated Press (AP) poll refused to play along with the BCS games and withdrew rather than taint their poll for the benefit of big conferences, the BCS created its own poll, the Harris Interactive, made up of largely ignorant voters who simply read the news and pass on the opinions of sportscasters on ESPN. Finally, the BCS maintains the power of its favored conferences by using a coaches poll. The majority of the coaches in the poll are from the same favored conferences and have a financial interest in voting teams from these same conferences higher than those from the non-favored conferences. As a result, teams like Boise State are routinely eliminated from major post season bowl games. This is not for what they have done on the field, but because voters and neutered computer ratings keep them out. With 5 undefeated regular seasons, Boise has only played in two major bowl games.

But the BCS does more than just monopolize revenue and handicap small but successful football programs. It harms the sport in a myriad of ways. The authors of this book note that the BCS encourages teams in the major conferences to play weak schedules out of conference. It increases the number of teams playing against lower division football opponents. It decreases the number of marquee games in a season. In short, the BCS hurts football as a competitive sport. And it does not have to be this way. The authors provide readers with an exciting alternative: a workable playoff system that can actually determine champions on the field, increase revenue for all colleges, and promote sportsmanship. Unfortunately, getting those with the power to give it up might ultimately (and literally) take an act of congress. Many are loath to bring politics into college football, but given that state institutions of higher learning are the ones behaving in such an anti-competitive way as to make the typical robber-baron blush, perhaps that is what is needed.

As an avid football fan of both BCS & non BCS affiliation, I found this book to be both enlightening and shocking. It goes deep into the problems with the bowl system selection process. Yet, with those problems, the book is not all "doom and gloom". It offers a playoff scenario that gets the reader excited for the possibilities that college football could become. Death to the BCS gives every college football fan a voice, one that gives every fan with a playoff plan something to turn to and say, "this is how it should and could be if these power players change their minds, or get removed from their position."

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