Computers and football don't mix

The college football season is supposed to end with the best team claiming the championship. Come January, there’s a big chance that college football fans will have no idea who was the best team in the 2007 football season thanks to the flawed Bowl Championship Series.

The BCS is a rating system that takes into account two human polls, the Associated Press and Harris polls, as well as a computer average. The computer average is the average rating given by eight different computer formulas used to figure rankings.

Computers can beat the world’s best chess player and computers can run nuclear reactors. Johnny 5 should have an Academy Award for his performance in Short Circuit. They’re good at what they do, for the most part. But, I don’t know of a computer that can watch a football game and consider factors outside of the final statistics. Sure, Ohio State only lost one game, but they were involved in a lot of dogfights with lesser competition. Hawaii is undefeated, but they were taken to overtime by San Jose State. All the computer can see is the final result, and not how those final results were achieved.

The BCS also places far too much emphasis on November instead of looking at the whole body of work. Previously undefeated Kansas lost for the first time on Saturday night to No. 1 ranked Missouri, eliminating itself from national title consideration. No. 2 West Virginia, ranked three slots ahead, got the doors blown off by No. 21 South Florida two months ago. Another mystery within the BCS rankings is No. 6 Virginia Tech being ranked ahead of No. 7 LSU. LSU destroyed Virginia Tech 48-7 on national television in September, yet the computers have the Hokies ranked a slot higher. Teams change throughout the season, but I would put the farm on LSU winning a head-to-head matchup nine-of-ten times.

While all of the teams with loss fight things out at the top of the BCS rankings, the lone unbeaten, Hawaii (11-0) stands at No. 12. The Warriors are ranked at No. 10 in both of the human polls, but the computers aren’t a big fan. Maybe the computers can’t stay up late enough to watch the midnight kickoffs from Honolulu, but for some reason, undefeated doesn’t mean very much to them. Granted, Hawaii doesn’t play the best competition in the world, but there’s something to be said for winning games. Immediately ahead of them in the rankings are two-loss Boston College and three-loss Florida.

Instead of allowing these computers that have an early bedtime and selective viewing practices to decide championships, how about we play it out on the field in an eight-team playoff?

Champions of the six power conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big XII, Pac-10 and SEC) would be given bids a playoff. Two remaining spots in the playoffs would be given to teams that finished with the highest BCS ratings. Only two teams would be allowed to represent each conference. Independents and teams from non-BCS conferences would automatically qualify if they finished in the top eight.

Doubters will say that that adding the possibility of four games to a team’s schedule will take too much of a toll on the student-athletes, giving them a possible total of playing 16 games in a season. Somehow the ‘lesser’ athletes on the Division I-AA are able to pull it off without trouble. If Appalachian State can play in a 16-team playoff, then why can’t Michigan finish an eight-team playoff?

College football purists will put up the argument that this would ruin the history and tradition of a bowl system. That system happens to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars each year, which seems to be what people are most worried about losing. It wouldn’t have to, actually. How many people honestly care about the Music City Bowl? Imagine the difference if the Music City Bowl were the host site of a playoff game? I’d say the atmosphere would be a little bit different and millions more would tune in to watch.

The NCAA could use a computer to calculate something -- the boatloads of cash that would pile in with a playoff system.

What the computer can’t do is crown a champion.