Draft 1 of Letter to the Editor

Positive Step but No Solution

To Max Landman, editor-and-chief of the TCU Daily Skiff:

The Bowl Championship Series system in college football has had numerous critics over the years since it was established as the way to determine the national champion in college football. An article in the TCU Daily Skiff published on March 24th of this year talks about a potential solution to this problem. Justin White compares and contrasts the current BCS system and unveils the Mountain West Conference’s proposed playoff plan in his article entitled “Mountain West presents eight-team playoff proposal.” Though I believe this to be a step in the right direction for college football, I think it is only the first of many steps that needs to be taken in order to fairly determine a national champion.
White talks about how fans that have been outraged in the past can now breathe easier because of this proposed plan; I think that is a bit bold. The article gives an overview of the newly proposed plan, and although it would replace the current BCS system, a 12 member committee would not only choose the eight teams to compete for the title, but they would also seed them, one through eight. This leaves the door open for some extremely arbitrary decisions when picking one team over another. The article takes the shape that this is the solution to a huge problem in college football when in reality, possibly one capricious group could be replaced by another group that is set up to have the same problems and make the same mistakes.
Like I said earlier, this is a step in the right direction, and I agree with what is said by the athletics director Danny Morrison in this article. He says this plan came about now because the MWC is doing well, not because some other BCS conferences are doing badly. The proposal is receiving praise by other conferences, but I think the MWC is ultimately trying to make their case for an automatic bid in the current BCS system. A playoff system has been discussed for years, and the various ideas have involved eight, 16, and even more teams, but the BCS continues to live on.
In the end, it is teams like the 2008 Utah Utes who get short-changed. They had a perfect season, and they won their BCS bowl game, beating an extremely well-coached and talented Alabama Crimson Tide team…why should they not get a chance to play for the national championship? There are teams like this, year in and year out, and still this problem exists. A problem that is as continuous as this one cannot be solved by a simple proposal by one conference, and I think the way this article flows, that is exactly what it is getting at. More needs to be done, and it will take some serious time for everyone in college football to settle on a fix; at least now more conferences are starting to realize that something has to change, and that truly is half the battle.