As for a playoff, make it the top 8 ranked conference champions. You have to win your conference to get in, and you have to win some real OOC games, too, to get ranked. No at-large bids, unless an independent is ranked higher than one of the top-eight conference champs.

The problem is that teams like Utah are effectively ineligible for any real playoff. That two teams with loses were placed ahead is just ridiculous. Especially since just a few years ago Utah was in the situation.

The fact that MCQ notes just demonstrates the bias in the system.

Do you guys really think that a schedule that tops out at #12 should entitle you to play for all the marbles? Really?

Yes, really. It happens all the time that the teams playing for the national championship haven’t played a top 10 team until the bowl game. In fact, until Alabama (their last game) Florida did not play a top ten team all year, and still managed to have one loss.

Setting aside the rightness or wrongness of Utah’s bid to be #1, would you agree that the BCS is an unfair system designed to continue tilting the playing field in favor of those 5 conferences (for all the good it is doing the ACC and the Big East)?

They know the criteria. These are:

1. Win games.
2. Win games in a convincing way.
3. Don’t schedule Weber State.

They managed #1, but not #2 or #3.

Utah *knows* that it comes down to a committee. They *know* the way that you make an impression. (There are dozens of ESPN articles about Texas and Oklahoma and the convincing ways they beat teams.)

Utah knew the rules, and they blew it. And now they’re bellyaching about it.

Look, I have no dog in this fight whatsoever, but I think you’re wrong. It’s not like Utah can just call up next year’s projected top ten and say, “Hey, how about we play some football?!” The football season is, necessarily, very limited. Utah played Michigan (usually better than they were this year, but there was no way to know that when the game was scheduled) and an Oregon State team that had just beaten USC. *Every* school schedules in-state rivals and a few subpar warm-up games. Do you think UTEP was a challenge for Texas, or Chattanooga a worthy opponent for Oklahoma?

I think Utah knew the rules and did everything they could have possibly done (short of teleporting themselves into a BCS conference).

And if adding a couple weeks of playoffs would damage the football players so…why no outcry about the length of the college basketball season? It is a good deal longer.