October...

The nights are getting colder.  The leaves are starting to turn.  Baseball is slowly making its way towards another Fall Classic.  And sportswriters everywhere are dusting off their trusty "BSC SUX" and "We Need a Playoff!" stories.

Why are these sad, old, recycled stories suddenly being dumped in our laps again?  Because its BCS time again!

In case you somehow didn't notice, yet another year (the eighth by my count) of BCS rankings debuted on Monday.  Predictably, USC and Texas held the top two spots.  Also predictably, the whining started in earnest.  You know the arguments: "The BCS 'fails' every year, how will it fail this time?" or "A playoff is 'needed', that will solve all our problems."

Well, maybe I'm the only one left who actually believes this, but there is nothing wrong with the concept of the BCS.  It has never failed.  Let's approach these points one after the other:

First, the concept of the BCS is fine.  The formula may not be right after eight years of tweaking, but the concept of picking the best two of (now) 119 contenders and having them play for the title remains sound.  College Football is a season-long, single-elimination tournament; adding more layers would only dilute what is today a fantastic product.

Second, and I can't stress this enough, the BCS has never 'failed'.  The BCS was developed after the 1997 season to select and match up the best two teams from a field of contenders in the least biased way possible.  It has done just that every time.  You may argue that USC deserved to play in the 2003 Sugar Bowl or Auburn deserved to play in the 2004 Orange Bowl but that doesn't mean the system itself did not work.  If you want to argue that the current formula has brought too much bias back into the process, I'm right there with you.  But you can't argue that the system hasn't done what it was designed to do.

So as we turn towards home in another excellent, way-too-short College Football season, let's try to enjoy what we have rather than pine for what might never be.  Let's talk about what's great about this sport rather than write yet another re-hashed story on why the BCS isn't a playoff.