End of the BCS

By: Jamie Walton

With the 2013 year coming to an end, so is the BCS era. As the end of the regular season is upon us and conference championships play out, the bowl games and their attendees will be picked for the last time. The new committee comprised of university presidents have devised a format through the 2025 season and is hoped to benefit fans, student-athletes, and sponsors.

Through the Social Learning Theory, the BCS Committee, alongside the NCAA, will use insight from other Division-I sport playoffs. They have plenty of years of experience with these other sports to go to a playoff system, but this will be the first time for college football. The top four teams at the end of the season will play in semi-final games and the two victors will then compete in the National Championship at a neutral site. Though not as many teams, this is almost the same system that college basketball uses for their Final Four and then National Championship games. This will give teams a chance to play out and be crowned as the best in the nation instead of letting computers do the talking.

Like basketball, football has chosen six different sites in a rotation style for the playoffs. The National Championship game will be set at a neutral site each year and played on a Monday; just like the BCS system has it today. The BCS and NCAA took insight from the NFL by rotating through the six bowl games, setting up two playoff games and four major bowl games at the end of each season. The national title game will be bid out each year through a separate process similar to the Super Bowl giving both college and professional venues a fair access to bid out and receive the final game of the season. As of January 6, 2014, the countdown will begin for the new era of the playoff system in college football for the world to see.

The BCS committee and NCAA used social learning theory by:

• Being resourceful and giving the fans what they want. They are in good faith that this new system will promote a better way to hail a victor in the end instead of letting the computers pick the two finalists.
• Making a plan to instill conferences their power and follow the lead of other sports and the way their playoff system is played out. They will still have the National Championship held on a Monday after the victors reign supreme from the two playoff games to hail an ultimate victor.
• Putting the game into the hands of the student-athletes and giving the fans what they want. Fans, schools and conferences have been wanting the playoff system to be put in place for fairness and quality of the National Championship.

As an avid sports fan, and being a part of a university that has been in the top tier for the last few years with their football program, I am anxious to see how the new plan works its course. I feel a lot of other fans, teams, conferences and schools feel the same way. Their programs will have to prove they are worthy to play in one of the semi-final games and conquer their opponent to make it to the National Championship title game. The teams worthy of competing in semi-final games will be scored by strength of schedule, win-loss performances, head-to-head results of opponents, and how they rank in their conference (whether or not they are conference champions or not). There will be six different bowls, three of which will hail a National Champion. The Big Ten, SEC, PAC-12, Big 12, and ACC conferences will make up seven of the twelve teams that are to play in these games, and the other five spots will be filled with other schools that either have an at-large bid or prove they are worthy to play for the Coach’s Trophy. Let the countdown begin!