The BCS is a sham and needs to be removed from college football. The only way to ensure that we no longer arbitrarily select a champion and allow the teams to settle it on the field is to install a playoff. College presidents are in the way. This letter answers their hypocrisy. While it is addressed to Penn State's Graham Spanier, it is to all college presidents.

Dear President Spanier:

As a Penn State alumnus, I am embarrassed by your comments in Sports Illustrated regarding the BCS (BCS Mess, Nov. 29, 2004). The BCS is broken1. Truthfully, it always was.

Any system in which a member team can win all of its games and not have a chance to win the championship is patently unfair on its face. Utah doesn’t have a chance. Boise State doesn’t have a chance. Even the BCS’s own Auburn doesn’t have a chance. I daresay that if Penn State would have managed to go undefeated this year, we would not have a chance. It’s broken, and every American knows it!

Apparently, it is you and the other college presidents who are standing in the way of doing what the rest of the country wants. You and the other presidents have stated strict opposition to a playoff. Oregon President Dave Frohmeyer was quoted by USA Today several months ago as saying the college presidents are “adamantly opposed to a playoff.” In Sports Illustrated, you said, “The presidents have completely rejected an NFL-style playoff system.”

Why?

The NCAA has a playoff in every other sport—and in football, too, at every other level. How about an every-other-college-sport-style playoff? The presidents keep saying it’s not about money. It does give one cause to ponder, since adding two semifinals and a championship game after the current four BCS bowls serve as quarterfinals (which is eminently logical and exceedingly fair when compared to the current unjust system—after the existing contracts that prevent it run out) would surely bring in even more money. Perhaps your comments published in The Daily Collegian some months ago give us the best clue as to why.

You said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the BCS conferences (and Notre Dame) have earned the right to set up the system this way, because only one non-BCS conference team (excluding Notre Dame) has won the national championship in the last 50 or so years (that being BYU in 1984). Earned the right to set up a patently unfair system that excludes its own members from the right to win?!? I don’t think so! What an awful example to set.

We Penn Staters can be thankful that this ill logic wasn't in effect before Penn State joined the Big Ten, or we would have needed a Notre Dame-style exclusion just to be eligible to play for the title. (And don’t tell any of us that money isn’t an issue; the money Notre Dame draws is the reason they have an exemption). Especially at a school with our history of being denied national championships after undefeated seasons (the only school with more than one undefeated yet unrecognized team, with four), this logic is illogical and insulting.

The only reason I can fathom for this openly absurd action is that the BCS conferences (and Notre Dame) are in league to keep the bulk of the money for themselves by excluding all of the non-BCS teams. Please, if there is another explanation, say it. The presidents keep telling us what they’re opposed to (a playoff), but they never tell us why.

Oh, right. Now we get to the presidents’ oft-touted “explanation.” “The principle concerns have been the creation of an extra game in the schedule, the potential lengthening of the season and over-commercialization,” you said in the SI article. Please! What did you and the other presidents allow in 2002-03, and what is being proposed to become permanent in the near future? Answer: A 12-game schedule for all teams. That 12-game schedule adds 117 additional games each year, and the presidents are belly-aching about one or three?!? Don’t try to offer some semantic explanation for allowing those extra games. Such explanations are transparent.

But wait. The BCS indeed did add another game this year. But did it do the smart thing and add a potential championship game? No. The presidents allowed the BCS to make just what they said they’re opposed to—a “lengthened” season with a 5th BCS game the following weekend. It is blatant hypocrisy. And what of fairness?

Add in the conference championships that the presidents have seen fit to allow, and it has been/likely will be no less than 122 additional games each year (but, hey, you did get rid of all of those great preseason “classics”). The simplest math tells us that it would take 40 years for an 8-team playoff using the current BCS bowls as quarterfinals to add as many games as you allowed just last year. This can’t-extend-the-season argument is nothing but an opaque smoke screen. That logic is faulty. To hear such things come from the mouths of our college presidents—especially when the solution is as plain as the Pinocchio noses on their faces—causes one to believe in corruption; frankly, it causes one to know there is corruption.

This is corruption based on conferences. The NCAA has a long history of cracking down on recruiting violations. It cracks down on everything that gives one school an advantage over another. However, in ceding jurisdiction to the BCS, the NCAA has allowed a huge advantage to be given to all of the BCS conferences (and Notre Dame). Case in point: During a nationally-televised Utah game, the color commentator noted that a prized recruit told Utah Coach Urban Meyer that he was picking another school, because Utah wasn’t in the BCS. The BCS gives an edge in recruiting. Clearly, the BCS conferences (and Notre Dame) are protecting their power through collusion.

The level of insanity crept in further this year when six coaches poll voters dropped Cal to 7th or lower on their final ballots after a 10-point (yes, I watched the game) victory at Southern Miss. A week before, no one voted them lower than 6th (see attached). Six coaches bought Mack Brown’s lobbying and voted Cal out of the BCS. We, as a people, have always wanted to remove this kind of politics from the system.

I also came across some comments on a playoff from The Daily Collegian (March 24, 2004) that you made to a class last spring. Derek Levarse quoted you: “Reporters, you can write about it all you want. You’re wasting your ink…it’s not going to happen.” I disagree. It will happen in our lifetime. Every day the waves beat against the shore, and every day the waves lose. Yet they move the shore back over time. We are the waves.

Best advice, President Spanier, is for the presidents to make a playoff happen. You, personally and as Penn State's leading official, have a tremendous opportunity here to show leadership in directing this mess toward a positive and wildly popular resolution. Penn State could be held up as an even higher example of integrity in the college football world. Your current public comments are doing the opposite, if I am to believe what I hear from others and my own heart. I believe wholeheartedly that you would receive vocal and enthusiastic support across the country (don't worry; Lee Corso will flip-flop and support the change once it happens).

Please help the presidents fix this. It will, in Penn State’s words, make life better. Right now, life is frustrating and patently unfair when it comes to college football. If you can’t make it happen, it’s about time to see an Auburn or a Utah or a Boise State (or a Penn State in '68, '69, '73 or '94, if we could turn back time) sue the BCS and/or the NCAA for the right to win—and for the money—they are being denied.

Lastly, in the Nittany Lion Club newsletter I just received, Tim Curley said, “For us, success with honor is the Penn State way.” The BCS is not the Penn State way. It has no honor. Allow the teams to settle this on the field—as Joe Paterno and Penn State fans always wanted (and now, all of America).

Thanks, and here’s to fixing the broken BCS!

Jeff Deitrich ’89

1 The BCS has worked properly only once in the last five years (and even that year, it wasn’t due to the BCS’s design). During the SEC Championship Game on Dec. 4, CBS showed the following graphic:
2000: Florida State with 1 loss, gets spot ahead of 1-loss Miami who defeated FSU during the regular season
2001: Nebraska gets spot in Rose Bowl after losing to Colorado 62-36
NEB: Didn’t win division title
2003: USC, Top ranked in both polls, fails to get a spot in the Sugar Bowl even after Oklahoma loses Big XII title game

I’ll add:
2004 Auburn, Utah and Boise State all go undefeated and are barred from any chance at playing for the national title (hey, and let’s not even get into how an 8-3 Pitt team ranked outside the top 20 gets a BCS bid. It’s not just rotten at the top)

Joe Paterno
(from Sports Center interview with Beano Cook, Dec. 21, 2004 at 6:37 p.m.), when asked, if he were God, what he would change about college football:
"I'd do away with the hypocrisy of the college presidents about playoffs and other things when money is an underlying factor. I think the college presidents allowing the BCS thing is a real, real shame. When you talk about having some kind of a playoff, well they say we can't miss classes, and then we get the NCAA (basketball) playoff. I mean, who's kidding who? I'd try to find a way to get rid of it... Tell television every once in a while to go shove it. Don't play a game on a Tuesday night. Don't play a game on a Thursday night. And how can you justify playing a game on a Tuesday night when you say you don't want to miss classes?"

The Associated Press
(on its Dec. 21, 2004 decision to withdraw its poll from the BCS, ESPN quoted the AP, which said that its association with the BCS has “harmed AP’s image.”