...Taking another look at the BCS
Competitiveness in college football is cyclical. Recent years have seen slumps from traditional powerhouses like Michigan, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Florida State and Miami. Apologies to fans of requisite snubbed team from the above list. The same is true of conferences and the last couple years are . Of the six conferences there are a grand total of two viable powerhouses: the SEC and the Big 12. Two. The Big 10 and the Pac-10 are top-heavy and the ACC and Big East are downright pathetic. The state of Notre Dame football, which gets to control its own destiny every year, is mentioned above.

Consider this: in the past four seasons the ACC and Big East have gone a combined 4-4 in BCS bowl games. Of course, their champions have played each other twice - so they had to have at least two wins. The other two wins have come from West Virginia, who is currently enjoying their own slump since coach Rich Rodriguez bolted for Michigan. For those of you who are better at math than I am, you may have already figured out that only eight bids in four years means that neither league has been good enough to warrant an at-large bid in any of these seasons. The ACC has a ridiculous .182 winning percentage in the major bowls since inception of the BCS.

The Pac-10 and Big Ten are not much better in recent years with the exception of Pac-10 juggernaut the University of Southern California. No Pac-10 team other than USC has reached the BCS more than once and a grand total of zero at-large bids have come from the conference since 2002-2003. The Big Ten has their own juggernaut in Ohio State but the conference's champion and at-large bids have gone 2-6 in the last four years, both wins coming in 2006-2007. That's correct, in the last three years the Big Ten has had an at-large team every year and BOTH teams have lost every time. Every loss except one has been by double digits.

With the recent emergence of the Big 12, what we have in the current BCS format is essentially a season-long, two-conference playoff competition where the SEC champion will face the Big 12 champion for the national title. So why doesn't an undefeated Utah deserve a shot? It's not like the same thing didn't happen in 2004-2005 when the Utes went undefeated in the regular season and beat Pittsburgh 35-7 in the Fiesta Bowl. That year USC won the national championship game 55-19, albeit this matchup actually paired two undefeated teams.
           
Anyone with a brain knows that, in a perfect world, Senator Orrin Hatch is absolutely correct. The BCS system favors large schools with traditionally powerful programs. Even being the only undefeated FBS team does not guarantee a shot at a national title. There is no current playoff system and the introduction of a play-in game or a full bracket would prevent at least most of the controversy which puts a cloud over almost every champion the BCS has crowned. 

But there is no perfect world. It's true that we are dealing with unpaid student-athletes who must concentrate on school in order to be eligible to play. Many university presidents will never vote for a playoff for this reason. Many other presidents will continue use the previous statement as a mask for their true motivation; the larger the odds of a BCS appearance, the more money the big schools continue to bring in.

At the end of the day, college football is a business. It is likely, unless a breach of the Sherman Act can be proven, that college football will never switch to a system that gives a ratings buster like Utah a chance.