College football without playoffs?

East College Avenue. is lined with shops selling Penn State t-shirts, sweatshirts and sweatpants. But as you walk down the street you wonder, why? Almost every person walking past the shops already has Penn State gear because East College Ave. is in State College, Pennsylvania, which is the location of Pennsylvania State University. At noon on Nov. 8, it also became the home of the undefeated number three Nittany Lions football team.


Students in navy blue and gray seemed to migrate toward the nearest place with a television. Two girls dressed in lion costumes danced outside a store. Everyone was excited for the game against the Iowa Hawkeyes that afternoon.


But Iowa seemed to have the game after forcing Penn State to go three and out in their first possession and subsequently scoring a touchdown. The ferocious winds affected both offenses, but mostly Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark, who had an average of 183.6 yards came into the game. However, he threw for only 86. But Penn State was ahead, 23-14, in the fourth quarter until RB Shonn Greene scored from six yards out to put Iowa within two. On the following drive for Penn State, Clark threw his interception, which probably cost the Nittany Lions their season because the Hawkeyes drove down the field and kicked a field goal with one second remaining to win by one. This ended Penn State’s hopes of a national championship. State College, Pennsylvania was quiet.


Penn State is now ranked eighth in the nation. There is almost no way that the Nittany Lions can make it to the championship game. If college football had an eight team playoff, it would not be such a big deal. But it does not, it has something called the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a controversial system which combines human and computer rankings of teams to determine who plays for the national championship. The BCS was created in 1998 and was changed a few times; including making the human polls more significant than the computer ones after 2004 when USC was ranked first in both human polls but did not make it to the national championship game. In NCAA 1-A football, there are six BCS conferences and five mid-major conferences. There are three polls: the Harris Poll, the USA Today Coaches Poll, and the computer poll based record and strength of schedule.


This affects mid-major teams whose conferences are not loaded with big name teams. Utah (10-0) has the same record as #1 Alabama and #2 Texas Tech but is ranked 7th. The other two undefeated teams are #9 Boise State (9-0) and #14 Ball State (9-0). Only Alabama and Texas Tech are from BCS conferences so they get the higher ranking. And even if both of them lose and Utah keeps winning, it is very unlikely that Utah could get into the National Championship Game. But if there was a playoff they would have a chance.
    

The call for a playoff is not new. People have been upset with the BCS for a while now. But the rankings are in chaos right now with so many upsets. So it all came into discussion the day before the election after Chris Berman’s taped interview with future President-elect Barack Obama aired during halftime of the Steelers-Redskins game. “I think it is about time that we had playoffs in college football,” he said. “I’m fed up with these computer rankings…Get eight teams—the top eight teams right at the end.”
It is not as if Obama is the first to come up with this solution, but he is going to be the president of the U.S. wave of how the BCS does not work and how it affects this tumultuous season flooded the sports world.


USC can claim getting the worst treatment from the BCS rankings last week. They shut out Washington 56-0 and dropped from fifth to seventh. USC coach Pete Carrol says that he is disagreed with the BCS since the beginning, “I just frankly believe that we should be playing this thing off,” said Carrol.
    

Penn State is now out of championship contention thanks to the BCS system which only takes the top two teams in the country. Penn State’s 81 year-old coach Joe Paterno says that the BCS is going to “do what they gonna do.” But I don’t know if he still feels the same way now that they are totally out of the picture. The Big Ten is weak this year and if they can’t win in that conference, why should they be able to play for a national title?
    

I do not believe that one last-second loss in a veritable tundra should determine their whole season, the Nittany Lions have not played a serious game outside of the Big Ten. Make a playoff so we can see what these guys are really made of and so East College Ave. would be bustling again next Saturday with students in navy blue jerseys who have not lost all hope because of one loss. Because Joe Paterno might not be around when college football becomes fair.