There should be transparency in the BCS formula
Everyone’s goal in fixing college football is to create a tiebreaker. Some people think that a plus one would be best. Others, including the Mountain West Conference, think that four is still not enough, and that an eight-team playoff is the solution. The prospects for a tiebreaker have been discussed for years since undefeated Auburn fell out of the championship game in 2003. It’s not clear to me if we’ve made any progress toward a tiebreaker in the past six years.
Playoff talk aside for a moment, there’s one change that needs to be made to the current system. The voting and ranking system must be available for evaluation by fans and the media. Everyone in college football has different opinions and biases. Why should they be hidden? All ballots from both the Harris Poll and the Coaches’ Poll must be public. Coaches and members of the media who vote a certain way should have to defend their position.
Currently, both the Harris Poll and the Coaches’ Poll publish their final rankings at the end of the year. This is a good start, but they should be public all year. For example, the BCS decided the Texas/Oklahoma/Texas Tech tiebreaker for the Big 12 South. Coaches and Harris Poll voters should be responsible for where each team voted.
At least the polls eventually release public ballots. On the other hand, the creators of the computer formulas that make up a third of the BCS rankings never publish their formulas. Why should they be private? Computers should also be responsible for who they vote for, especially since they have more power than any individual voter.
Also, computer formulas have been shown to be far from ideal in the past and have been changed. Originally, some of the formulas used margin of victory in their calculations. This led to the teams raising the score and, at the urgency of the NCAA, these formulas were changed. Now, neither formula uses a margin of victory.
For the benefit of the fans and the fairness of the rankings, all ballots, human or computer, must be on public record. This could be the first small step to fixing the BCS.
