The 2004 season’s first Bowl Championship Series standingswere released Monday and controversy has already begun stirring atthe top of the rankings.
Southern Cal tops the rankings with a BCS average of .9912.Miami comes in second, followed by Oklahoma, Auburn and FloridaState rounding out the top five. Tennessee and Georgia come in atNo. 9 and No. 10 respectively. LSU comes in as the fourthSoutheastern Conference team ranked at No. 19, with Florida servingas the fifth at No. 22.
Following last season’s controversial finish, BCSofficials made changes to the previous formula in an attempt toprevent a team from finishing No. 1 in both polls yet failing toplay for the BCS national championship.
In 2003, LSU earned the BCS national championship afterdefeating Oklahoma in the Nokia Sugar Bowl. Yet the Tigers wereforced to split their title with the Associated Press champion USCTrojans.
This season’s BCS rankings rely predominantly on separaterankings, as opposed to last season’s system of combingrankings with other components of the standings.
The Associated Press rankings make up one-third of the BCSformula, with the Coach’s Poll making up another third. Thefinal third of the formula is computed from an average of sixseparate computer rankings.
The six computer ranking polls include Anderson and Hester,Billingsley, Colley Matrix, Massey, Sagarin and Wolfe.
This season’s early controversy has been brought on byMiami earning the No. 2 spot over Oklahoma.
Brad Edwards, a BCS analyst for ESPN said the six computerrankings are what caused Miami to jump Oklahoma.
“It’s not so much because Miami has these greatnumbers in the computers as it is because Oklahoma’s numbersare just awful,” Edwards said. “Miami has pretty closeto a maximum score in the computers. So if Oklahoma can defeatOklahoma State and Texas A&M and win out, Oklahoma’snumbers will improve considerably.”
According to Edwards, only two of the six computer rankings haveOklahoma ranked in the top four.
“If USC and Oklahoma both win out, there’sabsolutely no question that they will play for the nationalchampionship,” Edwards said. “I would say by thebeginning of November that Oklahoma will jump Miami [as long asthey both continue to win.]”
Yet despite the possibility of Oklahoma jumping Miami in thepolls, Edwards said four undefeated teams at the end of the yearwould cause unrest within the BCS.
“The worst thing that could happen to the BCS would be forthere to be more than two undefeated teams from major conferencesat the end of the year,” Edwards said. “There’snot a change they could make to the formula that would keep thatfrom happening.”
Edwards added that fixing the system would require a change offormat, not a change in the formula.
“The only thing they can do is to make a change offormat,” Edwards said. “What I would suggest is to goto either choosing the top four teams as semifinalists orrecalculate the rankings after the BCS games and determine who thebest two teams are.”
With a new system, Edwards said a playoff, particularly asemifinal-final setup, would be necessary.
“Regardless, I think there’s too much parody incollege football for us to fool ourselves in saying these are thebest two teams,” Edwards. “I think it needs to beexpanded to four teams.”