Bowl Championship Series
Division I-A American football is the only NCAA-sponsored sport without an organized tournament to determine its champion. Therefore, for any given year, there is often no undisputed champion in Division I-A collegiate football. Ironically, NCAA football is the most popular NCAA sport and the one in which public interest in the "championship" is highest. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is the latest mechanism in series of controversial attempts to provide a "championship" game for NCAA Division I-A football.
The BCS is a computer ranking format and bowl setup that has decided the unofficial but de facto NCAA Division I-A national football championship since 1998. Among the criticisms of the BCS (and the bowl system in general), include the fact that the final ranking of Division I-A NCAA football teams is decided by arbitrary and subjective standards, much like beauty pageants. Observers point-out that the “champion” of the largest and most popular collegiate sport should not be decided by fiat. The BCS was especially criticized and deemed controversial in both the 2003-2004 and 2004-2005 seasons. In 2003, five teams (three from BCS conferences) finished the regular season with one loss, with no unbeaten team, while in the following season, the same number of teams finished the regular season unbeaten. In both seasons, three of the five teams had legitimate cases for playing in the BCS title game. Most recently, additional controversy has come from the decison by the Associated Press to prohibit the BCS from using their rankings in the BCS formula, and by ESPN to remove itself from the USA Today coaches poll.