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The BCS National Championship Game or BCS title game is the final bowl game of the annual Bowl Championship Series and is intended by Series organizers to determine College Football's Division I National Championship. The participants are the two highest rated teams in the BCS Standings at the end of the regular college football season, currently determined by averaging the results of the final weekly USA Today Coaches Poll, Harris Interactive Poll of media, former players and coaches, and the average of six participating Computer Rankings.

The game was first played at the conclusion of the 1998 College Football season in accordance with the agreement reached by the Big Ten and Pac 10 conferences and the Rose Bowl Game to join the members of the former "Bowl Alliance" to create the Bowl Championship Series. The Bowl Alliance and its predecessor, the Bowl Coalition, featured championship games from 1992 through 1997. However, these were hindered by the lack of potential participation by the champions of the Big Ten or Pac 10.

The game was initially rotated among the four participating bowl games, the (Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Sugar Bowl). However, beginning with the 2006 season, the BCS National Championship Game became a separate event played at the same site as a host bowl a week following New Year's Day.

The USA Today Coaches Poll has contractually agreed to select the winner of the game as the National Champion in its final poll of the season. Thus, the winner of the game is awarded the AFCA National Championship Trophy in a postgame ceremony. The winner also is automatically awarded the National Football Foundation's MacArthur Trophy.¹ However, the Associated Press does not participate in the BCS, and may award its prestigious national championship trophy to a different school.

Since the formation of the Bowl Championship Series, there have been several controversies regarding the selection of the participating teams. Most notably, following the 2003 season, the BCS ranking system excluded Associated Press No. 1 University of Southern California from the National Championship Game (The Nokia Sugar Bowl). The following season, in 2004, undefeated Auburn University and University of Utah teams were left out of the National Championship Game (The FedEx Orange Bowl), although the participating teams were also both undefeated. In 2001, Oregon, second ranked in the AP Poll, was bypassed in favor of Nebraska despite Nebraska's blowout loss in its final regular season game. Despite these controversies, since the inauguration of the BCS National Championship Game, to date only the 2003-2004 season resulted in a split national championship, when Southern California won the Associated Press national championship.

The National Championship Game for the 2007 season was sponsored Allstate. It was played at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana on January 7, 2008 and broadcast by FOX television network. The game featured the #2 LSU Tigers and the #1 Ohio State Buckeyes. LSU won 38-24 to become the first team to win two BCS National Championships. Additionally, LSU became the first team with two losses to play in a BCS National Championship game. The game for 2008 season will be played on January 8, 2009 in Miami Gardens, Florida, will be broadcast on FOX, and will be sponsored by FedEx.

Future

The game's location rotates among the sites of the BCS bowls. Future scheduled sites are as follows (note the years shown are for the game, which occurs in the calendar year following the corresponding NCAA football season):

• Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida in 2009, 2013
• The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California in 2010, 2014
• University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona in 2011
• The Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2012

The title sponsor of the BCS National Championship Game each year will be the same as that of the bowl game in that year's host location. Thus, the 2007 game was the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game, after the title sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl. The 2009 game will bear the FedEx brand and, barring any changes in corporate sponsorship, the 2010 game will bear the Citi brand.²

Based upon its television contract with ESPN, the BCS will retain its current format through at least the 2014 season.

Criticisms and Controversy

Main article: College football playoff debate

Critics of the current BCS Championship complain that the national champion is decided by polls and computers -- not by competition on the field. The BCS method chooses only the top two ranked teams, according to a combination of the BCS computer rankings and two human polls, to compete for the national championship.

This has often led to controversy and questions as to whether the team who won the BCS National Championship Game is actually the best team. In 2003, for example, USC was not included in the BCS Championship Game, but beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl and ended up No. 1 in the Associated Press final poll. The following season, USC and Oklahoma finished 1 and 2 in the final BCS poll before the games, while an undefeated Auburn team from the SEC finished 3rd and was thus left out of the national championship game.

In all other NCAA sporting events, the national champions are determined by a playoff system.

The major conferences, the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Big East, Pac-10, and the SEC, believe they gain monetarily from the current structure, and are quite unwilling to risk changing the system, even if a playoff system is fairer or leads to better football for the players and the fans.

In a 2008 interview with 60 minutes, President-elect Barack Obama espoused the idea of a playoff system:

"I think any sensible person would say that if you’ve got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season, and many of them have one loss or two losses, there’s no clear decisive winner; that we should be creating a playoff system.

"Eight teams. That would be three rounds, to determine a national champion. It would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season.

"I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m gonna throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do."

Many critics of the Bowl Championship Series favor a larger championship tournament with eight to sixteen teams, similar to that administered by the NCAA for its Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), Division II and Division III football championships. Others favor adopting the incremental step of adding a single post-bowl championship game between the winners of two BCS games among the top four ranked teams in the BCS standings, the so-called "plus one" option.The SEC and ACC conferences have been pushing for some type of playoff system as of late.

The primary virtue of increasing the number of teams in the tournament would be to allow for more head-to-head comparisons of teams from different conferences. Currently, it is difficult for pollsters to compare top teams from different conferences because such teams play on average only four regular-season games outside of their conferences, many of which are against teams from non-BCS conferences that have no chance of competing for the national title. The primary vices of expansion are threefold. First, an expanded tournament would diminish the relevance of traditional bowl games, a concern that is emphasized by football traditionalists and by major college university presidents and coaches. Second, an expanded tournament would reward teams who chose to play weak regular-season schedules, especially if some tournament slots were automatically awarded to BCS conference winners, thereby reducing the incentive of BCS teams to schedule non-conference games against strong opponents. The current two-team system, by contrast, rewards teams for playing difficult schedules, as evidenced by the fact that, at the end of the 2007 season, a team with one loss (Kansas) and a team with no losses (Hawaii) were passed over for the national championship game in favor of two-loss LSU, because LSU had clearly played a more difficult regular-season schedule. (LSU went on to win the national championship game, defeating one-loss Ohio State 38–24). Third, expansion would reduce the importance of regular-season victories. Along these lines, critics of an expanded tournament often point to the NFL where teams that have already clinched playoff berths will often bench their starting players in the final few games of the regular season because a loss will not prevent them from making the playoffs. This never happens in the BCS system, under which a team never goes into a regular-season game knowing that, even if it loses, its slot in the two-team tournament is nonetheless assured.

Game results

• For Bowl Coalition championship game results from 1992-1994, see: Bowl Coalition
• For Bowl Alliance championship game results from 1995-1997, see: Bowl Alliance

Note 1: †Double overtime

Records by conference

Records by team

Television

From 1999 through 2006, ABC broadcast eight BCS National Championship Games pursuant to broadcasting rights negotiated with the BCS and the Rose Bowl, whose rights were offered separately. Beginning with the 2006–07 season, FOX obtained the BCS package, consisting of the Orange Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, and the BCS National Championship Games hosted by these bowls, with ABC retaining the rights to the Rose Bowl and BCS National Championship Games hosted by the Rose Bowl. This means FOX has the rights to the 2009 BCS Championship Game, and ABC will have the rights to the 2010 National Championship Game.

On November 18, 2008, the BCS announced that ESPN had won the television rights to the BCS National Championship Game for 2011, 2012 and 2013. ESPN's sister network, ABC, is scheduled to broadcast the 2014 National Championship Game as part of the final year of its current contract with the Rose Bowl. The contract with ESPN is notable as it appears the BCS National Championship Game will become the most prominent annual sporting event not to be shown over broadcast television.³ However, nothing announced to date would expressly forbid an arrangement similar to the NBA on ABC, where currently ESPN owns the rights and "buys" ABC airtime, for any or all BCS games owned by ESPN.

References

1. ^ NFF Website
2. ^ Allstate press release, March 22, 2006
3. ^ ESPN, BCS agree to four-year deal for television, radio, digital rights
4. ^ bcsfootball.org - TV Ratings

See also

• Bowl Coalition championship game results
• Bowl Alliance championship game results
• Harris Interactive College Football Poll
• Bowl game

External links

• Bowl Championship Series - Official website of the Bowl Championship Series.

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 4 December 2008, at 09:18.

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