Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
December 12, 2003, Washington Post

No. 1, a Quick Study

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) has made a mess of college football. The BCS is the ranking system that is supposed to pick the two top teams of the year so they can play for the national championship.

The problem is that this season there are three terrific teams with only one loss apiece: the University of Southern California (USC), Louisiana State University (LSU) and Oklahoma. As any first-grader knows, three doesn't go neatly into two. The coaches and sportswriters who watch the games think that USC is the best team in the country. But the complicated BCS computer formula says that Oklahoma and LSU are the two top teams, and so they will play in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 4.

Folks who think USC has been cheated out of a chance of being No. 1 (and there are lots of them) are calling for playoffs to decide the NCAA football championship. Take the four or eight best teams in the nation and have them play a series of games to decide the champion. It would be like the NCAA basketball tournament, only for football.

Like most sports fans, I think football playoffs would be pretty cool. I would rather have the teams, instead of some crazy computer system, decide which really is the best team. But I think that the people who are pushing the idea of college football playoffs have forgotten one important thing: The kids who play on these teams are supposed to be students. When are they going to study for their exams if they are playing big-time, high-pressure football games all through December and January?

Every year, college football becomes more like the pros. There are more games. Kansas State, the team that walloped Oklahoma 35-7 last week, has played 13 games already this year. Schools play games from August to New Year's Day and beyond. Teams play on Wednesdays and Thursdays (school nights) so that the games can be on national TV. Coaches are paid millions of dollars to make sure that their teams have winning records and play before tens of thousands of fans in packed stadiums.

But the players aren't pros. Only a handful on any team will ever play NFL football. They are supposed to go to class and do homework. And as any kid who plays sports and goes to school can tell you, doing both can be tough.

So, if there's a playoff at the end of the season to decide which is the best college team in the nation, let's not forget that the players are student-athletes. Any new playoff system should not be tacked on to the end of the season unless some changes are made that give the players a chance to be college students. Changes including:

• No team may play more than 10 games during the regular season.

• No team may play before Labor Day.

• No team may play on a school night.

Maybe then the teams will have enough time for championship playoffs. And the players will have enough time to study for exams.