First, Sideshow Bob, while I'm for giving all the schools a chance to play for the National Title, I would not grant automatic status to mid-major conference champions. In your scenario, for example, Fresno State would not be playing, Louisiana Tech (who got creamed by a 6-5 Clemson team in the Humanitarian Bowl) would.
Second, ABC (Disney) & the BCS have a guaranteed $ contract through 2006...the BCS (unfortunately) isn't going anywhere; for now I think it would be more productive to find the best way to modify the stupid formula. In this regard, I have a couple suggestions:
1. eliminate margin of victory from ALL 8 computers; this year, they eliminated it in 4 of the formulas; computers that use MofV produce distorted results when teams like Florida run up the score unnecessarily (see Orange Bowl) when other teams (who still believe in sportsmanship) don't...
2. eliminate "quality win" component; substitute instead a 1 pt. bonus for winning one's conference or one's conference championship game
3. with the computer rankings, use where the team is ranked not what the team is ranked for the number (ie, Nebraska's computer # was 7.23, the 2nd best rank...in my system, their # would be "2")
4. use SOS only as a tie-breaker; SOS is incorporated in the computer polls already, which in the system now creates collinearity (the BCS gurus didn't care too much about statistics)
5. finally don't allow the computer polls to rank conference strength (or teams for that matter) until at least 1/2 way through the season...the real reason why Nebraska stayed #2 in 1/2 of the computers after there loss to Colo. was that the formulas those computers were using were biased towards the Big 12 & pre-season rankings (especially Billingsley's, & he openly admits this)
Thus "my" BCS formula is: AP/Coaches avg. + Computer ranking + losses - conference championship points.
I apologize for the length of the post; admittedly I'm very frustrated with all the "Miami is clearly the champion" headlines I'm seeing. Miami beat a mediocore Nebraska team by 23; Colorado beat Neb. by 26; UO beat Colo. by 22. Seems to me UO would be pretty competitive in a UO-Miami game (especially in the Rose Bowl).
regards, college_kid.
Yeah, your right, a bad Louisiana Tech won the tie breaker over a much better Fresno State. I agree that it is really unfair to have a system where some teams don't have a chance to win the national championship (however likely or remote that chance is).
Many of the top mid-major conference teams have programs better than the cellar-dwellers and average teams of the major six conferences. Those teams don't like being in mid-major conferences, but it's where there stuck (or they wouldn't be there.)
Temple, Rutgers, Baylor, Vanderbilt, Kentucky, California, Wake Forrest, Duke, Minnosota, ect. are in major conferences (and have a shot at the current BSC). Illinois and Maryland are usually cellar-dwellers, but show that turn-arounds do happen.