...except adding to the have-nots.
Nobody (except me evidently) likes the BCS. Do I think it could be improved? Yes. Are there issues of exclusion and unfair practices to get certain teams into the games? Yes, there most certainly are. That said, unless the goal is strengthening the top leagues at the expense of everyone else, the BCS needs to win in court when the seemingly inevitable anti-trust suit comes to light.
It appears that there are some major illegalities involved in the BCS system. Quite obviously, schools from outside the major conferences are penalized in the current system. Nobody is going to dispute that. TCU and Boise St. have to go undefeated just to get into a major game while Connecticut can lose four games and go because of its standing as a member of the Big East, nothing more. Obviously, this is where things start on anti-trust grounds. I am no law expert, but this looks like unfair business practices excluding the smaller teams.
The other point of the lawsuit would be challenging the championship game as exclusionary. This is a far more difficult challenge. There is no way to prove that the BCS has colluded against the smaller leagues in this case. Everyone starts out at zero in the computer formulas (with the exception of the idiot Billingsley's) and the polls determining the teams in the national title games are made up of coaches from each of the conferences (for the coaches poll) and people nominated by the leagues, all of them including the lesser leagues without automatic bids (for the Harris Poll). It might not look fair, it probably isn't fair, but there is likely no way the championship game gets overturned. In theory, any team can get there and starts on level ground, even if that is not really the case.
SO what would things look like if the current structure is changed but the title game is kept in place? First, forget automatic bids. The bowls will be able to do whatever they want once the championship has its game. Goodbye TCU in the Rose Bowl, Boise St. in any BCS game and goodbye any other non-AQ school. With no rules because the bowls would in effect be forcibly de-regulated, those non-AQ schools would be sent back to the stone age as far as access goes. The bowls don't want any of them at any point barring some odd anomaly (we certainly would never see Boise St., and TCU would have likely missed out two years ago and then been in the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma and not the Rose Bowl last season).
Also, the ACC other than a few schools and the Big East can pretty much say goodbye to their BCS money. The ACC had consistently been a part of the lower rated BCS game for most of the BCS's existence. Only Florida St. and Miami are worth anything from a television standpoint and only Clemson and Virginia Tech or North Carolina depending on the matchup are worth anything from a ticket selling perspective. The rest get to join TCU and Boise St. If you doubt this, remember that Georgia Tech won a share of the 1990 National Championship out of this league coming from the Citrus Bowl played in the morning on New Year's Day and never considered one of the biggest bowl games.
With the Big East, West Virginia spent much of its time as an independent and in the early Big East days as a top level program consistently relegated to lesser match ups unless they were undefeated. That would continue to be the case now. Syracuse and Pittsburgh would join them while Cincinnati's two recent Big East title teams would have been held so far from the major games they would rather be in Boise St.'s position. Out of both the Big East and ACC, perfection would, in most cases garner the big invite, but that is all except for a select few from those leagues.
SO what would become of the newly opened spots in the BCS games? The SEC and Big Ten would take them. ALL of them. With no two per conference limit (that would get done away with too on financial grounds in a de-regulated BCS), the bowls would be free to pick whoever they want no matter the affiliation. The Rose Bowl would continue to keep its Big Ten/Pac-12 matchup as it drives the economy of the region at that time of year. Oh well with merit, that is the best financial matchup for the Rose Bowl, every year, no matter what anyone says.
The Sugar would also gets its SEC champion every year for much the same reason and put them with the best they can get out of the Texas/Oklahoma loser, Big Ten runner up, and ACC or Big East Champion. The Fiesta, Cotton and Orange would also be free to do whatever they please. Believe me it would end with 12 bowl slots (current games plus Cotton) and two Pac-12 teams, two Big 12 teams, one from the ACC/Big East/everyone else (maybe two in a weird year) and seven from the SEC/Big Ten combo.
I think this scenario is hardly what anyone wants. Of course the Pac-12, Big 12, SEC and Big Ten would love it, but everyone else would lose greatly. Needless to say, filing a lawsuit against the BCS is not a winning plan. In fact, unless a fan of the biggest schools and biggest conferences, everyone loses.
