What Are the BCS Standings?

The Bowl Championship Series standings govern team rankings in U.S. college football. They were first introduced in time for the 1998 college football season, and have been controversial ever since. The significant argument against the BCS is that a computer is responsible for ranking the teams. Even President Barack Obama has critiqued the system and suggested that it may need to be revamped.

  1. Use

    • Once the standings from each of the three different elements that comprise the BCS are added together, a ranking of the top 25 teams in the nation is produced. At the end of the regular season, the standings are used to determine which teams will play for the National Championship, and which teams are eligible for bowl games as automatic qualifiers and at-large teams.

    Polls

    • Polls are used to determine a team's BCS ranking. There are 114 people who vote in each week's BCS poll, giving a number between one and 25 for each team. If a voter believes a certain team should be ranked first, he assigns that team a 25. A second-ranked team gets 24 points. For example, if a team is considered the best in the nation unanimously, it would receive 2,850 points, or 114 x 25.

    History

    • In the early years of the BCS, the championship game was given a bowl name, such as the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl in 1998, the first year of the standings. In the 2006 championship game, the game was renamed to simply the BCS National Championship. In addition to the National Championship, the BCS sponsors four other bowl games -- the FedEx Bowl, Rose Bowl, Allstate Sugar Bowl and Tostitos Fiesta Bowl.