Officials in charge of college football's Bowl Championship Series have probably heard all of the complaints by now.
The BCS was first designed four years ago to help in crowning a national champion amidst a football field of controversy. It now has become a lightning rod for even more criticism than the original poll system.
"Everybody has forgotten why there is a BCS poll," said Big East Commissioner Michael Tranghese during a conference call with the media last week. "When the Bowl Championship Series was created we needed a mechanism to determine who was playing in the championship game.
"We were not going to allow football coaches to select who was playing in a national championship game. That's not their job."
So in an effort to remain true to the original mission of the BCS while also eliminating embarrassing snafus – Nebraska's national championship appearance last January being the latest – BCS officials decided last week to modify the formula once again.
Gone is the computer-calculated margin of victory component that helped the Cornhuskers, who were ranked below the Oregon Ducks in both the Associated Press and USA Today polls, make their way to Pasadena.
Had it not been for calculating the margin of victory in its final analysis, the BCS would likely have awarded the Ducks a shot at Miami in the championship game.
The quality win component has also been narrowed, according to BCS officials. Teams will only receive points for beating opponents in the top 10, rather than the top 15, as was the case last year.
The BCS will also decrease the number of computer polls that are used in its analysis from eight to seven.
The four components that make the final rankings (record, strength of schedule, AP and USA Today polls and computer rankings) are all evenly weighted at 25 percent apiece in the final outcome.
BCS officials see these changes as offering an olive branch to critics who debated the relevance of the system after watching as the unanimous No. 2 Ducks were left out in the cold last season.
"We think the elimination of the margin of victory is the middle ground," Tranghese said. "A computer can't get at the nuances of a score."
It also can't give the close calls and tough games the proper attention they deserve, but Tranghese said trying to implement the type of human evaluation that a lot of critics of the BCS seem to want, just wasn't feasible.
"We gave considerable time and discussion into introducing a human element into the selection process," said Tranghese, adding that the entire committee must recommend the modification.
"If we are going to make a change, it's going to have to be a consensus and it clearly was not."
The Big East chairman also said the proponents of adding humans to the BCS formula, in the end, couldn't reach a compromise as to how the system could be implemented.
"Even the people who wanted to consider a human element couldn't agree how the human element would be used," Tranghese said.
Tranghese went on to say that asking human beings to apply their own judgment is better left to the two polls already used.
"We would be asking these gentlemen to decide who would be playing in the national championship game and people thought the stakes were just too high," Tranghese said. "At the end of the day there just wasn't enough support for it."
When asked if scrapping the system in its entirety was ever an option, Tranghese denied the issue ever being brought up, stating, "We have a contract. The BCS is here for four more years, whether you like it, I like it or somebody else likes it or dislikes it, we've got a contract."
Tranghese also admitted he has "no illusions" about attempting to satisfy all college football fans with.
"No matter what we do there is going to be controversy, but, hopefully, with these minor adjustments the system will be better."
Reach the reporter at al.stevens@asu.edu.
