Designed to create a single national championship while maintaining the integrity of the college bowl system, the BCS has remained one of the most controversial systems in the nation today.  If any of the recent dual-national champions have anything to say, it is that the sytem does not work.

Critics argue that the system is designed only to keep money flowing into the NCAA powers that be.  Recently even Congress has stepped into the realm of sportswriters to question the motives of the BCS; in a game full of money, where do the priorities lie?  This is a fair question, considering that the lives of kids are factored into the equation.  But rather than join the mob, I only ask that the question be turned around on the critics: what are your priorities?

Considering the state of our judicial and political systems (where money, too, is embedded and corruptive in both), how is it that a body that governs a mere recreational sport can take so much precedence and consequence in our lives? 

Intolerance and money can buy a person's way in and out of our judicial system, statistics don't lie.  Apparently money can buy a war and shape our domestic and foreign policies, yet we have a congressional hearing based on whether or not Alabama is getting a fair shot at the Rose Bowl? 

The system, in the name of pure competition, is flawed.  There is no denying that.  When you decide the fate of a national champion just as you would your weekly power rankings, room for arguement will always exist.  But every system is flawed, even the one that runs our lives, so what we must decide is what the best system available is.

True, the NCAA is the largest governing body of collegiate sports, but it is not the only one.  At any time these schools could secede from the NCAA in the name of integrity, a playoff system could easily be put into place.  So why haven't they?  To put it simply: money.

Remember, a university is first and foremost a business.  And while the money from bowl games does find its way into the wallets of many officials, it also keeps scholarships available for student athletes who may not have otherwise had the opportunity for a first rate education.  Try telling a student who is dependent on the money the BCS bowls provide that we're cutting his funding for the good of college athletics.

But what of our sportswriters and media outlets?  Those who crusade for the just cause of determining a fair national championship.  Our press is the most powerful entity in the nation.  They are the gateway to all information and advertising.  The only reason that the BCS exists is because the sports writers allow it to.

And why wouldn't they?  Each year the BCS provides another heated topic to fill air time or newspaper space.  In short, ratings.  Every sports writer seemingly has a template for complaining about the BCS every year, only stopping to insert the names of this years bowl teams.  When you consider that this time every year, each sportswriter gets critical acclaim for rehashing the same story as the previous season, why would they want it to quit? 

This very blog, and those similar to mine, proves this very fact.

So why do we really protest the BCS?  Is it because we have the best interests of college students in mind, or because we feel we deserve a playoff system as the demanding public?

When you think about it, that the BCS is such a lightning rod for controversy makes it the perfect system for College football.  The NCAA is a competing and inferior brand of football to the NFL.  Equivalent to AAA to Major League Baseball.

Yet, every year during the time of the NFL's crucial stretch run, College football gains national prominence without a game even being played!  The bowl system has kept college football healthy even as ratings and attention spans dwindle.  And when you consider the health of college football, where else can your priorities be?