BCS Pointlessness

With all the craziness that happened last week in college football, all the smart money seems to be on a national title game rematch between LSU and Alabama. On the one hand, if Alabama's only loss came against the number 1 team in the country in LSU, then doesn't that make them better then everyone else? It makes sense that they would be number 2 in that case.

But does that really entitle them to play in the National Championship Game? Isn't the point of the National Championship to determine the best team in all of college football in 2011? Haven't we already established that LSU is better than Alabama?  

Let's play this scenario out and see what happens if you give Alabama a second chance at LSU in the title game:

Option 1: LSU wins.
Well, then you look stupid for giving Alabama second chance and the number 3 teams screams to high heaven that they could have beaten LSU if only they'd had the opportunity.

Option 2: Alabama wins.
What does this prove? At the end of the day you'll have an LSU team with one loss to Alabama on a neutral field and an Alabama team with one loss to LSU at home. Doesn't that still make LSU the better team? What's more, LSU will have a better record thanks to the SEC title game. LSU will be 13-1 to Alabama's 12-1. But that won't matter to the BCS. Alabama would still get the BCS title. Of course, the AP could still award LSU its title and we'll have 2 champions. Isn't that what the BCS is supposed to prevent?

The only way to really tell which team is better in that scenario is to have them play a third deciding game, which would never happen.

Now maybe Alabama will lose to Auburn, or maybe LSU will lose to Arkansas and/or Georgia in the SEC Title Game. Certainly stranger things have happened this season. Heck, stranger things happened last Saturday. Still, the odds of those things happening seem pretty slim. Of course this problem could be avoided if a team had to win its conference title to play for the National Championship or if you just said a number 2 team that's already lost to the number 1 team gets passed over and number 3 gets the title shot. Or, you know, if we had a playoff.

Instead, the BCS is rocketing us towards a completely pointless title game. Yawn.