Formula for BCS Revised

Call it a tweak here, a snip there and a tuck for good measure.

The ever-evolving Bowl Championship Series rankings, still under fire after probably delivering the wrong team to last year’s national championship game, have been amended in the hope of rendering justice in a college football world devoid of a conventional playoff format.

Change was in the offing after the four-component formula, in use since 1998, spit out its two finalists last season: Oklahoma and Florida State.

Oklahoma ended the regular season undefeated and a unanimous No. 1, but Florida State edged Miami for the No. 2 spot by .32 of a BCS point, even though Miami was No. 2 in the writers’ poll and had defeated Florida State on the field. Oklahoma then defeated Florida State, 13-2.

In the revised BCS formula, unveiled Thursday, Miami would have finished No. 2 in the BCS and played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl for the national title.

“We did not set out as a group for that to be the end result,” BCS coordinator John Swofford said on a teleconference Thursday. “We set out as a group to see if there were legitimate reasons to make changes and improve the system.”

The commissioners of the six BCS conferences, with help from mathematicians, think they’ve fixed the glitch and made the system more equitable.

First, the BCS has added a “quality win” component that will reward schools for defeating opponents ranked in the top 15.

Points will be awarded on a sliding scale. A win over No. 1 will earn a school 1.5 BCS points, whereas a victory over No. 15 will be worth .1 of a point.

“This added factor will encourage teams to schedule as many quality wins as possible,” Swofford said. “It also rewards beating quality teams.”

The “quality win” rule will not apply to schools playing an “exempt” or additional game, or to schools meeting for a second time in a conference championship game.

Why the exceptions? Because most schools do not have access to an extra game and four of the six major conferences do not have conference title games.

Also, the “quality win” only counts if the team or teams you defeated finish in the top 15.

Last year, for instance, UCLA defeated then-No. 3 Alabama in September. But Alabama ended the season unranked, meaning UCLA would not have received any bonus points.

The second BCS change effectively eliminates the margin of victory in the computer rankings.

This can be seen mostly as a cosmetic change to appease coaches who complain they should not be in the position of having to run up the score to improve their teams’ BCS rankings.

Swofford says the margin-of-victory factor was less significant than people thought but BCS leaders agreed it posed a perception problem.

“It was something we felt was not good for . . . college football,” Swofford said.

Last season, seven of the eight BCS computer polls had a margin-of-victory component.

This year, four of the computer rankings will have no such component and four others will have factors that, according to Swofford, will be negligible.

The BCS commissioners asked operators of the eight computer polls to make the change.

“Some were willing to make adjustments, others not as willing,” Swofford said.

Two computer rankings that apparently were not willing, the New York Times and Dunkel Index, are no longer part of the BCS formula.

They have been replaced by computer polls operated by Peter Wolfe and Wes Colley.

The new computer polls join six holdovers: Billingsley, Massey, Rothman, Sagarin, Scripps-Howard and Seattle Times.

The BCS also resolved a loophole that could be called the “Kansas State provision.”

In the 1998 Big 12 Conference title game, Kansas State came within seconds of earning a spot in the national title game, but squandered a second-half lead and lost to Texas A&M; in overtime.

Because the three other major BCS bowls had already locked up opponents for their games, Kansas State fell all the way to the Alamo Bowl, a slight fans in Manhattan, Kan., have not forgotten.

Under the new rules, any team that finishes third or fourth in the final BCS rankings is assured a spot in one of four BCS bowls: Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta.

This is the second time since 1998 the BCS rankings have been tweaked. After the first year, the number of computer polls was increased from three to eight.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever reach perfection, I suspect not,” Swofford said. “We’d like to get as close as possible.”

The BCS contracts with ABC run through the 2006 bowl season, all but assuring there will be no college football playoff in the foreseeable future.

The championship game next season will be Jan. 3 at the Rose Bowl.