Kirschman: BCS leaves no room for error

In 2005, the North Carolina men’s basketball team lost its first game of the season on the… In 2005, the North Carolina men’s basketball team lost its first game of the season on the road to Santa Clara, 77-66.

This was the perfect cue for the cries of “overrated” and accusations that the Tar Heels were only ranked so high because of their North Carolina pedigree. But after their initial stumble, the Tar Heels went on to have a pretty good season.

They won their next 14 games, lost only three more the rest of the season and eventually took home a national championship.

Nobody was talking about Santa Clara that April.

There are two morals to this story:

1. Pitt’s football season isn’t over. Good things can still happen. Everybody breathe.

2. I hate the BCS. It’s a little early in the season for this rant, but Pitt’s loss just brought up the feelings.

First off, one loss doesn’t define a season — or at least it shouldn’t. Pitt can still win the Big East and go to the BCS Bowl. A season-opening loss against Utah doesn’t end all hope for the elusive Big East title that slipped through the Panthers’ fingers last season.

And if Pitt goes on to beat Miami at the end of the month, odds are the loss to Utah will be quickly forgotten. Pitt fans tend to run extremely hot and cold that way.

But unfortunately for Pitt, the BCS system doesn’t allow for missteps, not even early in the season on the road against quality opponents. The BCS doesn’t care that a team that loses the first game of the season might end up being the best team in the country by the end of the year.

Now I’m hardly saying that Pitt is the best team in the country. I want to make that clear. I’m simply making a point: A team, any team, shouldn’t have all hopes dashed of winning a national championship because of one early loss.

Sure, you can say that the bowl games allow more than one team to go home happy, but quick, who won the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl last season?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

The list of BCS screw-ups and controversies is long. Everybody remembers the split national title between USC and LSU in 2003 and Auburn being left out of the championship picture in 2004 despite an undefeated season in the highly competitive SEC.

For teams like Pitt, that play in conferences not considered among the top in the country, one defeat is all it takes for national title hopes to slip away.

Sometimes for those teams, even going undefeated isn’t enough for a national championship opportunity (see: Boise State 2007, Cincinnati in 2009).

The BCS just seems like a good way to discourage teams from playing challenging out-of-conference schedules.

The risk is greater than the reward when it’s one loss and you’re out of the picture. The BCS system doesn’t allow for upsets or the idea that teams improve as the season goes on.

But it should.

BCS proponents claim that the system keeps the regular season exciting, but it’s not very exciting when teams are hesitant to schedule quality opponents for fear of being left out in the cold — look at Penn State’s schedule in 2009.

I, for one, found those games against Akron and Temple absolutely thrilling.

In college basketball, teams play for seeding throughout the season, and more emphasis is placed on the end of the season when it comes time to make up the brackets. The college football season would remain just as exciting if the teams were playing for seeding instead of bowl games.

Think about it: What other major sport decides the national champion without some sort of playoff? Umm…

Imagine the excitement that college football playoffs would bring: pitting the best teams against one another to determine a national champion on the field, where it should be determined. Instead, the two contenders are determined by an odd combination of polls and computers.

It’s a good thing for North Carolina that college basketball does things differently.