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Bowl Championship Series History

The Bowl Championship Series is an outgrowth of the traditional bowl system that has been a part of intercollegiate football for more than a century. Since the first Rose Bowl game in 1902, major college football teams enjoying successful seasons have been invited to play against one another in post-season bowl games. Throughout their history, the bowls have generated enormous benefits for college football, higher education generally, and their host communities.

Today, there are 28 bowl games that offer post-season opportunities for approximately 5,600 student-athletes. In addition to the games themselves, the bowls provide substantial support for education through scholarship programs and engage in a plethora of charitable and community-based endeavors designed to improve the quality of life in their respective cities and regions. The BCS was designed to preserve and nurture the rich traditions and many benefits of the bowl games while at the same time providing a means for the nation's two highest ranked teams to play annually in a bowl game to determine the national champion. To understand how the BCS developed, it is necessary to understand something of the history of the bowl system and the role of the bowls in intercollegiate football. Although the bowl system has existed since 1902 (and even predates the creation of the NCAA), the bowls blossomed after World War II.

As the bowl games grew over the years, a number of conferences individually developed close relationships with certain bowl committees and began to send their champions to a particular bowl game annually. The most noted of these relationships is the long-standing arrangement between the Big Ten and Pacific-10 Conferences and the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association for the Rose Bowl. The prevalence of conference-bowl affiliation arrangements, however, often precluded matchups between highly ranked conference champions because of these relationships.

Thus, the bowl system, as it evolved in the post-war era, was not particularly suited to matching the top two teams in a national championship game. Only nine times from 1946-1991 were the bowls able to pair the two highest ranked teams in a post-season game. To increase the chances of a matchup between the top two teams in a bowl game, several conferences and Notre Dame, along with four bowl committees, developed the Bowl Coalition arrangement in 1992. The Coalition did not alter any of the then-existing conference-bowl affiliation arrangements.

Instead, the Coalition's major innovation was the creation of a selection procedure among four bowl games - the Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar Bowls - to enhance the chances that the two highest-ranked teams would play in a national championship game. The Gator and John Hancock (Sun) Bowls later joined the Coalition arrangement.

Given its narrow parameters and aims, the Coalition arrangement was quite successful, pairing the top two teams in the nation in a bowl game in two of the three years it existed, but it had limitations. It could not, for example, pair the champions of the Big Eight and SEC in any bowl game. Likewise, because neither the Big Ten nor Pac-10 champions participated in the Coalition, the arrangement could not pair either of those teams with an opponent from another conference, even if such a game would have matched the top two teams against one another.

The Coalition agreement ended in January 1995 at the same time that a number of the existing conference-bowl affiliation agreements also expired. The end of the affiliation arrangements presented another opportunity to increase the likelihood of a season-ending bowl pairing of the top two teams. The result was the Bowl Alliance.

The Alliance arrangement involved the champions of four conferences - the ACC, Big East, Big 12, and SEC - and three bowl games - the Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar Bowls. Like the Coalition arrangement, the Alliance created a selection structure for the participating bowls.

Each year one of the three Alliance bowls had the right to select the first two teams from a pool of eligible teams consisting of Notre Dame, the champions of the ACC, Big East, Big 12, and SEC, other conference champions if those conferences chose to participate in the arrangement, and highly ranked non-conference champions from any conference. None of the participating conference champions was committed to play in any bowl game as they had been in the past under the conference-bowl affiliation arrangements.

This selection procedure permitted the Alliance bowls to match conference champions in games that would not have been played under the previous conference-bowl affiliation arrangements. For example, after the 1995 regular season, the Alliance arrangement created a national championship game between the only two unbeaten teams in the nation: Nebraska, champion of the Big Eight and the defending national champion, and Florida, champion of the SEC.

Like the Coalition, however, the Alliance had limitations. Neither the Big Ten nor Pac-10 champions were committed to play in one of the Alliance bowls because of their relationship with the Rose Bowl. Accordingly, if the champion of the Big Ten or Pac-10 finished first or second in the polls, it could not be paired in a national championship game against a team from any other conference that happened to finish among the top two teams in the nation.

In 1996, several conferences began discussions about the possibility of integrating the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions into a bowl arrangement that would allow for an annual pairing of the top two teams in the nation. To make that arrangement possible, the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Rose Bowl agreed that, under certain circumstances, the Big Ten or Pac-10 champions would not play their traditional game in Pasadena on New Year's Day.

Similarly, the Rose Bowl agreed to host a national championship game in rotation with the other bowls. The three bowls that had participated in the Alliance arrangement enthusiastically supported the new approach, and thus was born the BCS. The bowl system could, for the first time in its nearly 100-year history, promise the fans of college football an annual pairing between the top two teams in the nation.

The BCS arrangement has existed for seven years and provided numerous benefits to college football and its fans. It has paired teams in national championship games that would not have been possible under the bowl arrangements existing before its creation. For example, without the BCS, the Miami-Ohio State game in the Fiesta Bowl that decided the 2002 national championship would not have been played. Similarly, the USC-Oklahoma national championship game in the Orange Bowl last season would not have taken place without the BCS.

The new BCS arrangement that begins in January 2007 further expands the opportunities for all Division I-A college football teams to compete in one of the BCS bowl games. The new arrangement will continue to involve the Fiesta, Orange, Rose, and Sugar Bowls and will add a new game, a BCS National Championship Game, to be played in one of the host cities approximately one week after the regular bowl game played in that city.

Under the new arrangement, unless such team qualifies for the BCS National Championship Game, the champions of the Big Ten and Pac-10 will continue to play in the Rose Bowl, the SEC champion will continue to play in the Sugar Bowl, the Big 12 champion will continue playing in the Fiesta Bowl, the ACC champion will continue to host the Orange Bowl, and the Big East champion will play in one of the four BCS bowl games.

In addition, if a champion of Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference, or the Western Athletic Conference finishes the regular season either (a) ranked in the top 12 or (b) ranked in the top 16 and ranked higher than the champion of a conference with an annual automatic berth in one of the BCS bowls, then it will be guaranteed a slot in one of the BCS bowl games.