Here’s What The BCS Rankings Would Look Like Right Now, If It Still Existed

Here’s a fun little exercise if you are a college football fan: what would the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Rankings look like today if it were still, you know, actually a thing?

Back in the day, for all you youngs out there, the Bowl Championship Series was used to determine which two teams played for the national championship.

It used a convoluted combination of polls and computer algorithms to determine not only that game, but the matchups for the Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl.

Though during the first eight seasons of the BCS there was no fifth game as each of the four main Bowls rotated hosting the national championship game. That’s how Texas (rather than a Big Ten team) ended up playing USC in the Rose Bowl in 2006.

This all occurred from 1998 through 2013 and didn’t accomplish a whole lot other than wrecking the traditional annual matchups between champions of certain conferences.

Oklahoma and Ohio State played in in all five BCS Bowls during this time. The University of Miami appeared in all of them but the National Championship Game, though they did play in the 2002 Rose Bowl, which was that year’s national championship game.

Confused? That’s why the system was put in mothballs in favor of the current College Football Playoff in which a 13-member committee selects and seeds the top four teams in the country. The playoffs are then rotated among the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Peach Bowl. The committee also picks the teams that will compete in the Bowls that don’t host a semi-final game or the national championship that year.

See? WAAAY less confusing.

Which brings us to the first simulated BCS rankings of 2020, because what the hell else do we have to do today?

The calculations come from BCSKnowHow.com, people who, six years later, still have way more free time than mostof us

Interestingly enough, were the BCS still in existence, the current top four teams would be identical to both the current Associated Press (AP) Poll as well as the Coaches Poll.

Current 2020 BCS Rankings
1. Alabama 6-0
2. Notre Dame 8-0
3. Ohio State 3-0
4. Clemson 7-1
5. Florida 5-1
6. Cincinnati 7-0
7. Texas A&M 5-1
8. BYU 8-0
9. Wisconsin 2-0
10. Oregon 2-0
11. Indiana 4-0
12. Miami 7-1

Current 2020 AP Rankings
1. Alabama 6-0
2. Notre Dame 8-0
3. Ohio State 3-0
4. Clemson 7-1
5. Texas A&M 5-1
6. Florida 5-1
7. Cincinnati 7-0
8. BYU 8-0
9. Indiana 4-0
10. Wisconsin 2-0
11. Oregon 2-0
12. Miami 7-1

Current 2020 Coaches Poll Rankings
1. Alabama 6-0
2. Notre Dame 8-0
3. Ohio State 3-0
4. Clemson 7-1
5. Florida 5-1
6. Texas A&M 5-1
7. Cincinnati 7-0
8. BYU 8-0
9. Miami 7-1
10. Indiana 4-0
11. Georgia 4-2
12. Wisconsin 2-0