The BCS System Really Lacks Any Kind of Actual Responsibility or Check-Balance System

Dennis Dodd inked a quick little number this morning (gracias, Piler) about an inaccuracy in the BCS system that was recently revealed. Shocking, I know -- the BCS is, in fact, not absolutely, 100% perfect. (Please note I mean that as a sarcastic jab at the shoddy ranking system, not Mr. Dodd for being nitpicky.)

And, aside from just being fatally flawed in some sort of overall manner, it appears that the computer statistics for 2008 are all kinds of funked as well, at least according to Jerry Palm of CollegeBCS.com (pay site?).

Anyway, it turns out that Colley, Palm states, forgot to input two games this season -- Idaho at Hawaii and UC-Davis at San Diego. Idaho-Hawaii had no impact on the numbers. However, UC-Davis-San Diego did matter.

Palm says that the BCS got erroneous data from Colley this week. Hold onto your computers. It didn't matter in the BCS top 25 but that's not the point.

So, yeah, it might be lame of someone/anyone to harp on such a minor mistake in such an already obviously flawed system, but the more important point here is the general secrecy with which all of the BCS ranking systems operate. See, as Dodd points out, the Colley system is the only one whose formula is made public.

Meaning, Colley is the only one with any sort of public accountability. For all we know, the rest of the computers are run by Nick Saban, Bear Bryant and Beelzebub himself in some sort of freakish, lever-pulling, orgy-astic fashion that ends up looking like that Urbanspoon iPhone app (or, for those less tech oriented: a row of freaking slot machines in the seediest Las Vegas hotel available.)

The point, though, isn't the sold-out nature of Saban's soul: it's that for all we really know, there are flaws lining everyone of the BCS computer rankings systems, but because they don't have to publicly tell us how they achieved the score, we just blindly follow along every Sunday when the results seem close enough to reality not to cheese us off too much.