COLUMBUS, Ohio – Urban Meyer is one coach who may not be sorry to see the Bowl Championship Series in his rear-view mirror, but doesn’t think a four-team college football playoff system that begins next year will be free of controversy.
Meyer called the BCS “a flawed system” and said that it was great “for a while” but predicted problems with the playoff as well.
“There’s not a 64-team playoff so you have four guys. What’s that fifth team going to feel like?” he said in his weekly news conference Monday.
Ohio State’s national-championship hopes rest with the Bowl Championship Series, where they are not in control of their own destiny.
With his team ranked No. 3 in the BCS — far behind Alabama and Florida State and barely ahead of Baylor — the Buckeyes will likely be shut out of the race for No. 1 unless the Crimson Tide or Seminoles lose at least once in closing weeks of the regular season.
Ohio State carries a nation’s best 22-game win streak into Saturday’s final home game, against Indiana (3:30 p.m./ABC). They travel to arch-rival Michigan on Nov. 30 (Noon/ABC) for their regular season finale.
But, under the BCS system, where Ohio State is ranked higher by the two human polls in the formula than they are by the computer polls, factors like strength of schedule and scoring margins have become as much a topic of conversation than won-loss records. Ohio State has won its 10 games by an average margin of 30.6 points, but analysts say the Buckeyes have been penalized by a weak non-conference schedule and the overall poor performance of the Big Ten.