From 1998 to 2013, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) served as the heartbeat of college football’s postseason. For sixteen seasons, it determined which teams competed for the national title and helped define an era that forever changed how champions were crowned in the sport. From 1998 to 2013, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) served as the heartbeat of college football’s postseason.
For readers new to the system, our BCS overview explains the structure and purpose of the format in detail.
Although the BCS was eventually replaced by the College Football Playoff (CFP), its influence remains strong. The system sparked innovation, debate, and excitement — uniting fans across the country every winter as the top programs in the nation battled for recognition and glory.
The Bowl Championship Series was introduced to bring structure and fairness to college football’s postseason. Before its creation, determining a national champion was often subjective, relying heavily on human polls that sometimes produced multiple champions in a single year.
The BCS aimed to change that. By combining human polls and computer-generated rankings, the system sought to ensure that the two top-ranked teams met in a single, definitive championship game. Alongside that title matchup, four additional major bowls — the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange — hosted top-tier teams in high-profile postseason games.
The result was a five-game showcase designed to highlight excellence, competition, and tradition all at once.
You can explore the full BCS history for a deeper look at how the system evolved.
At the core of the BCS was a formula — a mathematical model that merged coaches’ polls, media rankings, and computer data into a unified score. That score determined which teams earned a spot in the national title game and who played in the other major bowls.
While the formula itself was often controversial, it represented a groundbreaking attempt to balance data-driven analysis with human judgment in college sports. In many ways, it was a precursor to the modern analytics-driven decision-making we now see in both college and professional football.
The system also reflected broader distinctions in how the college game operates, many of which are highlighted in NFL vs College Football through differences in rules, gameplay flow, and competitive structure.
There’s no denying the BCS achieved many of its original goals.
Yet, the BCS also faced its share of criticism. Debates over the fairness of computer rankings, conference bias, and the exclusion of undefeated teams fueled countless discussions among fans and analysts. These conversations ultimately paved the way for the College Football Playoff, which launched in 2014.
Today, BCSFootball.org exists to preserve and explain that fascinating era of college football history. We are an independent resource, unaffiliated with ESPN, the NCAA, or any bowl organization. Our goal is to document the story of the BCS — its origins, its logic, its controversies, and its legacy — for new generations of fans and analysts.
Here, you’ll find:
Whether you followed the system in its heyday or are discovering it for the first time, this site aims to give you a complete and accurate understanding of how the Bowl Championship Series shaped modern college football.
Even though the BCS officially ended after the 2013 season, its legacy continues through the College Football Playoff. Many of the principles developed during the BCS era — ranking systems, strength-of-schedule weighting, and championship access criteria — still influence how college football determines its best teams today.
The BCS era marked a time when technology, tradition, and competition collided to produce unforgettable games and endless debate. That ongoing discussion is part of what makes college football so unique — and why revisiting this period remains valuable for fans and historians alike.
Use this site as your guide to explore:
BCSFootball.org is not an official source but an independent, educational project dedicated to preserving the full story of the Bowl Championship Series — one of the most influential chapters in the history of college football.