The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) was a postseason format that determined college football’s national champion from 1998 to 2013.
It was created to ensure that the two highest-ranked teams in the country met in a single, definitive championship game — something that had rarely happened under the old bowl system.
The BCS also organized four additional major bowl matchups among the top-ranked teams, resulting in five total games each season:
These games collectively formed the centerpiece of college football’s postseason, producing some of the sport’s most memorable matchups and setting the foundation for the modern College Football Playoff.
The BCS operated through a ranking formula that combined human polls (like the AP and Coaches Polls) with computer-based performance metrics.
Each week during the season, the formula generated a BCS ranking, which determined which teams would play for the national title and who qualified for the other BCS bowls.
The BCS was managed by the commissioners of the major Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conferences, alongside representatives from independent programs like Notre Dame.
These officials collaborated with athletic directors and a presidential oversight group to maintain rules, rankings, and bowl assignments.
The conferences involved included:
This collective management system was designed to balance the interests of multiple regions and programs while preserving the traditional bowl structure. For a deeper breakdown of how decision-making worked at the administrative level, see our overview of the BCS governance model .
Each year, ten teams were selected to participate in BCS bowl games.
The process for determining these teams was a combination of automatic qualification and at-large selections.
Once automatic berths were assigned, the remaining slots were filled from a "pool of eligible teams."
To be eligible, a team needed to:
Bowl committees then made selections based on rankings, fan interest, and traditional matchups.
In many ways, yes — the BCS achieved its primary goal.
Before its introduction, the top two teams in college football met in bowl games only eight times between 1936 and 1992. During the BCS era, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams met almost every year, ensuring that the national championship was decided on the field rather than in the polls.
The system also provided greater access to major bowl games for teams outside the traditional power conferences. Programs such as Utah (2005, 2008), Boise State (2006), and Hawaii (2007) became national sensations by earning BCS bids despite coming from smaller leagues.
However, the BCS was not without controversy. Critics argued that the computer formulas and human polls were too subjective, occasionally leaving out deserving teams or producing disputed championship matchups.
These debates ultimately led to the creation of the College Football Playoff (CFP) system in 2014.
The BCS was not just a competitive system — it was a financial powerhouse.
It dramatically increased the distribution of postseason revenue to participating conferences, including those outside the automatic qualifying group.
During its first decade, the BCS distributed over 90ドル million to non-AQ conferences, helping smaller programs expand and compete nationally.
The host cities for BCS bowl games also benefited enormously. By the late 2000s, the combined economic impact of the five annual BCS games exceeded 1ドル billion, generating tourism, local jobs, and national exposure.
A key distinction of the BCS era was that it wasn’t a playoff.
Instead, it aimed to preserve the traditional bowl structure while still producing a clear national champion.
The formula created a "virtual playoff" — matching the top two teams based on rankings — without extending the season or eliminating existing bowl partnerships.
Proponents of the system believed this approach kept the college football regular season meaningful, since every game could directly influence the championship race.
Critics, however, saw it as an imperfect solution that often left one or more deserving teams just outside the title picture.
By the early 2010s, public pressure for a true playoff became impossible to ignore. In 2014, the College Football Playoff officially replaced the BCS, introducing a four-team bracket and a selection committee model.
Even so, many of the CFP’s principles — including ranking transparency, conference representation, and rotating championship sites — can be traced directly back to the BCS framework.
In that sense, the Bowl Championship Series didn’t disappear; it evolved into the system college football uses today.
The Bowl Championship Series remains one of the most fascinating experiments in sports organization — a bridge between the traditional bowl era and the modern playoff structure.
It combined data analysis, tradition, and controversy in equal measure, creating a system that defined college football for over a decade and changed how champions are crowned forever.
For fans, historians, and analysts alike, the BCS stands as a pivotal chapter in the ongoing story of college football.