Editing College football (section)

===Bowl Championship Series===
{{Main|Bowl Championship Series}}
[[File:The 2013 College Football National Championship Trophy display at the Moore Athletic Center.jpg|thumb|The BCS National Championship trophy on display at [[Florida State University]]; the 2013 championship game marked the end of the BCS era.]]
In 1998, a new system was put into place called the [[Bowl Championship Series]]. For the first time, it included all major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and SEC) and four major bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta). The champions of these six conferences, along with two "at-large" selections, were invited to play in the four bowl games. Each year, one of the four bowl games served as a national championship game. Also, a complex system of human polls, computer rankings, and strength of schedule calculations was instituted to rank schools. Based on this ranking system, the No.1 and No.2 teams met each year in the national championship game. Traditional tie-ins were maintained for schools and bowls not part of the national championship. For example, in years when not a part of the national championship, the Rose Bowl still hosted the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions.<ref name="BCS" />

The system continued to change, as the formula for ranking teams was tweaked from year to year. At-large teams could be chosen from any of the [[NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision|Division I-A]] conferences, though only one selection—[[2004 Utah Utes football team|Utah]] in 2005—came from a BCS non-AQ conference. Starting with the 2006 season, a fifth game—simply called the [[BCS National Championship Game]]—was added to the schedule, to be played at the site of one of the four BCS bowl games on a rotating basis, one week after the regular bowl game. This opened up the BCS to two additional at-large teams. Also, rules were changed to add the champions of five additional conferences ([[Conference USA]] [C-USA], the [[Mid-American Conference]] [MAC], the [[Mountain West Conference]] [MW], the [[Sun Belt Conference]] and the [[Western Athletic Conference]] [WAC]), provided that said champion ranked in the top twelve in the final BCS rankings, or was within the top 16 of the BCS rankings and ranked higher than the champion of at least one of the [[Power Five conferences|BCS Automatic Qualifying (AQ) conferences]].<ref name=BCS/> Several times since this rule change was implemented, schools from non-AQ conferences have played in BCS bowl games. In 2009, [[2009 Boise State Broncos football team|Boise State]] played [[2009 TCU Horned Frogs football team|TCU]] in the [[2010 Fiesta Bowl|Fiesta Bowl]], the first time two schools from non-AQ conferences played each other in a BCS bowl game. The last team from the non-AQ ranks to reach a BCS bowl game in the BCS era was [[2012 Northern Illinois Huskies football team|Northern Illinois in 2012]], which played in (and lost) the [[2013 Orange Bowl]].