PASADENA, Calif. — The Bowl Championship Series, a postseason system that drew the ire of college football coaches, players and fans while enriching bowl directors and the establishment that profited from it, died Monday night after Florida State topped Auburn, 34-31, in the final championship game.

It was 16 seasons old.

The death was long expected but was confirmed over the Rose Bowl’s loudspeakers late Monday night. “A new era for postseason college football begins next year,” the announcer said.

The B.C.S., mocked and maligned, debated and ridiculed, and in later years accepted as an odd but mostly functional part of the greater sports landscape, was born in Birmingham, Ala., in the offices of the Southeastern Conference. Its tasks were to succeed where two older siblings — the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance — had failed; to restore order to college football’s postseason; and to pit — gasp! — the best team against the second-best team in the national championship. (Presented by Vizio, of course.)

Its legacy is a complicated one. The B.C.S. helped consolidate the available wealth in college football into the power conferences. It made the bowls — and the people directing them — truckloads of money. It factored heavily into the dizziness of conference realignment. It presided over college football’s postseason as the sport boomed in popularity and became a national endeavor, not simply a regional one.