| | Nearly 4 years ago on this site, I wrote about how the BCS should be fixed (changing the BCS system to a simple average of the two polls, using computers only to break a tie). They didn't enact my exact plan, but close enough that the system works a lot better than it did then.
But after this season of ups and downs in college football, it's clear there is no way to isolate only two teams that should play for the national championship. And more and more, I'm getting on board with a playoff system. I always thought that a limited playoff would be best, like four teams, to preserve the prestige of the bowls and the integrity of regular season games.
Now, I think an eight team playoff would work, because it uses the system we already have in place, which are the four major bowls (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta). You use those four bowls as the first round matchups (on or around Jan. 1), then a week later, have the semi-final matchups (use two of the above four locations), then another week later, have the BCS Championship game (using one of the remaining locations).
Participants in the eight team playoff would be the champions of the six major conferences (Big Ten, Pac-10, Big East, Big 12, ACC, SEC) plus two at-large or "wildcard" teams. You could keep very similar rules to determining at-large participants to the BCS bowl games, but with less room to maneuver with only two at-large spots, as opposed to four.
- A non-BCS conference team (e.g. Boise State, Hawaii) would gain an at-large bid by finishing in the top 10 in the BCS rankings.
- No conference may have more than two schools in the playoff.
- Notre Dame gets an automatic bid if it finishes in the top 8.
- Applying the above rules first, you would then choose the teams who did not win their conference but are ranked highest in the polls.
- Seeding will be based on the BCS standings, and matchups will be determined by seeding except that conference affiliations with a specific bowl will take precedence. The Big Ten champ will always play the Pac-10 champ in the Rose Bowl, the SEC champ will always go to Sugar Bowl, the Big 12 champ to Fiesta bowl and ACC champ to Orange bowl.
I know the Notre Dame rule makes no sense, but that's how the rules are now. It's not ideal, but I'm just trying to appease the most people here. Most of the rules above are the same or slight modifications to existing BCS bowl selection rules, but the last rule is one I added and I think it's important. While the BCS bowls may lose a little luster by being only "quarterfinals" of the real championship, they gain I think by preserving their conference affiliations. Instead of the Rose Bowl going out of their way to choose Illinois this year (seriously, what???) they can have their Big Ten / Pac 10 matchup every single year, just like they want.
Using the above rules, this season's bowl season would look something like this:
Rose Bowl: #1 Ohio State vs. #7 USC
Sugar Bowl: #2 LSU vs. #10 Hawaii
Orange Bowl: #3 Virginia Tech vs. #9 West Virginia
Fiesta Bowl: #4 Oklahoma vs. #5 Georgia
Second round, you would reseed the matchups, highest remaining ranking against lowest remaining ranking and so forth.
Now is this not a few weeks of some fantastic football? Now even, with eight teams in the playoff, you're going to have a few teams complaining. Under this scenario, it would be primarily #6 Mizzou and #8 Kansas. But you know what? This is a playoff to determine the national champion! Mizzou lost TWICE to Oklahoma, so I'm pretty sure they're #2 at best. So forget them. And Kansas' schedule is a joke; if they didn't play such a sorry schedule then they wouldn't be ranked #8 in the first place; it's their own fault.
The problem, though, is that with so few at-large spots, I'm not sure it's fair to give automatic bids to every league champion. So I would also include another rule (I don't know if this would ever fly, but this is just my idea) that would prevent any conference champion ranked lower than #12 from competing in the playoff. We'll call this the "Big East Rule".
Of course, if people wanted to add more at-large teams to this down the line, we can have "play-in" games for the at-large spots, which would take place the second week in January. That could theoretically increase the number of teams in the playoff to ten. But that's just an option. And then you'd be adding too many games; with the above plan, you just add the two additional semifinal games, and that way, the other lesser bowls don't complain too much that no one is going to watch their games. By only adding two additional games, lesser bowl games won't become like the NIT, i.e. a ridiculous waste of time, but can remain nice rewards for solid but unspectacular seasons.
Bottom line, I think the format outlined above does the best job of balancing tradition, the interests of the conferences (major and mid-major), the schools, the major bowls, the minor bowls and producing some crazy entertaining games. Please copy and paste the above text and send in an email to your local sportswriter, football coach or celebrity spokesperson. Thanks.
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As a postscript, let's see what last year would have looked like under this system:
Rose Bowl: #1 Ohio State vs. #5 USC
Sugar Bowl: #2 Florida vs. #8 Boise State
Fiesta Bowl: #10 Oklahoma vs. #4 LSU
Orange Bowl: #3 Michigan vs. #6 Louisville
*ACC Champ Wake Forest (#14) did not qualify for the playoff under the Big East Rule.
Wow. That's crazy awesome entertaining too.
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| | Posted 12/3/2007 4:50 PM - 26 views - 3 comments
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