The Ultimate College Football Playoff Proposal
| 18
|
College Football Playoff Proposal
gingerbreadmann | December 7, 2007
College football has just had, in my opinion, its best year ever. Admit it, you know you were blindsided a few times by some major upsets week in and week out. However, as usual, the NCAA and the BCS are out on their annual mission to ruin the season, but this time, it really hurts me. Come on, who wants to watch OSU and LSU? Again? Another year, another national championship consisting of two teams with rich histories and traditions over teams who could possibly be better than they are at this point. We wouldn't want them to get a chance now, would we? Hey, at least they got rid of the rotating national championship-bowl system.
What I have done is come up with a system that will please everyone, BCS included. I have come up with... a playoff! How original! Sarcasm aside, knowing that this won't be taken seriously by anyone important(though it should be), I propose to you... the new college football postseason.
Unlike all the other 716 playoff concepts, I am the only one, as far as I know, to attempt to keep the BCS alive... in a different sense. Don't stop reading! I believe, as imperfect(I'll be the first to tell you) and skewed as the BCS is, that this could work. And let's face it, the NCAA will never completely abandon the BCS. This system incorporates the BCS and still functions as a turbo-charged, hyper-exciting playoff!
Now, onto the concept, and the first part of the BCS to carry over. The conferences that currently get an automatic bid to the BCS are clearly the most talented and highest-level, so not only do their champions get an automatic bid, they get a bye. I'm talking about the ACC, Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Big Pac-10, and Big SEC. (Sorry, I thought every major conference started with “Big” for a second).
We all agree that the college basketball playoff, March Madness, is the most exciting month of the year. Therefore I'm going to sort of model this after it, because how can you go wrong doing that? Everyone loves the Bucknell over Kansas; the VCU over Duke type of upset, and because of that every mid-major's conference champion gets an automatic bid. They would include the MAC, WAC, Sun Belt, MWC, and C-USA. And as J. Darin Darst of CBS SportsLine put it, all you four independents(that means you, Notre Dame), join a conference and stop crying. Or, if you were any good, you could make it as an at-large.
That gives us 11 teams with automatic bids, 6 of them with byes, leaving 5 first round teams. 5 isn't a power of two, so I will add 15 at-large teams. Those teams have no restrictions and are chosen by their final BCS ranking. Face it, that's the only way the NCAA would go, and it makes sense. No Selection Committee like basketball, so I am drifting there. Oh, yeah–seeds will also be determined by BCS ranking(smaller-conference champions' seeding determined by overall record then SOS, if they're not ranked in BCS). Sorry, I'm not using the Harris Poll for that.
So there it is, 26 happy teams. 21.66% of D-I(I refuse to call it FBS or whatever) teams go Dancing. Compared to basketball, 19.69% of D-I go Dancing there. Pretty close. Another similarity so March Madness, check. (Thanks to Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports for the idea for this stat)
With the bye system, conference championships would be that much more exciting. Instead of eliminating individual championship games, I would make every conference have one in Week 13, so that would be the 12 th game for everyone. If a conference has divisions, the two winners go. If not, the top two teams go. I can't decide which is better, and whether it should be uniform or not.
The first round would take place two weeks after the conference championship. Teams need rest before this tournament, and even though they get 4 now, 2 is enough. The regular season would change back to 11 games(the way it should be); 7 regular season conference games and 4 non-conference. Each team would have to follow that, so the standings would be easier to calculate. (If there is a tie, go by head-to-head – How else would it be done?). Of course, each team, if it is in a division, would have to play every divisional opponent every year, to eliminate confusion. If there are no divisions, and the two teams did not play each other, the tiebreaker would be overall record, then... ? BCS Standing? SOS? How should that be done? I don't want to use points or margin of victory or anything; that would be wrong.
Back to the actual playoff. In the first round, the BCS standings determine seeding, 1(7 overall) vs. 20(26 overall), 2 vs. 19, etc. Bracket-style. Then, once the teams with byes are added, No. 1 overall plays the winner of 10 vs. 11, #2 gets 9 vs. 12, etc., except the winners of 1(7) vs. 20(26) and 4(10) vs. 17(23), and 2-19 and 3-18 play each other, to keep the rest of the tourney as a power of two. Make sense? No? Didn't think so. Here is a diagram:
Now that that is settled, another issue is that the NCAA would not be happy about eliminating the bowl system that defines college football today. As others have proposed, each playoff matchup would be its own bowl game, except for the 1 st and second rounds, which would be held at the higher seed's home field. The four current BCS bowls would be held every year(and rotate which round they're held in), and the remaining two bowl spots would rotate on a yearly basis as well. I'm still not completely sold about teams winning multiple bowl games in a season, but it makes the most sense and the bowls' importances are reduced. The fans could still plan a vacation out of a bowl game (or possibly more), and the bowls would still make money because fans would come, seeing as every game is an elimination game.
The teams who didn't make the playoffs would still use the current bowl setup, with invitations and all(Unless you want to use the BCS for that, too). Some bowls would not accept their decrease in prestige, and would have to possibly fold(if they did accept it, then the most non-prestigous bowls would fold). It's not perfect, but it keeps at least some of the current system in place. Those lesser bowls would be played over the course of the week before the first round of the actual playoff(starting on Saturday), so those bowls get their own spotlight without overlapping the playoff.
I believe this system is better than the oft-proposed 16-team playoff for a couple of reasons. First, it would eliminate snubs. Every team is given a chance to win, and with 11 at-larges, most, if not all, of the top contenders would make it. Second, with so many at-larges, it gives extra meaning to the BCS conference champions. Instead of starting at the same level as their potential victim in the conference championship, they start later with a bye and an extra week of rest. In addition, the championship would be a week later in the second week of January, but who can complain about another week of college football?
Obviously, it's not perfect. Nothing is. You probably think it's too complicated, but with the whole BCS/bowl system now, how can anything be more complicated than that? Is it even close to perfect? Didn't think so. I truly believe that this is the most effective method to make college football the best it could be. With a year like this year, who wouldn't want that?
So there you have it. The uber-college football playoff system. Just like March Madness, but better, and with no NIT!
-gingerbreadmann
Not every team deserves a chance. Any method of determining a champion needs to be a bit elitist. Football does not equal fair. Football is the least fair of all the sports and we all know and love this.
Using bowl games as playoff games does destroy the bowl system. The bowls get to pick their teams, that's what make them bowls. Using them in a playoff will last for like 5 years before people say, "this is dumb, whay ar ewe doing this? No one can make sense of it. Let's just call it the quarter0finals like every other tournament."
College football does not want to be college Basketball. It is different. What was wrong with App St over Michigan or Stanford over USC? Were they not equally as exciting? I say they were more exciting.
Thank you for making the single most ridiculous playoff argument ever. You put a lot of time and effort and you weren't at all being sarcastic. Kudos.