As we embark upon a bloated bowl season filled with many mediocre to abyssmal matchups, I will humbly take up the challenge issued by humble fellow SFN scribe Jeff – and outline a college football playoff system that truly makes sense. It would work for TV and “live” fans, retain meaning for the regular season (in fact, enhance it by encouraging tough non-conference scheduling), and give EVERY Division 1-A school that makes a real investment in its football program a realistic chance to compete for a championship.
First, how many teams should be invited? 16 works for 1-AA, and would work just fine for 1-A. It’s inclusive enough to afford opportunity for every team that really deserves it, while not being so unwieldly as to make the regular season meaningless. There will still be plenty of “pretty good” teams left over for mid-week Holiday Bowl action, for the 10-15 well-run bowls that can survive in the playoff era. More on that later.
How do you seed teams? I am flexible on that point, but it should be a system that rewards teams that play good non-conference schedules, and that resist the temptation to gorge themselves on home games for revenue. To that end, I will use the Sagarin ratings, which I don’t completely agree with, but is (to my knowledge) the most consistently fair metric. I certainly don’t want idiot pollsters to have the disproportionate influence that they currently have. I also don’t like the tweaks made to the BCS formula, so that is also out.
How do we handle conference champions and “mid majors?” Mid-major champs should get a shot, but not a free pass. In a year where mid-major teams were relatively strong (see 2004, when Utah finished 4th and Boise State 10th in Sagarin), they will be well-represented. In an off-year (like 2005), they won’t be. The true power conferences (SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve) will get an automatic bid for the conference champion. All other leagues get a guaranteed bid ONLY if they make the Top 25 in whichever ranking formula is used. So, congratulations to Sagarin #21 TCU and #25 Florida State. Too bad for #15 Minnesota and #16 Wisconsin (both of whom I believe are ranked too high by Sagarin in any event). Sagarin teams #1-14 are seeded in order, filling out our bracket. [NOTE: Conference without title games would not be entitled to use conference tiebreakers to trump the objective ranking.]
How do you play the games? Utilize existing bowls? Uh, no. As Jeff rightly notes, this would be an excessive travel burden, and would likely result in near-empty venues. Instead, the higher seeded team hosts the games during the first 2 rounds. Naturally, this is an especially potent incentive for a team like Michigan, Ohio State, or Virginia Tech (all would get first round home games in 2005), and it would thus be foolish to suggest that the regular season has lost its meaning. Schools would be forced to allot 25% of tickets for the visiting team, so fans would have the oppotunity to travel to see their team (and if your school was an infrequent participant, you likely would consider doing so). The “Final Four” would be played at neutral sites, and I believe the hype and excitement would lead to strong turnout, despite many fans having travelled already. In this vein, it’s not much different from the multiple weekends of the NCAA tournament, as travel gets progressively more difficult (but the stakes get higher, keeping demand high). These neutral sites could continue to use traditional BCS bowl sites, if that makes it an easier sell (personally, I don’t care either way).
Here are your first round matchups – explain to me how TV wouldn’t kill to show this kind of action (and remember, this is just scratching the surface), rather than having a TOTAL of 3 or 4 decent bowl matchups:
– #16 Florida State at #1 Texas
– #15 TCU at #2 Southern Cal
– #14 Auburn at #3 Penn State
– #13 Georgia at #4 Ohio State
– #12 LSU at #5 Virginia Tech
– #11 Texas Tech at #6 Notre Dame
– #10 West Virginia at #7 Michigan
– #9 Miami at #8 Oregon
Just for fun, here would be my projected future matchups:
– #14 Auburn at #1 Texas
– #12 LSU at #2 USC
– #11 Texas Tech at #4 Ohio State
– #8 Oregon at #7 Michigan
Final Four:
– #1 Texas vs. #7 Michigan
– #2 USC vs. #4 Ohio State
Championship:
#2 USC over #1 Texas
That, my friends, is one hell of a tournament! Forget about how weak the Big 12 has been this year – Texas will have to crawl through a veritable pit of vipers to get to the title game. And maybe Texas and USC don’t get there – so be it! Having 1 or 2 losses in the regular season doesn’t mean that the likes of Ohio State, Michigan, and Auburn have no business getting the right to challenge the unbeaten Longhorns and Trojans. Playing in a tough conference and/or against a challenging OOC slate shouldn’t mean that your season ends in a meaningless exhibition.
So what happens to the “left out” teams? You can still make interesting matchups that are attractive to TV and interesting to fans. How about matching up Alabama and Clemson in the Peach Bowl? Florida against UCLA? Iowa against Louisville? Boston College against Wisconsin? South Carolina against Georgia Tech? Interesting inter-sectional matchups, one and all.
