My College Football Playoff - 2007 Edition
Last year, I presented my proposal for a college football playoff. In my world, the top 16 in the BCS would battle it out for the title. Rather than rehash last year's post, I'd like to defend my system against some of the most common complaints about potential playoffs (playoffs?).
College football already has a playoff - it's called the regular season
Tell that to Hawaii. If the only undefeated team in the country has no chance to play for the national championship, then this year's regular season is less important than what happened in the 1970s. Besides - this isn't college basketball - only 16 teams would make it into my field. To get into this year's field, teams (with the notable exception of Tennessee) had to have 3 or fewer losses. Plus, my system gives a huge advantage (a home game) to teams in the top 8, so the reward for a great regular season is definitely worth playing for.
But what about the bowls???
My system uses the seven best bowls for the quarterfinals, semifinals and National Championship Game. As for the rest of the bowls, who cares? Why should we be concerned about what happens to the Meineke Car Care Bowl. In any case, the rest of the bowls could stay. It's not like the other bowls had access to most of the top 16 teams anyway. The bowls can stay and still be exactly as relevant as they are today - which is to say not relevant at all.
Football-playing student athletes need to study for final exams
With two weeks between the first round and the quarterfinals, there's plenty of time for finals. More time than, for example, hockey-playing or basketball-playing student athletes get.
Instead of the #3 team bitching, the number #17 team will bitch
Wisconsin is #15 in both of the BCS' human polls, but the computers knocked us down to #18 in the final rankings. As the fan of a bubble team, of course I'd be disappointed, but let's be honest - we'd lose in the first round. Most of the bubble teams would lose. If Wisconsin wanted off of the bubble, the Badgers shouldn't have lost to Illinois, Penn State or Ohio State. What more could Hawaii, a team that beat exactly as many currently ranked teams as #1 Ohio State, have done?
Posted by kris at December 3, 2007 09:55 AM
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| # December 3rd, 2007 5:49 PM themandownthehall |
| You are dead on here. Allow me to answer one of the questions. Do we care what happens to the Meineke bowl. Well, I do, but don't cry for us Argentina. We have the powerhouses UCONN and Wake going at it and the game is just about sold out. You can get some scraps, but not many seats left.
I am going to be there. Club level as always with the kids. We do it every year. Spend less than a quarter watching the game and most of the time getting ice cream at the restaurant or walking around. It's a fun tradition that is even better when you don't care who wins. After the game is ice skating at the local radio stations "Holiday on ice" rink. An outdoor rink they have set up each year. http://wbtholidayonice.com/index.cfm So, most bowls will still be around. Playoff or no. Did any suffer because the BCS? We have more now than we did then. Any bowl that dies would not have made it anyway. |
| # December 3rd, 2007 10:11 PM drew |
| For as much as Big 10/Pac 10 people complained about Texas' Rose Bowl berth in 04, I can't see how you'd want to see your precious bowl game incorporated into a playoff system that could potentialls have Boise State or Hawaii play there.
I'm personally fine with the BCS, but if we ever go to a playoff, then I hope the NCAA doesn't cheapen the bowl tradition as making them sideshows in the process. |
| # December 11th, 2007 1:58 PM Cremdawg |
| You definitely have the right idea, I proposed a similar one to a sportswriter last year with a few key differences and got some positive feedback on it. The first is that the Bowl Alliance would probably never allow 3 other bowls to jump into a potential playoff system or for one of them to be relegated to a quarterfinal only. Thus all 16 teams would have to be selected into one of 4 bowl brackets based on ranking, geography and conference/bowl affiliation. This could probably be done in a couple different ways: 1) with the bowl alliance forming a selection committee similar to college basketball or 2) If they are completely incapable of finding common ground, doing it on a rotating draft-type of selection process. The first round should definitely be played at the home stadium of the higher ranked team, but the 4 quarterfinal games would then be played at the 4 respective bowl sites. The semis and finals would then be played at a neutral site. The teams that lose in the first round would go on to play each other in one of 4 other high level bowl games during bowl week. The other key difference is that the 6 major conferences would bitch about not getting an equal number of teams in, so the only way to keep them happy is by guaranteeing each of them that their top 2 ranked teams will automatically make the tournament (12 teams). After that there needs to be a rule that any other undefeated team will then automatically make the field (this is highly unlikely to be more than 4 as there are only 5 other conferences, so we'll say even if there was somehow 5 there would be a play-in game). This is necessary because if a team went undefeated in the Sun Belt conference, for instance, it is a definite possibility that they would be ranked below 16. Any remaining "wild card" spots would then be filled out based solely on the BCS rankings. So this years participants would be as follows:
ACC: Virginia Tech, Boston College Big 12: Missouri, Oklahoma Big East: West Virginia, South Florida Big Ten: Ohio State, Illinois Pac 10: USC, Arizona State SEC: LSU, Georgia Wild Card: Kansas, Hawaii, Florida, Clemson And I would guess that the bracket would look something like this: Sugar Bowl Bracket: #21 South Florida at #2 LSU #11 Arizona State at #8 Kansas Fiesta Bowl Bracket: #14 Boston College at #4 Oklahoma #10 Hawaii at #5 Georgia Orange Bowl Bracket: #13 Illinois at #3 Virginia Tech #9 West Virginia at #6 Missouri Rose Bowl Bracket: #15 Clemson at #1 Ohio State #12 Florida at #7 USC |
| # December 11th, 2007 2:43 PM Cremdawg |
| Oh and the scheduling would have to be different. I would suggest the first round take place the weekend of Dec. 7 through Dec. 9 with a late 6:00/9:00 doubleheader on Friday night, a 12:00/3:00/6:00/9:00 quadruple header on Saturday, and an early 12:00/3:00 doubleheader on Sunday. This would allow them to make max money of of television exposure as well. The quarterfinals being the bowl games would have to be another 12:00(Orange Bowl)/3:00(Sugar Bowl)/6:00(Rose Bowl)/9:00(Fiesta Bowl) quadruple header on New Years Day, Tuesday, Jan. 1. The Semis would be held on Saturday Jan. 12 and the Final on Saturday Jan. 19. Runs a little late, but that would seem to be the only logical complaint, besides, school usually doesn't return from winter break until that week anyway. |
| # December 15th, 2007 11:37 PM Daddy |
| In DADDY'S world....if you ain't undefeated, then you can't play for the championship.
PERIOD. "But we played a tough schedule" Ya sure did. Shoulda won the games, though, Rocky. This year, Hawaii would be the national champion. Now y'all go play your nice little bowls. For a playoff, I think there should be 8 total 1-A divisions: ACC, Big 12, C-USA, MAC, Pac-10, SEC.... ...then the Mountain West rejoins the WAC, for a great BIG WAC... ....and Notre Dame, Pitt, and West Virginia join the newly-aligned Big 10--which will no longer be called the "Big 10". (Big East gets disbanded, with schools dispersed to C-USA, MAC, or ACC). At most, you have 8 undefeated teams...a 4-wk. playoff. Playoffs lengths depend on number of undefeated teams. Lose=go home. Every week is a playoff. :) |
| # December 16th, 2007 10:26 AM kris |
| Cremdawg,
I think your playoffs run far too long. They've gotta end on New Years or the week after or they start to run into the NFL playoffs. You don't need to give that much time for exams. Other winter sports don't. For example, exams start at UW-Madison today, but the basketball team had a game yesterday. |
| # December 18th, 2007 9:28 AM Cremdawg |
| Well, there's a simple solution to that as well. To avoid running into the Saturday NFL playoff games, the Semis and Finals could be held on a weeknight, probably Friday. The Rose Bowl has to be held on New Years, they will never ever allow it to be any other day because of tradition, so the quarterfinals have to take place that week somehow. |
| # December 18th, 2007 9:33 AM Cremdawg |
| Conference re-alignment would take forever and is highly unlikely to happen simply because it makes the creation of a tournament easier. Too much goes into that, and it would probably be a 20 year process. The Big East is the strongest college conference overall in terms of athletics besides football. That conference will never be disbanded. |
| # December 18th, 2007 11:47 AM kris |
| The Rose Bowl has already been held on different days -for example ,when it's the National Championship Game or when New Years is on a Sunday. The parade is what doesn't change. |
| # January 8th, 2008 11:07 AM Cremdawg |
| That's true, when it used to be the National Championship game it was held on other days. Hopefully, they can settle on doing that again to make things easier. Not that any of this will ever happen, lol. I'm just begging for them to let up enough so we could even get a 4 team playoff which would be miles better. Still not perfect by any stretch, but better. |
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