It’s time for a real post-season college football playoff system. Four teams are better than two, but 16 is about the lowest number that does service to fairness.
Forget the barriers of greed and politics from the current bowl game system and its marriage to the egos, status, and coffers of the NCAA and its member conferences, universities, and television networks, the following plan is the simply better system we could have in place now without those obstacles:
(1) It would be a 16-team playoff that begins the 2nd Saturday in December, requiring each participating conference to have completed its regular season and any conference championship games by the 1st Saturday in December.
(2) The 16-team field would contain automatic bids to the five (5) champions of the SEC, ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, and PAC-10, plus the next highest 11 ranked teams from a special all-season poll of the best 25 teams in college division 1 level football.
(3) Round One Playoff Pairings would be based on the usual top seed vs. low seed matches down the line:
16 vs. 1;
15 vs. 2;
14 vs. 3;
13 vs. 4;
12 vs. 5;
11 vs. 6;
10 vs. 7;
9 vs. 8.
(4) All first round games would be played at the home fields of the top 8 seeds.
(5) Round Two Pairings would be based on the same seeding plan already in play. The four games of Round Two would pair teams in this way:
16 – 1 winner versus 9 -8 winner;
15 – 2 winner versus 10 – 7 winner;
14 – 3 winner versus 11 – 6 winner;
13 – 4 winner versus 12 – 5 winner;
(6) All Round Two Pairings would be played on the 3rd Saturday in December at four of the previous Tier One bowl sites on an annually rotating site basis.
The Round Three Semi-Finals would be played on New Years Day at two other rotating Tier One bowl sites:
16-1v9-8 winner versus 13-4v12-5 winner;
15-2v10-7 winner versus 14-3v11-6 winner.
(7) The two surviving teams would meet for the Division 1 College Football Superlative Bowl on the Sunday prior to the NFL Super Bowl at a site that could either be determined by either a rotational schedule among the old top bowl venues – or by competitive community bids to be the site.
While they are at it, maybe it’s time too for the NCAA to abandon their hypocrisy about money and cut the players in for a share of the swag they are raking in in the name of pure amateurism. College football hasn’t been an amateur sport in a long time, if, indeed, it ever was.
Maybe they could even get the Campbell Company involved as a permanent sponsor and just call it “The College Football Souper Bowl”.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
September 5, 2013 at 10:19 pm |
Way too many obstacles for a 16-team tournament to work (there’s this little thing called “finals”, for starters).
Eight works better and the way I would do it would consist of *only* conference champions (no wild cards). Independents are considered a conference unto themselves so Notre Dame, BYU, etc. get in but only if their top entrant ranks better than the eighth highest conference champion.
The same BCS formula can be used to seed the teams but they aren’t picking who gets in and who doesn’t anymore. The conferences themselves decide this using whatever tiebreakers they have now for determining the conference champ.
The quarterfinals are around the 15-16th of December with the higher seed hosting the game. The semis are near New Years Day at the site of two major bowl games on allegedly neutral fields and the finals at a neutral site to be held the Saturday of the NFC and AFC Championship games.. Plenty of time in between each round for players to heal, take finals, visit family, et al between rounds.
Should the major conferences eventually merge to four 14- or 16-team “superconferences”, we change the design so that the four conference title games become the de factor quarterfinals and the rest still go on the same way. That way, you have an eight-team playoff that really is the same as a four-team playoff.
September 7, 2013 at 12:30 pm |
Whether it’s 16 or 8 teams the point must be made of how much of a money maker this would be. Right now, I don’t have the passionate interest in the BCS system. I watch my team and the national championship and catch the others as catch-can. Previously without the BCS I’d watch them imagining scenarios that benefitted my team. A playoff would give me a stake in all the games again and I’d never leave the TV (or the road because I’d travel with my team if I could get tickets). Every game would be a sell out and the TV ratings enormous. To accommodate the additional games I could do with one less Adirondack Community College or Texas A&M on my schedule.