The Pecan Park Eagle

a modest proposal for change
~ The Pecan Park Eagle

A Never Simple Suggestion for How the NCAA Division 1 of College Football Could Stage an Even Truer, More Lucrative Playoff System Without Much Additional Distraction to the Already Intense Academic Studies of Its Student Athletes. ~ Call it “The Great Eight Path to January Joy!”

Here’s the Q&A answer to who, why, what, when, and where:

1. Question: Who makes up the tournament field? Answer: The eight best teams at season’s end shall be selected by the same committee format that now anoints only four schools for the tournament.
2. Question: Why 8 instead of 4 teams? Answer: Because 4 committee selections already  has proved better than the 2 that often dissatisfied many during the long period of the BCS process,  8 will we twice as good as 4 was in the elimination of unbeaten teams with a good case for unhappiness, if they are left. Baylor and TCU, the abandoned babies of 2014, would have a place to go in this new twice-as-big field. No plan for rating and selecting the best college teams by anything less than head-to-head competition will eliminate all unhappiness, but a field of eight makes it far less likely that some undefeated team with a strong opponent schedule will be left out there to whine.
3. Questions: What will it take to expand from 4 to 8 tournament clubs? Answer: It will require (a) better use of the  4 major bowls every post-season as the hosts of the tournaments first round; (2) the movement of two other bowls into mid-January as hosts of the two semi-final round games; and the continuation into a national collegiate championship game at a host city and venue that is chosen by a site selection committee a few years earlier than the actual event, much as the NFL picks their Super Bowl locations now.
4. Question: What about the when and where aspects? Answer: Those were covered inclusively in the first three Q and A’s.

Bones and Marrow Details. Using the Top 25 List system now being generated by the selection committee for its field of 4, the final week list of the committee’s top 8 clubs would make up the field.

Using a rotating system among the four major bowls for determining who gets the #1 seed in Round One, a typical schedule for all three rounds would look like the following:

Round One: January 1st (New Years Day, every year)

Seed #1 versus Seed #8 at the Rose Bowl

Seed # 2 versus Seed # 7 at the Orange Bowl

Seed # 3 versus Seed # 6 at the Sugar Bowl

Seed # 4 versus Seed # 5 at the Fiesta Bowl

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Round Two: January 15th

Seeds 1-8 winner versus Seeds 4-5 winner at the Cotton Bowl (for example)

Seeds 2-7 winner versus Seeds 3-6 winner at the Gator Bowl (for example)

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Round Three National Championship Game: January 29th (at variably selected site)

A championship game between the two winners of the Round Two match-ups.

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Hangnail Points to Planners: The New Years Day first round date would be firm. The other rounds could be adjusted a day or two, either way, depending upon whatever is practical and possible. Planners would try to make sure that all is completed prior to February 1st, but the Championship Game would avoid playing on any direct date that was in competition with the NFL Super Bowl.

If the bigger bowls have an ego-hissy over traditionally smaller money bowls getting two second round games, then don’t bury the idea or yourself in that sand trap. Bid Round Two out to cities as you did Round Three.

To those who claim this plan will be too negative a factor upon the student athletes’ grade point averages, tell them to keep track over the first five years to see what the effect is upon any reduction in the student athlete graduation rate as a direct result. We aren’t exactly cranking out valedictorians and Rhodes scholars with our current use of student athletes as it is. If the colleges want to go back to the days in which real students actually try out for their various school sports teams with a chance to actually make it, I’m down with that road too. In the meanwhile, let’s stop denigrating the young athletes who are pursued by the schools for their playing abilities – and either pay them for their hard work – or do everything we can to make sure that athletics do not actually prevent them from doing their intellectual best in class. I don’t see this playoff system making things any worse for student athletes than they already are.

That’s it. No need to complicate it further.

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