I don’t want to completely bog this thread down with BCS bashing and playoff scenarios, but since BobLibDem sort of brought it up I’ll go off on one of my pet tangents.
I’m getting a little sick of the media and pundits screaming about a Playoff system for college football. What no one seems to realize, is that the only person this really benefits is the media. The networks will lose money, the conferences will lose money and fans will have more meaningless games. Essentially it would marginalize all but the biggest 20 programs. Instead of us complaining about the top 2 teams, we’ll be complaining about the top 16.
Everyone also forgets that this obsession, not shared by all, with the “National Champion” is a very recent development. When I was growing up the National Champion was just an unofficial designation that popped up in the newspaper on the Monday after the bowls. It paled in importance compared to the Conference and Bowl champs, and while we usually knew if it was Miami or Nebraska or whomever, we didn’t spend much energy discussing it. At the time we were much more interested in the outcome of the Liberty Bowl featuring the 3rd place Big Ten team than the relative margin of victories for the 'Canes in the Orange Bowl and Penn State in the Sugar.
By having a large playoff field it essentially makes the major bowls even less meaningful than they are now, regardless if you call a semi-final game the “Rose Bowl” it still isn’t. Maintaining the tradition and conference affiliations of the current bowls is of greater importance than deciding which 1 team of the most renowned programs gets a ring. I could give a rats ass if LSU or Auburn or USC get to call themselves champs or not.
My compromise solution is as follows:
All Major BCS conferences must play championship games. The Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 10, ACC, Big East and SEC. These games represent what would be 6 of the “first round” games of the playoff bracket. The remaining conferences such as the Mountain West, Conference USA, WAC, MAC, Sun Belt and D-1A Independents would be slotted into the final 2 games based on whatever criteria is best, record, rankings, BCS-ranking, whatever.
That’s an 8 game, 16-team bracket. It includes the top 2 teams of all the major conferences and gives an equal shot to all the Mid-Majors. I don’t care if 2 Big Ten teams are ranked #1 and #2 or whatever, they play in the first round. To be National Champ you have to beat everyone, so you better win your conference title game if you want to compete.
The Second round is where the current big 4 Bowls come into play. You maintain the traditional conference tie-ins. The Pac-10 and Big Ten Champ play in the Rose Bowl on New Years Day. The ACC and Big East face off in the Orange Bowl. The Big 12 goes to the Fiesta, and the SEC goes to the Sugar Bowl. The Winners of the other two games winners get slotted into the empty spots.
At this point, the losers of the first round games get invited to defacto consolation games in the remaining bowl games. This mitigates the compromise that the Major Conferences are making by having half their teams eliminated in the first series of games. At this point old traditional tie-ins can be maintained, the Big Ten #2 goes to the Capitol One Bowl vs the SEC #2 etc. Also, other bowl eligible teams get selected to the bowls.
Finally, we come to 4 remaining teams who can play in a pair of Semi and Final games to decide who gets the title. The revenues of these 3 games can be distributed in whatever way best appeases the Major Conferences in order to get them to cooperate.
Overall, I think it eliminates any perceived inequities between the conferences with or without title games. Each of those conferences reap the rewards of the additional, nationally televised game. They can rope in sponsorships and decide if they want to have it in neutral sites or not. Should be a nice little cash cow.
A team that then makes it to the championship game would get revenues from not only it’s title game, but also the traditional major Bowl game and then 2 championship playoff games.
For teams in the SEC and Big 12, it only requires them to play 2 additional games, fewer than any other proposal I’ve seen.
The biggest advantage to this system in my view is that it essentially eliminates any and all reason to schedule cupcake non-conference games. Because it would only reward teams for their ranking within their conference, it would encourage teams like OSU, LSU, USC and Texas to schedule high profile early season inter-conference games with minimal risk. They’d be able to capitalize on the revenue these types of regular season games would generate without having to mortgage their changes at a national title.
) when it comes to all the conference-superiority talk.