My College Football Playoff System. It's Ingenious!

I have designed a college football playoff system that preserves most elements of the current Bowl system (bleah) and has a sixteen-team playoff that determines the undisputed champion, on the field. My system should satisfy both the dyed-in-the-wool bowl supporters (bleah) and those who thirst for a playoff (:D). In the process, it will increase TV revenues and thus increase revenues for the teams who compete in it, the bowl committees, the host cities, and the casual fan (if the casual fan enjoys making a friendly wager, that is :D). Here’s how it works…

Let’s say that, hypothetically, when the 2002 regular season ends the BCS Top 25 rankings look like this:
[ul]
[li]1 Illinois[/li][li]2 Ohio St[/li][li]3 Indiana[/li][li]4 Iowa[/li][li]5 Michigan[/li][li]6 Michigan St[/li][li]7 Missouri[/li][li]8 Nebraska[/li][li]9 Oklahoma[/li][li]10 Arkansas[/li][li]11 Kansas[/li][li]12 Florida[/li][li]13 Florida St[/li][li]14 Miami[/li][li]15 Auburn[/li][li]16 Penn St[/li][li]17 Georgia[/li][li]18 Wisconsin[/li][li]19 UCLA[/li][li]20 USC[/li][li]21 Texas[/li][li]22 Miami of Ohio[/li][li]23 Notre Dame[/li][li]24 Tennessee[/li][li]25 Ole Miss[/li][/ul]

Now, we take the top 16 teams and enter them into a sixteen-team playoff. But here’s the beauty of it: each game in each round of the playoffs is paired with a bowl game and played in that bowl game’s host city. For example, the Sublimina Bowl committee in Crawford, TX negotiates with the NCAA for the rights to the 1 vs. 16 game in the first round. Thus, in the first round of the playoffs, Illinois will play Penn St. in the Sublimina Bowl in Crawford, TX.

Under this sytem, each bowl committee will negotiate with the NCAA for the rights to which game in which round. Thus they could also negotiate such things as sponsorship packages and TV coverage. Needless to say, bowl committees with more money to wave around, or more clout, would get rights to games in the later rounds, or to more signifigant games in the first round. For example, a 1 vs. 16 matchup is likely to draw more viewers than, say, an 8 vs. 9 matchup. So in this case, the 1 vs. 16 matchup might be something along the lines of the Liberty Bowl while the 8 vs. 9 matchup might be the Hula Bowl.

The seven major bowls (Sun, Orange, Fiesta, Peach, Sugar, Cotton and Rose) would go to the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. The championship game would be the Rose Bowl.

So let’s carry the hypothetical 2002 season further…

The first round begins on Friday, December 6th, 2002. The weekend of December 6th and December 7th is a busy weekend in college sports, because there are three games on Friday night and five games on Saturday. On Friday night #1 Illinois plays #16 Penn St in Liberty Bowl on ABC. #4 Iowa plays #13 Florida St. in the FedEx Bowl on ESPN, and #8 Nebraska plays #9 Oklahoma in the Hula Bowl on ESPN2. On Saturday, the remaining teams play in the Outback, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Sublimina and Gator Bowls.

The second round of the playoffs is Saturday, December 14th, 2002. The winner of the Liberty Bowl plays the winner of the Outback Bowl in the Peach Bowl. The winner of the Amazon.com Bowl plays the winner of the FedEx Bowl in the Fiesta Bowl. The winner of the Microsoft Bowl plays the winner of the Sublimina Bowl in the Sun Bowl. And the winner of the Gator Bowl plays the winner of the Hula Bowl in the Cotton Bowl.

The third round of the playoffs is Saturday, December 21st. The winner of the Peach Bowl plays the winner of the Fiesta Bowl in the Sugar Bowl, and the winner of the Sun Bowl plays the winner of the Cotton Bowl in the Orange Bowl.

The winner of the Sugar Bowl will play the winner of the Orange Bowl for the championship, in the Rose Bowl, on New Year’s Day (Wednesday, January 1st, 2003).

The remaining nine teams in the BCS top 25, and any unranked teams to get invitations, can play in any lesser bowl games that didn’t manage to secure rights to playoff bowl games.

In this system, teams that advance in the playoffs can earn more money for their schools by competing in multiple bowls. TV ratings will go up because the games will actually mean something, and because people who don’t give a rat’s ass about college football under the current system (people like me :D) would be drawn to the games. And, of course, a sixteen-team playoff bracket just *begs for office-pool wagering, which would draw even more interest to the games…

Note that this system preserves the rights of bowl committees to maintain their traditions, and make their money, by hosting a bowl game in their host city.

So there’s my system. I now officially open it up to the Teeming Millions for analysis.

My first question is: When are these students supposed to study for finals?

Secondly, I have a more general question: Do you think that the winner of the Super Bowl/World Series/Final Four/NBA Finals/etc. is consistently the best team in the league?

My answer to the second question is that very rarely is the winner at the end of the year the best team. Duke and the Rams are recent exceptions. But too often (Arkansas, Baltimore Ravens) is the winner of these a matter of luck. Take your #1 vs. #16 game. If #16 wins that game, then your original rankings were either incorrect, or the system is inherently flawed (the #1 team is actually the best team, but one off-day takes them out of the top 8).

Obviously, you’re working under the assumption that the original rankings are incorrect. But what about the marginal teams? What if that #17 team could win it all (Kansas, 1988)? Does that mean that that #17 is the best in the country, or does it mean that they were the luckiest team between Dec. 6 and Jan. 4? Is that worthy of a championship?

Personally, I’m of the opinion that college football is a fairly easily comparable sport (watch Florida play and watching BYU play, it’s obvious who the better team is, despite them never playing each other). Sportswriters typically know what they’re talking about. On the occassion when one of them doesn’t, then 112 of them together can usually come up with a decent group concensus. Obviously, Penn State has a very good argument against this (1994). Notre Dame does as well (either 1989 or 1993). But the fact of the matter is, no system is going to be head and shoulders above the rest, and the one we have currently has the least possible problems with it (despite Miami’s objections).

My first question is: When are these students supposed to study for finals?

Most college terms end around Mid-December, don’t they? If the possibility of the football playoffs interferes with studying for finals, push the games back a week.

Relating to your more general question: the possibility of the best team being eliminated by a bad game is the chance you take in any double-elimination tournament. When March Madness comes around it is possible, however unlikely, that the #1 team will lose in the first round. If Illinois is ranked #1 going into the tournament and they lose to #16 Wattsamotta U in the first round- well, them’s the breaks. That opens the door for the #2 team to run the table. That’s the beauty of a double-elimination tournament.

My first question is: When are these students supposed to study for finals?

Most college terms end around Mid-December, don’t they? If the possibility of the football playoffs interferes with studying for finals, push the games back a week.

Relating to your more general question: the possibility of the best team being eliminated by a bad game is the chance you take in any double-elimination tournament. When March Madness comes around it is possible, however unlikely, that the #1 team will lose in the first round. If Illinois is ranked #1 going into the tournament and they lose to #16 Wattsamotta U in the first round- well, them’s the breaks. That opens the door for the #2 team to run the table. That’s the beauty of a double-elimination tournament.

Under the current system, the #16 team will either not play in the postseason at all, or play in ONE game that means absolutely nothing.

Finally, why are we content to have the matter of the NCAA men’s basketabll champion settled on the field (so to speak) but have the matter of the college football champion settled by a consensus of sports writers?

I’m sickened by the thought of never seeing a annual Big Ten - Pac 10 matchup in the Rose Bowl.

A 16 team playoff system simply isn’t practical for the sport of college football. These are students, they have finals, and they aren’t as physically seasoned as professionals. There would be too many injuries, more frequent early departures from school to avoid serious injury, and most importantly don’t indicate who the best team necesarily is.

I’d rather it go back to the pre-BCS system, but if a playoff system is absolutely needed, it should be an 8 team playoff, the semi-finals occuring New Year’s Day and a revolving Bowl for the Championship.

All that considered there absolutely must be some consideration for traditional Bowl matchups. I can’t forsee a method in which both the playoff seeding and traditional rivalries can be reconciled.

Also, I don’t necesarily agree that the 8 (or 16) playoff teams be soley chosen based on ranking. Think about the SEC and Big 12 championship games. All four teams are typically going to be in the top 16, and about half the time within the top 8. Why have them face off in the conference championship and then match up immediately after in the first or second round of the playoffs. In theory we already know who is better late in the season. In that case, how do you reconcile between conferences with a Championship game and those without? Suppose Illinois and Michigan had tied for the Big Ten title. Do you only send one team? Illinois lost to Michigan early in the season. However we are ranked higher, and Michigan lost to a much worse team. (hypothetically had they beat OSU of course)

Basically your solution doesn’t solve ANY of the problems and arguement we see today, and those we saw before the BCS. It does however create many HUGE problems for anyone who happens to enjoy the current Bowl layout (most fans) or anyone who values the history of their team or conference.

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Gee,** rastahomie, ** if folks didn’t know better, they’d think you were a Big Ten fan or sumthin’. :slight_smile:

Is there an Ivy Bowl? If not, I ain’t interested!

–Cliffy

The defect in the original post is that it presupposes, incorrectly in my view, that there are enough people with the vacation time, disposable income and inclination to travel to attend 3 bowl game sites in 3 weeks. Nebraska and Notre Dame might have many fans who can do so, but nobody else does. The opening rounds of the college hoops tournament is played in venues with seating capacities of only 15,000-18,000. Those preliminary bowl games are going to be played in front of an awful lot of empty seats.

Okay, first of all, AFAIK every level of College Football except the top level has a normal playoff system. Most of the players that are not at the top are true student-atheletes, with the student part coming first, and yet they manage to do this.

I think that this is done by regionalizing the playoffs to avoid long travel distances, and having a home field advantage. Now to keep the bowl angle alive you’d probably have to have some cross between the two, and you’d likely need to eliminate things like the current SEC and Big 12 Championships. You could take your top 16, which in reality is more likely to be geographically diverse, seed the Regions as best you can. Of course the recent Florida dominance in college football would make this sticky, what if FSU, Florida and Miami are all in the top five?

Okay, let’s toss out the region aspect and just give the higher favored seeds home field in the first round. Now what do we have? 1 v 16, 2 v 15, 3 v 14 etc, with teams 1 - 8 at a home field advantage through the first round. In the next round there are 8 teams left. I can see these games now going into the bowls (the bottom level bowls which may lose out are generally weak anyway). You may have Oregon flying down to Miami for a game against Oklahoma, but that’s only mildly different than Washington flying down to Miami to play a regular season game anyway.

For the next round you have only the last 4 standing. These are almost assuredly not the top 1-4 seeds, but that’s what makes it exciting, the possibility for upsets and underdogs to come through. Any sport with a seeding expects this, including NCAA basketball. These also go to bowl games, and fans will travel for this.

Finally the last week you have the national championship. You can rotate where this ends up, or let them bid, probably they’ll want rotation.

Too many teams, the regular season won’t mean shit. I like it when every game matters. I also love the bowl season. There is no better sport than college football, I don’t see why people are so quick to change it so drastically. Leave it the same!

I agree with the comments posted by others regarding why this is not a good idea… especially the one by PatrickM about the fans (students and otherwise) having the difficulty of traveling to possibly three sites over three weeks. Us Wisconsin fans travel in hordes to a single site, but any one game wouldn’t be as well attended under a playoff system, and as a consequence it wouldn’t be as much fun.

…and here are a couple more…

a) I love the fact that over the New Year’s holiday, there are multiple college games to watch. Under this proposed system there would only be the one championship game to watch (you can always turn to another game if the one you’re watching is boring).

b) in college basketball playoffs, a team can play another game with only a day of rest, so you can fit two rounds into four days in one location.

I say leave it the same.

There is no reason other than simple greed why EVERY FRICKIN COLLEGE SPORT has playoffs to determine a champion except Division I-A football.

How about this one: There is not a large enough pool of voters who could give an accurate ranking to anything OTHER than I-A football. Show me someone who thinks they have a good grasp on the finer points of III-A football, and I’ll introduce you to the rest of his psych ward.

Why is there a playoff system in basketball? Because the nature of the sport lends itself to it. As Omni said, college football does not. And I would venture to say that a playoff system in college would generate a whole lot more money than the current bowl season.

Oh, Butt-Munch? Last year the Ravens WERE the best team in the league. They had the best defense in the history of the NFL coupled with an offence that didn’t make mistakes and powerful special teams. They ran 11 straight thru the SB, including any number of “best” teams that were supposed to beat them handily. Do try to get your facts straight in the future, OK? And as to this year, the Rams? Ask Tampa about that.

I certainly hope to see an apology in the near future.

So what’s your point? That the Ravens possibly being the best team in the league last year (despite not scoring a TD in the first, what, 5 games?) gives credence to a college playoff system?

I’m sure you will. Lots of people apologise for lots of things all the time on these boards.

Your gratuitous slam of the defending Super Bowl champions was unwarrented, particularly, as you point out, in a thread about college football.

Let me be more specific. I expect an apology from you, regarding your insult directed towards me, regarding my screenname.

I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about. I don’t seem to recall me slamming the Ravens. In fact, I don’t even remember calling them a bad team. Regardless, whatever I did say certainly was gratuitous, as I can’t seem to place what you’ve taken offense to. If you’d point it out, I’d gladly take it back. However, please take into account that I’ve now pointed out twice what I’ve taken offense to regarding your post, and have received nothing but a dismissal.

That outta tell you something, eh sport?

sigh Very well. You implied that the Ravens victory last year was due to nothing but luck, to wit:

If my refering to you as “butt-Munch” offended you that much, I respectfully suggest that you refrain from posting derogetory statements in sports threads. I heard worse in Kindergarden, and going to an actual NFL game would probobly make your head explode. None the less, I apologise for the word play on your name. :rolleyes: