Sports!!

Here’s how I propose how to fix College football’s playoff crisis, so all of you big-school presidents, please listen.

I am a big advocate of getting rid of the BCS, but all the bowl games can be used. In fact, I don’t think any bowl games should be eliminated. Are some of the bowl games ridiculously named? Yes. Are there a few too many? Yes, but it gives teams something to aim for at the same time. Maybe change the criteria to get to a bowl game to 8 wins, but that’s another topic for another time.

The big name bowls will all be used in the playoff system, but something has to be agreed upon at the outset. The Rose Bowl has its ties with the Pac-10 and Big Ten, with the champs of each usually facing each other in that game. Do the same with the others. Have the Big 12 and SEC champs faceoff in the Sugar Bowl and the ACC and Big East champs face each other in the Orange Bowl. Leave the Fiesta Bowl for two at-large bids. How are you going to determine those teams, you ask? If there are undefeated teams from the mid-major conferences, you take them first. Then you go from there looking at the best one-loss teams that didn’t win, or even make it to, their conference championship game. So, for example, last year’s matchup of Hawaii and Georgia would have probably made it here.

From these bowl game matchups, you take the winners and go from there. You could have the Rose Bowl champ against the Fiesta Bowl champ and the Sugar Bowl champ against the Orange Bowl champ…or some combination of that until you are down to two teams for the championship. If you wanted, you could even come up with fancy names for this too.

Now, this is would require two extra games for these 8 teams, but if the bowl season is started a couple weeks earlier, than it wouldn’t matter too much. You could still be done around January. The less time off would help the teams because they would still have their momentum. Some may bring up the argument of the student’s academics, but think about this. If students play during the season, they are still taking mid-terms and other tests during the season. Why would this be much different? Most players are there for football rather than academics

One other thing that would need to change is how the Pac-10 and Big Ten determine its champion. All the other big conferences have two divisions, so they need get with the program. The Pac-10 has 10 teams (obviously), so they could have even divisions. If they wanted 12 teams, well go steal from some of the mid-majors or Independents. The Big Ten usually has a lot of its team play Notre Dame, so why not go convince them to get into the conference finally. Then their 12th game would be the championship game. You may have to cut down on your cupcake teams, but who wouldn’t want to see that. Or even with the added playoff schedule, you could go to 11 games and still have two cupcakes left. Once these two conferences have this all sorted out, everything would be in place for the playoff system. The Big East also needs to adopt this and add a few teams. With these conferences adding teams, maybe it would even make some of those mid-major conferences combine a little to be a little stronger.

Let’s address the schedule one more time. All conferences (the big ones at least) have 12 teams, with two divisions. Say your Team A. Team A plays all of its opponents within its division and then 3 from the other division. You can play it on a rotation. 3 teams one year, the other 3 the next year. So, you’ve got 8 games, and then you can still have your 3 (easy) non-conference games. There should be a set bye week for every team too. It would make the polls and rankings a whole lot easier. End of Nov or Start of Dec would be the Championship games. Give everyone a week off and then start the playoffs on Sat afternoons. The other bowl games can be scheduled during the week. With this schedule, the season would still be done by the first week of January.

So, as a brief recap, the playoff system that should be adopted.

Rose Bowl: Pac-10 vs. Big Ten
Sugar Bowl: Big 12 vs. SEC
Orange Bowl: ACC vs. Big East
Fiesta: Undefeated mid-major team/At-large vs. possible second undefeated mid-major team/At-large

Rose Bowl winner vs. Sugar Bowl winner
Orange Bowl winner vs. Fiesta Bowl winner

Championship: Rose/Sugar winner vs. Orange/Fiesta winner

Will it happen? Eh, probably not, but I can dream, right?

Tags: NCAA //