1/3/09

I'm officially bored stiff now, but at least I'm warm. A nice sunny 75 degrees in Oklahoma today. It's a windy mofo out here, but you know, leave well enough alone and whatnot. After driving for a few hours I stopped for some lunch and found that my connection speed here should be plenty fast for some football watching. And thus concluded my day on the road.

I was hearing the callers to the sports radio shows whining about a college football playoff for the 20th year in a row, so I figured I might as well toss my 'vision' into the mix here. I think that a bracketed playoff like the one that they use in the lower college divisions would absolutely destroy college football as we know it. The "use the other bowls for the earlier rounds" nonsense is just goofy. The damn Orange Bowl couldn't even sell out for two conference champions this year. Does anyone think that fans will travel to a bowl/playoff game for three or four weeks in a row? Seriously, no. I would prefer to do things the way that they used to be done and let the fans argue once it was all over. That was fun for me, even though Notre Dame got hosed after the 1993 season. Most people want a "champion" decided on the field though.

So here's what you do... The conferences send their champions to whichever bowls have the tie-ins. The Cotton Bowl is used as the fifth major bowl and aligned with the Big East. Why? 'Cause I said so. This is my vision. The BCS rankings are used to fill the at-large positions, but not to pull a team away from another BCS game. In other words, you can steal Utah from the Las Vegas Bowl, but you can't pull Florida from the Sugar Bowl. The current rule limiting each conference to two teams is kept in place.

The highest-rated conference champ gets the lowest-rated at-large team, unless that team is from the same conference. Then they get the next lowest and the bowl with the second-highest rated champ takes the lowest-rated at-large. I'll acknowledge that this is pretty close to a bracketed playoff, but by keeping the tie-ins and preventing conference teams from playing one another in a bowl, it provides the potential for more interesting matchups.

All bowl games are played by January 1st, without exception. At the conclusion of the bowl games, you apply the BCS formula. Whether or not that formula needs tweaking is open to discussion. Then you take the top four teams in the BCS rankings and play on January 8th (or thereabouts). The only exception to the top four being used is that I would exclude any bowl game losers from participating. If the pre-bowl #1 lost a close bowl game and managed to stay ranked in the top four, they would get dumped and I would take the #5 team. Tough rocks. Better luck next year.

Since three straight weeks of travel arrangements and fan attendance will be virtually impossible to pull off, the top two teams host the playoff games at their home stadiums. #4 plays at #1 and #3 plays at #2. I don't want to hear about weather considerations or any of that noise. If the NFL can play in Buffalo in January, then college teams can play in the cold too. The two winners then meet on the following weekend at a neutral site to decide the champion.

There. We've kept the tradition and meaning of the bowls intact. We've given opportunities for the Utahs of the world to earn their way to the top. We've restored the fun and excitement of January 1st to what it used to be. We've helped TV ratings by giving numerous bowl games a potential influence in the final outcome.

This year's bowls would have been:

Fiesta - Oklahoma vs. Boise State
Sugar - Florida vs. Utah
Rose - USC vs. Penn State
Cotton - Cincinnati vs. Alabama
Orange - Virginia Tech vs. Texas

Play the games, pick your top four, and move along. If Cincinnati or Virginia Tech were to win, neither of them would be in the top four discussion. Then you would have a clean four teams leftover. In the worst case scenario, five winners would be arguing over four spots. The performance in the bowls would give the voters plenty of information from which to decide and every bowl game would matter. If you came in at #5 after the bowls and got left out, tough rocks. Better luck next year. If we saw a few upsets in these major bowl games, then the bowl performances of highly rated teams like Texas Tech and Ohio State in second-tier games could also have an impact on the final outcome of the standings. An imperfect system? Of course. A hell of a lot better than what we have now? I say yes.