College Football Playoff Idea

With all the talk of March Madness coming up lately, I thought it might be fun to come up with an idea for a NCAA Football playoff system. So here goes a walk though something that will probably never happen.

First, the regular season would have to be altered to some degree. Given that there are currently 12 regular season games, there would need to be 10 "regular season" games in this format. It would up to each conference to determine how many conference games and non-conference games there would be. If we follow what is the norm currently, this would mean there is 1 non-conference game outside of the "playoffs". Teams such as Michigan could feel free to schedule a cupcake like Appalachian State for an "easy" win (no Michigan fans, you will never live that down) or you could schedule a real difficult opponent like Minnesota did when they agreed to play USC in future years.

So what about those last two "playoff" weeks. This is where it gets a bit different from some of the other models. Everyone participates in the playoff. The BCS is expanded to include all 119 NCAA teams. The teams are subdivided into brackets of 8 teams. For instance, let's take a look at my fictional bracket for the Top 8 from the 2008 season. These rankings are from right before the bowl games. For arguments sake, I have the higher ranked team winning in all, but one case. Keep in mind there would be 15 total brackets (14, plus one weird one). I just wanted to highlight the only branch that everyone would care about.


(Before I start getting the 'WTF w/ Penn State winning?' comments, I'm a Penn State alumni. Since this is a fantasy and will never happen, let me have my dreams. It's the same reason Pitt loses immediately despite having a higher ranking in the brackets at the end)

The first two rounds of the tournament would be played during what were the final two weeks of the season. Higher ranked teams would have home field advantage. Teams who lose would enter into a "loser bracket" following the same format where the highest ranked team available would play the lowest ranked team available. While this functions like a playoff, it also produces a lot of non-conference matchups. This could also give everyone a better indication of how "good" a team. So, when do we play the championship game and what the hell is the point of having all these games if they have no bearing on the championship game?

Bowls. The things that everyone despises because of all the subjectivity still have a place in this system. They would be divided up into "tiers", allowing the bowls to pick from the available teams within two brackets. This would allow the bowls to select as they see fit. They can select based on the current conference affiliations or they could pick from the best available teams. It's up to the bowl committees to make the decision that is best financially for them.

The FedEx-Tostitos-Allstate-AT&T National Championship Game presented by Citi could still exist and would select the #1 and #2 teams. All the other BCS bowls can select from the available teams based on their current rotation. I would even go so far as to advocating for the Cotton Bowl to be added to it. There's too much tradition to that bowl for it not to be considered "Tier 1". As for the Rose Bowl, my thought would be to have them be guaranteed the Pac-10/Big Ten Champions so long as they are not taking the #1 or #2 team. If they wanted to participate in the rotation and select from the available teams, they would get to select last. I am a proponent of keeping the traditional matchup there just because of all the history behind that specific bowl. That being said, it shouldn't give them a free pass to cherry pick teams every so-often though. If they wanted to break that tradition on a permanent basis, that's fine, but then they have to give up automatically getting the Pac-10/Big Ten teams. Again, it's up to the bowls to make the best financial decision for themselves.

One other rule about the BCS games I would keep is the limit of 2 teams from a conference being allowed in. I'm assuming the bowl payouts would still be in place. I can't imagine the conferences allowing a situation where they could be shut out of the payouts that are the BCS bowl games.

The same model could work for the other bowls as you go down the tiers. The next tier would be able to pick from the 2nd and 3rd level brackets and if there were any left over from the 1st tier. That tier would include bowls like Capital One, Outback, Gator, Chick-fil-A, Insight, and Holiday.

At a high-level what this ends up looking like is mandatory non-conference games that have increased meaning at the end of the regular season. Those games then feed into the bowl selection process and allow us to have a true National Championship Game instead of the current Mythical National Championship Game we have today.

The good parts to this:

• PLAYOFFS! WHOO! Our cure all for everything that's bad about college football. Joking aside, it would go a long way to making a cleaner, but still not perfect, system.
• We get what could be some really interesting non-conference games instead of the typical cupcakes against a powerhouse team at their home. How often do we as college football fans complain about our teams playing a "Charlie Weis's School for the Poor" (circa 2007) or Costal Carolina instead of a real school like 'Bama? This also keeps the feeling of the regular season having a lot of meaning. By only allowing 8 teams into the playoff bracket for the Championship, winning your games are the only way to guarantee entry.
• Bowls, which do mean something to their respective markets, are still in place for those towns/cities. For those of us that live in snowy places, it still provides a nice escape away from home once a year. Let's be real, most of these are exhibition games anyway for the NFL. Let the scouts have some fun too.
• It doesn't alter the amount of games or any timing associated with the current structure, thereby stopping the whole "we care about our students and their grades" argument that normally comes up from the school presidents. I would prefer to stop this argument before they even open their disingenuous mouths.
• Conference championship games are no longer a knock-out for some team from the National Championship Game. This is a good thing if you're a highly ranked team playing a lower ranked team (i.e. Oklahoma-Missouri from 2008. While Oklahoma won, a loss would have totally removed them from the Mythical National Championship Game). Some coaches complain about this situation. It also helps with the case of Texas from 2008 as well. While they would not be in their conference championship game thanks to some "awesome" tie-breaker rules (that the Big Ten for some reason now thinks are a good idea too, but I digress), they would have the opportunity to settle the differences on the field instead of in a neutral CPU. If you want to complain about a team that did not win their conference playing in the championship, I shall direct you to the NFL's playoff structure that everyone says they love. It has happened a number of times fairly recently there.
• Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money. Think of the advertising revenue that could be generated from playoffs. I mean if golf can make more money by advertising a useless "playoff", then certainly college football, which is widely popular, could make a killing with a playoff. At the very least, the more interesting non-conference matchups would increase TV viewership and thereby increase ad revenue.
• Conference superiority debates that have very little facts behind them, massive amounts of emotion and arguments that can easily be turned on their head, pretty much disappear. The debate is settled on the field. Yes, there are still people voting on your team, but when your margin of error is 8 instead of 2, it takes a lot of the need for all the grandstanding we see away. It would piss off ESPN if they don't have anything like that to talk about, but quite frankly, that's their problem. Their job is supposed to be to report the news.
• Speaking of which, once the playoffs start, you're really basing decisions on wins and losses instead of someone's opinion about a team. I know, that sounds like crazy talk in the college football world.
• Mid-majors can now have the opportunity to play in a National Championship Game. All they have to do is finish in the top 8 and win their playoff games, just like everyone else.
• Layoff time does not become an issue anymore as everyone finishes on the same weekend.
• Southern teams may be graced with the opportunity of coming north to play in some of our stadiums. Welcome to Central PA, where in December, it's cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey! Let's see some of that "OMG ESSS EEE SEEE Speed" when it's below 32 and a snow storm.

The bad parts:

• Money. While the playoff system itself could generate more money, the one thing that would suffer is the local economies of college towns. Potentially, a team (like Penn State in the scenario above) would have two away games that may normally be home games. If you're in a major city like Pittsburgh or Columbus, it's probably not a huge deal. When you're in State College, the cows aren't going to spend more money just because the team isn't around one weekend. Since this defines a number of major college programs, it does present an issue. The only thing I could think of is the athletic departments trying to organize some kind of playoff spectacle for the weekends when the team is away.
• There's not much of a non-conference schedule to go on when ranking the teams. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. It's a good thing if you're thinking of how "bad" the Pac-10 was in the 2008 season after the first few games or a good thing if you're thinking of the Big Ten from the 2006 regular season when everyone anointed them as the best conference only to watch them crash and burn like the Hindenberg (except for Penn State and some of the other middling Big Ten teams who won their bowl game that year). Ohio State could have been exposed much earlier and we all could have been spared having to watch them get demolished by Florida.
• We would still have such prestigious bowls as the San Diego County Credit Union Pointsettia Bowl. I know you look forward to that every year.
• Conference championship games are a bit in limbo here. A conference would be free to have one or not have one, but if they had one it would subject their top two teams to having a competitive game and beating up each other right before the playoffs. It also means you could potentially end up with two teams playing each other again (i.e. Bama-Florida in the 2nd round of the above scenario).
• Ranking 119 teams is downright insane. The good thing is who would really care about anyone past 26 except for the teams past 26. Computers could always solve the 26-119 range, but that doesn't seem right.

The other thing I really like about this is it puts more onus on the individual conferences and bowls to make the best decisions for their financial stability. The NCAA ends up being a loose federation with an overall framework and rule book for the sport, but the organizations associated with it are responsible for their own rise or fall from success (say what you will about that philosophy, I'm a free market type so it makes sense to me).

Here are the other brackets I made up. In this mythical world I created, Penn State wins the National Championship for the 3rd time (WHOOOO!!!!!, again please let me have my dreams) and Ohio State still can't win a BCS game even against a mid-major. Again, I doubt this will ever happen (except the Ohio State losing part), but I thought it would be a fun exercise to try to come up with something viable. More than anything this proves most people could scribble down a better system on a cocktail napkin than what currently exists. Anyway, I welcome comments on this. If you have any suggestions on how to cover for the bad parts I identified, feel free to suggest ways to improve it.





















One other quick note, even though I took some shots at different schools, please take it in stride. I mean it all in good fun.