Path to a Playoff: The 5 Changes That Must Be Made in College Football

It’s good that the BCS has finally begun the process of redesigning the Division I FBS national championship—it took them long enough.

I’m excited, just like every other football fan, to hear that a football Final Four is a probable outcome of the talks that occurred in the BCS meetings last week and that will take place over the next month or so in the various colleges and conferences.

Quite frankly, though, I don’t trust the BCS to carry a playoff plan to complete fruition. I think that it will most likely end up giving in and granting the public a Final Four in 2014, but I don’t anticipate it allowing any sort of eight-team playoff.

Similarly, there are a lot of problems inherent in the BCS’s model of running things, such as the ranking system, big-conference bias and the bowl system.

Because the current climate in college football allows me the opportunity, I’m writing a series of articles addressing the requirements of any organization that would put itself in charge of what is currently know as the bowl subdivision of NCAA football.

These articles, while presenting advice for the current administration, also postulate my ideal scenario—a world without the BCS. I will link the articles back here as I write them.

The five things that the BCS, or any organization that succeeds it, needs to address are as follows:

1. A relatively fair ranking system needs to be introduced.

2. A playoff must be created and regulated.

3. Historic bowl games should be preserved.

4. The current bowl system should be refined. 

5. The artificial division between the FBS and the FCS should be eliminated or made definite by a separation into two distinct divisions.

College football needs to make changes on these fronts in order to bring the sport up-to-date while preserving the dignity of a historic system that is nearly a century-and-a-half old.