A BCS Playoff: The Best of Both Worlds

Many do not like the way that college football handles the way it decides a national champion.  I do not agree that a playoff is a be-all end all when it comes to problems with the system but I do acknowledge that the pre-season coaches poll does more damage than anything else to what is a great regular season.

Each year we get to hear from the D-1 coaches on who is the best team in the nation.  This is being decided based on the season before, nothing from what has happened on the field of play during the current season.  It is also because of this poll that we see so many teams having a bone to pick with the NCAA at the end of the regular season.

The way this years preseason poll is set up, it gives all higher rated teams a headstart on the season.  There are many things that should go into deciding who plays for a national championship at the end of the season, the projections of how good a team should be is something that should not be taken into effect and unfortunately that is how it is currently set up.

Just looking at this years poll look at a team like West Virginia who enters week one ranked #8 in the nation.  A bad rating?  Not by any means but this preseason rating could very possibly be what costs them a chance to play for the national championship in January.

Even if every team currently rated above West Virginia loses one game during the year and the Mountaineers go unbeaten that they will have a chance to play for the title?  No.  In a perfect world the Mountaineers would be granted a chance to play for the title but in the world we live in the teams ranked above them for the most part would not fall far enough in the rankings after losing one game to have West Virginia surpass them.

If the season goes anything like Georgia losing one game only, USC sneaking by an otherwise unbeaten Ohio State, and USC then losing a game later on in Pac 10 play we could very well face this problem.  That does not even take the Big XII powers of Mizzou and Oklahoma into effect.

With that being a scenario that could very likely play out this year I feel with it you would not see an unbeaten West Virginia team in the national title game and that is a crime.  Sure they do not play in the best conference in the country but they would be deserving to play in the title game.

West Virginia is just one of several teams you could make an example out of in this situation.  A team should not enter a season having to wait for others to lose in order to play for a national championship, as long as they take care of their own business.  With the way the system works today that is not the case and is in large part due to the preseason poll.

If I ran the world we would set something up along the lines of a BCS-Playoff.  How does that work you ask?  Lets take a look.

After for a feeling there should be no college football playoff for the majority of my life, I feel that there should now be a playoff to some extent.  Eight teams would be too many for me but six I would not have a problem with it.

To solve these six teams, you simply would take the winners of the six BCS conferences and they would become eligible.  You would also then take any mid-major or independent teams that ran the season unbeaten or very impressively and have a group decide the six teams from there who deserve to be in the playoff.

That way meaning a conference championship would still mean something to teams instead of like when Nebraska couldn't win the Big XII in 2001 but still played for the national title, or like last year when many Georgia supporters felt they deserved a title shot.

Then in the event there is a team from a weaker conference that wins its conference but was not impressive in doing so, they could be in jeopardy of losing their spot to a non-BCS team who was possibly more impressive.  An example of this would be the 2004 season where we saw a 7-5 Pitt Panthers team win the Big East and play in the Fiesta Bowl against Utah.

In my system, Pitt would be in jeopardy of not having a chance to play for the title and Utah would have been one of those teams with a chance of replacing them.  With this being the case it would keep the integrity and demands of the regular season in college football so high.

No team would be safe nearly any week and the underdogs and mid-majors would also not automatically be left out.  Wish you could have seen Boise State get a chance to play for a National Title a couple years ago?  With this system they would have had the chance to unseat a less deserving BCS Conference Champion like Wake Forest or even Oklahoma that year.

To more thoroughly show how this would work, lets look at 2007's final BCS poll and conference standings:

Ohio State, LSU, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma, USC, and West Virginia all won the BCS conferences and Hawaii was the only unbeaten mid-major.  Depending on the pollsters votes, we could see the six teams selected be OSU, LSU, VT, Oklahoma, USC and Hawaii.  (I am only using this as an example, not hate being shown towards anyone I promise).

The six teams would then be seeded according to vote totals, one through six.  Lets just say it went OSU, LSU, VT, Oklahoma, USC, and Hawaii.  They would then be placed in the BCS Playoffs which would look as follows:

FIRST ROUND

1. Ohio State (bye)

3. Virginia Tech vs. 6. Hawaii (Sugar Bowl)

4. Oklahoma vs. 5. USC (Orange Bowl)

2. LSU (bye)

SECOND ROUND

Ohio State vs. 3/6 Winner (Rose Bowl)

LSU vs. 4/5 Winner (Fiesta Bowl)

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP

Semi Final Winners at Alternating BCS Stadium, exactly how national title game is rotated today.

Will it ever happen in our lifetimes?  It seems inevitable but it is something that I don't believe in until I actually see it take place.  However just take a minute and think about that.  All teams would still go into regular season games on a weekly basis that absolutely matter.  One mess up could still cost a team the national title and everyone would treat the regular season the same way they do today.

What this system would also do is cure us of relying so heavily on the preseason poll to decide how things may happen later in the year.  Many teams complain annually about being screwed by the system and this would be a way to fix that major issue.