Bleacher Report - Articles by Daniel Deceuster

The Case for a College Football Playoff

Daniel Deceuster — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:09:43 -0400

It’s coming, and it will be here before you know it: yet another great and exciting college football season filled with controversy. College football is still the only major sport to not implement some kind of playoff or postseason tournament.

Why you ask? Good question.

We know that college football has deep tradition. The game was first played back in the 1860’s sometime, so it’s been around a while.

But here’s the thing about it. Throughout its illustrious history, college football has evolved. Rules have changed, conferences have come and gone, NCAA divisions were implemented, polls and rankings came into play, and even the BCS was formed in 1998 to “fix” the Bowl Alliance.

College football is no stranger to change. Whenever it has been in the best interest of the sport, it has changed.

So why—when a playoff is so obviously in the best interest of the sport—has nothing changed?

The answer is that a few select, powerful people have stopped this solution from becoming a reality.

The Pac-10 and Big Ten commissioners are two of them. They don’t want a playoff because they don’t want to take away from the money making machines known as the Rose Bowl and other BCS games.

In fact, the people who don’t want it to change are those on the top who control everything about it, including a large majority of the revenues generated by the current system.

If only they knew what they were missing! A playoff can happen, and it can generate a whole lot more revenue. Here’s how:

1. First, college football must become akin to other major sports, (ie: some sort of uniform divisions/conferences). Winning the eight-team Big East is in no way comparable to winning the ACC with a conference championship game to top it off.

Conferences need to become somewhat uniform so that winning one conference is comparable to winning another.

2. The season must begin the last Saturday of August and end with Rivalry Week just before Thanksgiving. Conference championships would be Thanksgiving weekend.

3. Conference champions are automatically into the tournament. At-large bids are given to the highest ranked non-conference champions in the BCS rankings until there are 16 teams.

4. The first weekend in December, the tournament starts. Higher ranked seeds get home-field advantage. This continues into the second week in December.

5. At this point, other bowls select their teams the way the current bowl season goes. Teams already eliminated from the playoff can compete in these bowls. Playoff takes a two week break.

6. On New Years Day, the semi-finals take place. Winners play in the national championship the following week. The two semi-final games are home games for the higher ranked teams. The championship game rotates stadiums much like the Super Bowl.

Think if USC and OSU played in the Rose Bowl next season. Each team would get a big cut of the revenues generated and a lot of money would go to their conferences, the BCS, and the television network broadcasting the game.

Now think if USC and OSU are seeded 1-2 in the tournament and go all the way to the championship. Each team would have played three home games to get there.

Think of how much revenue goes straight to the school—much more than just the one Rose Bowl game that divides the revenue so many ways.

A playoff is definitely coming, it’s only a matter of when. The stale arguments against it never make any meaningful point.

The regular season will still mean something. It can mean the difference between winning the conference and losing the conference.

It can be the difference between an No. 8 seed in the playoffs or a No. 15 seed.

The season will go no longer than it does now. Only a few teams will play more games, as the playoff doesn’t involve very many teams.

The bowls are untouched and operate as normal. Nothing changes except that the teams with the best seasons get a chance to prove on the field that they deserve to be the national champions.

And don’t say the regular season is a playoff. I think Boise State and Utah might disagree with you.

Remember them? The ones who both had undefeated seasons yet didn’t get to play for the championship?

A BCS Proposal for the Plus-One Model

Daniel Deceuster — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:58:20 -0400

The Plus-One Model had some momentum in college football recently but never made it to serious consideration. But the BCS needs to be fixed, and since a playoff is never going to happen while the BCS exists, we should be thinking of ideas to help the situation.

But those idea must be in the framework of the BCS and college football as it currently is.

I don’t understand why the Plus-One Model is so bad. I have a proposal that would implement some changes that would improve college football overall. The BCS was definitely a step in the right direction in trying to determine a national champion and make competitive bowl games.

But since the BCS can never definitively pick the two best teams every year, its time to try something else. Here is what I propose.

First, a new conference should be formed.

The only BCS busters have come from the MWC and the WAC. There are great schools in those two conferences, but top to bottom they aren’t good enough to compete with the big boys. So we form the Big Mountain Conference by combining teams from the MWC and the WAC. Here’s the setup:

North

Boise State
Utah
BYU
Colorado State
Nevada
Hawaii

South
TCU
Fresno State
UNLV
New Mexico
Houston (from C-USA for Louisiana Tech)
Air Force

The MWC is no more and is replaced by the Big Mountain Conference. The WAC now consists of:

San Jose State
San Diego State
Wyoming
Idaho
Utah State

Also add the five-team Great West Conference from the FCS:

Cal Poly
UC Davis
North Dakota
South Dakota
Southern Utah

They would jump at the chance to be in the FBS. Ok, that’s the first big change to make sure all the great programs in the country have an equal chance and equal access to the championship.

The second change would be to put Notre Dame, Army and Navy into the depleted Big East Conference. It’s a joke that they have an automatic bid with only eight teams, and not many are exactly standouts.

This would make the conference winner have accomplished similar things as other BCS conferences.

Now we have a new power conference whose champion gets an automatic bid to the BCS. We have a stronger Big East so that all seven BCS conference champions went through similar schedules to win their conferences. So what does this have to do with the Plus One?

Let’s take a look.

The BCS will first add the Cotton Bowl as its fifth bowl. Now we can allow 10 teams into non-championship BCS bowl games. They will be determined as follows:

1) All seven BCS conference champions will play in BCS bowls.

2) The highest ranked non-BCS conference champion will be invited to a bowl game if they are ranked higher than No. 15.

3) The remaining two (or three) at-large bids will go to the highest ranked teams who did not win their conferences.

4) No conference will be allowed more than two teams in the BCS bowls.

Now we have 10 teams playing in the five BCS bowls. The BCS would seed all 10 teams as 1-10. The matchups would be 1-6, 2-7, 3-8, 4-9, 5-10. This keeps all the games competitive.

Also, if done traditionally, a No. 1 beating a No. 10 doesn’t look as good as the No. 5 beating the No. 4, so No. 1 would inherently be at a disadvantage for playing the weaker opponent.

These BCS bowl games would be played on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. They would be the last bowl games of the bowl season. Other bowls would proceed as normal, free to do any type of conference tie-in they see fit.

After the final BCS bowl, the BCS will rerank all the teams. The two teams ranked No. 1 and No. 2 will then play each other the following Saturday, but at least six days must pass between the last BCS bowl and the championship game.

The site of the championship will rotate between the five BCS bowls.

This gives us a postseason of sorts. It guarantees good matchups between good programs. It also validates the championship game as being “earned” in a sense.

The season is not stretched out at all as the championship game is still played at the same time. Great teams who don’t win their conferences (2008 Texas and Ohio State) can still play each other and potentially earn a spot to the title game if the conference champions lost some non-conference games.

It still maintains a bit of controversy, just like we like it in college football. The drama is still there. The regular season is still just as important, as one loss could devastate a championship campaign.

All the great programs in the country have a great chance to get into a BCS bowl. It's a win-win-win for everyone involved. Plus the addition of that extra BCS bowl will bring in a ton of money.

What are everyone’s thoughts?

A BCS Solution: The Big West Conference

Daniel Deceuster — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:43:16 -0400

There is a solution to the BCS that will allow qualified teams to compete at the highest level of college football. Currently, non-BCS conferences are unable to ever compete for the national championship, as we have seen both Utah and Boise State have two undefeated regular seasons and not get invited to the championship game.

The only thing you can do is beat everyone you play. If you are the only one to do this, you should be rewarded for it, plain and simple. The only problem is, the WAC and MWC aren’t viewed as “strong” conferences from top to bottom. So going undefeated in those conferences doesn’t quite mean as much to the pollsters.

Enter the new proposal for a Big West Conference. Basically, just combine the MWC and WAC. Completely dissolve the MWC and redo the WAC, to be more precise. Here’s what I mean.

Between Hawaii, Fresno State, Utah, BYU, Boise State, and TCU, there are six teams that have been ranked pretty regularly. By that I mean of those six, there are always at least two of them ranked at any given time. What if all of them were put in the same conference? You could easily get an automatic BCS bid to the conference champion.

Here’s the breakdown of the proposed divisions:

North:
Boise State
Utah
BYU
Colorado State
Nevada
UNLV

South:
Fresno State
TCU
Hawaii
Air Force
San Diego State
New Mexico

Those teams not invited to the Big West stick around to form the new WAC, which would import some FCS teams to complete the conference:

San Jose State
Wyoming
New Mexico State
LA Tech (should go to the Sun Belt)
Cal Poly
Davis
Montana State
Idaho
Utah State

You can make a conference out of that and promote some deserving FCS schools in the process. Now nine of the 12 teams in the proposed Big West were in bowl games last season. This would be a competitive conference.

The Big West could schedule it’s non-conference games with the Pac-10, WAC, and maybe some other conferences further east like the Big 12 or C-USA. Because their conference schedules are now really tough, they don’t have to play big time non-conference schedules to get attention.

Most call the SEC the best conference in football, yet we see Vanderbilt usually playing bad, and there are always those teams that don’t do so hot. Every conference will have those, so New Mexico, UNLV, and San Diego State are fine in the conference to give teams a break from a grueling schedule.

So now imagine an undefeated Utah team. They would have beaten BYU, Boise State, Nevada, Colorado State, UNLV, three others from the conference (we’ll say Air Force, Hawaii, and New Mexico), plus four non-conference teams, maybe Oregon State, Utah State, Michigan, and Arizona.

If that were Utah’s schedule and they went undefeated, then beat TCU for the conference championship, is there any question that they should play for the national title? Or even if they lost to two of those teams, if they won that conference, don’t they deserve a seat at the BCS table?

Teams in the WAC and MWC only have everything to gain by embracing this proposal. If BYU and Utah go for it, you know the whole MWC would follow suit. The WAC would still be around, just with different teams. Conference headquarters could be in Las Vegas, the site of the conference championship every year.

But this opens up another question—what about those non-BCS schools back east? Well, no one from the Sun Belt has ever been a serious contender, so that answers it for them. If anyone in C-USA wants to be taken seriously, they should join the Big East, which has plenty of room. Same goes for independents like Army or Navy. The Big East could use some teams.

So Tulsa, East Carolina, and others—join the Big East and leave Conference USA. Dilemma solved. No team in the MAC has shown enough consistency to move to the Big Ten, but that would be the likely move for them to get taken seriously.

There is a way to live with the BCS system. It may not be perfect, but we can sure try and get it as fair as possible.

The College Football Cafeteria's 2008 Champion

Daniel Deceuster — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:16:50 -0400

The Utah Utes! Congratulations for being the only FBS school to go undefeated! That’s of course not to mention how badly they trounced Alabama, a team ranked No. 1 for almost half the season.

Between Florida, USC, Utah and Texas I think the whole country would love to have seen a four team playoff after the bowl games. But alas, our current system does not allow for such things. Here at College Football Cafeteria, we are pushing for a revision of the current postseason. Check out our postseason proposals for more info.

Just a thought, think on this one: what about combining the MWC and the WAC? We drop Louisiana Tech and put them into the Sun Belt. We call it the WFC, Western Football Conference. I guess that is still 16 teams, a bit much, but not unthinkable. In the West division you have: Hawaii, San Jose State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Nevada, UNLV, Boise State and Idaho.

In the East division you have Utah, Utah State, BYU, TCU, New Mexico, Colorado State, Air Force and Wyoming. You play your division plus one conference game out of division each year. That’s eight conference games and four non-conference games.

Division winners play a conference championship. Tell me the winner of that game doesn’t deserve an automatic bid at the BCS table.

What are your thoughts?

A College Football Postseason That Can Actually Work

Daniel Deceuster — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:46:59 -0500

Before I say anything, I just want to say that the Utah Utes are my college football national champions for the 2008 season.

Why? Because college football is stuck in an archaic tradition in which the national champion is decided by a poll every year. If the AP voters get to pick their national champion, why can't I pick mine?

What we all know, though, is that the postseason of college football is long overdue for a change. Yes, some years, like in 2002, the BCS was helpful. But in other years, like 2008, the BCS was a complete mess.

Why? Because it is inherently flawed. The BCS is designed to match the two best teams from the regular season in a championship game. That's fine and dandy when in 2002 Ohio State and Miami(FL) were the only undefeated teams.

But what about this year? Utah and Boise state finished the regular season undefeated. Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech, USC, Florida, Alabama and Penn State all finished with one loss.

How in the world can the BCS claim to "know" which of those teams are the two best? Every one of them made a good case to be given consideration.

So with the thought of a college football playoff not in the agenda of the BCS, what can be done to fix this mess? The answer is a plus-one format.

Currently, the BCS matches the two best teams at the end of the regular season. A plus-one format takes the bowl season into consideration before deciding who the two best teams in the nation are.

Imagine this year if the bowls had been Florida beating Texas, Oklahoma squeaking past Ohio State, and Utah dismantling Alabama? Wouldn't the bowl season have made the case for Utah to play Florida in the title game?

Imagine a national championship where both teams did more than just win the perceived "best" conferences in college football?

So here is a postseason proposal for college football that can actually work. First, add a fifth bowl to the BCS bowls. The Cotton Bowl seems like an obvious choice. Then, create a traditional rivalry between conference champions. The following could work:

Rose Bowl: Pac 10 vs Big 10
Fiesta Bowl: Big 12 vs WAC
Sugar Bowl: SEC vs MWC
Orange Bowl: ACC vs Big East
Cotton Bowl: C-USA, Sun Belt, MAC

The two higher ranked teams between C-USA, Sun Belt and MAC can play in the Cotton Bowl. Notre Dame gets in the Cotton Bowl if they are ranked #8 or higher and are also ranked higher than at least two of those conference champions.

Now these bowls will all be played in two days to bring back some New Year's tradition. Two bowls are played on December 31 and the other three on January 1. Adjust accordingly if one of those falls on a Sunday.

Make these BCS bowls the last bowls played of the season. Once all bowls have been played, including these BCS bowls, then the BCS reranks the teams.

The plus-one format would call for the new number one and number two to play each other in the national championship game. Is it perfect? No, because there will always be controversy. But does anyone ever tune in to a bowl game their team is not playing in?

This would bring the importance of the college football regular season into the bowl season. Losing a bowl game would be more than just a disappointment like it is now; it could derail your national championship aspirations.

A playoff is the only true way to eliminate controversy in this sport, but we all know the BCS and the powers that be will not allow that to happen anytime soon.

That is, of course, unless Obama and the government intervene and cease the unfair practices of the BCS. I wouldn't hold your breath though. Until a playoff can become a reality, this plus-one proposal would be the best we could get.