College Football: How to Improve Upon the Proposed 4-Team Playoff System

Finally! The commissioners of college football's BCS got together and logically pitched a four-team playoff idea to the Presidential Oversight Committee.

Unfortunately, it was a half-baked conclusion. But there is a way to improve what ails the proposed system.

This pseudo-coup the BCS made will only continue the monopolistic movement in college football.

The report from ESPN.com's Heather Dinich included a quote from Virginia Tech president Charles Sterger:

"A four-team playoff doesn't go too far; it goes just the right amount...We are very pleased with this arrangement, even though some issues...remain to be finalized."

Sterger hits the nail on the head: This system doesn't go far enough, and it benefits his well-established football program.

While it's great to have a system that many fans have been pining for, this model, as it stands, is the worst of both worlds.

Although it hasn't been decided how the teams will be selected, it would be difficult to imagine that the BCS's standings and the crazily flawed "computers" formula it employs won't be the determinant.

After all, the commissioners were the ones who pitched the idea of the playoff system to the four-team committee.

They aren't stupid, and because of that, there will be an even further decrease in parity in college football for years to come, which further deepens the pockets of programs that don't even need it.

The trend of smaller schools crowding into big-name conferences will only continue because that's where the money is. However, the schools that are already established will make recruiting even more competitive.

The domino effect: Traditional powerhouses get more top recruits; the less competitive teams in the conference will grab better players as a result of conference name-recognition.

Boise State and Texas Christian are smaller schools who have established, renowned, consistently-winning programs despite less of a budget to work with.

However, both those schools are bolting to BCS conferences as well. The teams that don't will be left in the dust by the shifting college football landscape.

The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, and whomever doesn't hitch a ride on this for-profit bandwagon will be left with a broken program.

Guaranteed to diminish drastically would be the quality of football played in the "mid-major" conferences. This will create many floundering athletic departments across the country.

With these lesser schools joining bigger conferences just for profiting reasons, doesn't that diminish the underdog nature of those schools?

In a four-team playoff, there isn't enough revenue to be shared.

The incentive to join a power conference will increase, grossly large TV contracts will be signed and the "little guy" in college football will be a thing of the past.

Solution: two different eight-team brackets. Although the BCS's standings could still be used to determine these teams, it seems those computers still have a little too much sway.

For argument's sake—and the likely pending reality in the context of the BCS's commissioners presenting the playoff system as it stands—here's the model using Week 14 of last year's BCS standings for the first eight-team bracket (excluding Boise State):

1(a) LSU vs. 8(a) South Carolina

2(a) Alabama vs. 7(b) Kansas State

3(a) Oklahoma State vs. 6(a) Arkansas

4(a) Stanford vs. 5(a) Oregon

All of these games are played at neutral sites.

Now, there's a twist to the second one: The top four schools from non-BCS conferences get the top four seeds, and they have home-field advantage in the opening round games.

Their opponents are BCS conference schools which are seeded 5-8. To stay consistent, this example uses last year's Week 14 BCS standings once again:

1(b) Boise State vs. 8(b) Michigan

2(b) TCU vs. 7(b) Baylor

3(b) Houston vs. 6(b) Virginia Tech   

4(b) Southern Miss vs. 5(b) Wisconsin

After the first round of games is played, the brackets are merged and the highest seeds play the corresponding lowest seeds from the non-BCS conference bracket.

For example, say all the top seeds win their first round matchups except for TCU and Southern Miss. The second round would look like this:

1(a) LSU vs. 5(b) Wisconsin

2(a) Alabama vs. 6 (b) Virginia Tech

3(a) Oklahoma State vs. 3(b) Houston

4(a) Stanford vs. 1(b) Boise State

This system gives power to top seeds at both ends, but it also gives power to the other big schools in college football to pull off upsets along the way. The matchups are also more even.

There are obviously concerns about lengthening the season so drastically.

A solution to that: get rid of two regular season games. Cut the subdivision cupcake out of the schedule and one conference game for every team. This will even further lessen the incentive to form a super conference.

Also: cut out the conference championship games. Just use a tiebreaker like the NFL does; get over it.

What to do with the rest of the teams, you ask? Some of the big-name schools will get shafted in this system, but most do anyway without a playoff system.

The remaining teams can be used to create higher quality bowl matchups. There will be more big programs against upstart smaller ones which will take place in between each round of the playoffs.

Under this system, if recruits didn't get the big-time programs they wanted, and didn't feel like joining a garbage project team within a power conference, they could go to a school in a non-BCS conference.

Recruits would have a better chance to play early, dominate their non-BCS conferences and make a name for lesser programs in the postseason.

It would be a huge win for smaller schools and would help grow college football as a whole, and it would make the game much more fun and competitive outside of the current prominent conferences.

The best part of this system: ultimately preventing a monopoly over college football between big conferences, corporate TV networks and BCS commissioners.