College Football FBS 8-Team Playoff: 2010-11 Edition

At the beginning of this season, I speculated on the teams that might make a hypothetical eight-team FBS playoff scenario:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/442678-college-football-preview-2010-11-playoffs-there-can-be-only-eight

I feel very proud about picking Stanford and Virginia Tech among the final eight, although in the case of Stanford, I picked them to arrive in the playoff via having won the Pac-10 championship, not by having been the 2nd-highest ranked "at-large" team.

Of course, I whiffed on the other six. C'est la vie!

And as I've done in previous years, I compare the actual pairings of the five BCS bowls with what the hypothetical quarterfinal pairings would be for an 8-team FBS playoff.

Please see another of my previous articles for a detailed explanation of this hypothetical playoff system:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/51983-broken-championship-system-heres-how-to-fix-it

Now, some people reading this might think that this year is pretty clear-cut and that the BCS actually did its job successfully. Sure, it has—if the goal is to exclude undefeated teams by virtue of whether they are part of the BCS "cartel" (Automatic Qualification) conferences.

Keep in mind that this same BCS system excluded Auburn from a chance at the title game in the 2004-05 season because it declared (based on number-crunching, not on the field) that USC and Oklahoma were better than Auburn.

Oregon has also been snubbed, being left out of a BCS bowl because of Notre Dame's inclusion in the Fiesta Bowl in 2005-06 (albeit Notre Dame was ranked 6th in the BCS rankings, while Oregon was ranked 5th, albeit not the Pac-10 champion).

Basically, every championship contender, even the "legacy" programs, has either already been screwed by the BCS system or will likely be screwed at some point in the future.

How would a playoff correct this, you ask?

Simple: Instead of only two teams gaining entry to the promised land (the BCS Championship game), eight teams are given the CHANCE to fight it out on the field to get to the promised land.

The argument shifts from the 3rd- and 4th-ranked place teams being left out to the 9th and 10th teams (which may be ranked higher than 9th and 10th in the BCS standings) being left out.

For the six AQ places in the eight-team playoff, the requirement is simple: Win the conference.

Some years, this means a team ranked very low (or not at all) in the final regular season BCS rankings gets a berth. Until the AQ criterion itself is changed, though, this is a necessary evil—perhaps the one stinking remnant of the BCS that would remain with a shift to a playoff format.

For the two at-large places, the BCS ranking comes into play. Again, unless consistently poor regular-season performances are taken into account and conferences such as the Big East and/or ACC lose their AQ status, there will only be two at-large spots available.

Note that TCU has seen the system as it is and will be moving to the Big East—no doubt to be joined by Central Florida, East Carolina and perhaps even prodigal son Temple at some future date.

Please note that other than the change in function from one-off bowl games to quarterfinals for the four BCS bowl sites, the bowl system is left unchanged.

So, having explained how the teams arrive in the eight-team FBS playoff, I now turn to the 2010-11 actual pairings in the BCS bowls and the hypothetical quarterfinals.

Actual pairings:

• BCS Championship: (1) Auburn (SEC) vs. (2) Oregon (Pac-10)
• Sugar Bowl: (6) Ohio State vs. (8) Arkansas (both at-large)
• Orange Bowl: (4) Stanford (at-large) vs. (13) Virginia Tech (ACC)
• Rose Bowl: (3) TCU (at-large) vs. (5) Wisconsin (Big "10")
• Fiesta Bowl*: (7) Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. (NR) Connecticut (Big East); *=at same site as BCS Championship

Quarterfinals:

• Rose Bowl: (2) Oregon (Pac 10) vs. (5) Wisconsin (Big "10")
• Fiesta Bowl: (7) Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. (4) Stanford (at-large)
• Sugar Bowl: (1) Auburn (SEC) vs. (NR) Connecticut (Big East)
• Orange Bowl: (13) Virginia Tech (ACC) vs. (3) TCU (at-large)

"Losers": (6) Ohio State, (8) Arkansas, (9) Michigan State, (10) Boise State

Teams in bold are in the actual BCS bowl game pairings, but would not make the hypothetical quarterfinals and so are among the "losers."

In this case, there is an obvious choice for the "Best of the Rest" bowl game: Ohio State vs. Arkansas. In previous articles/editions, I've suggested that this non-playoff game could be included as the "5th" BCS bowl game (since the four sites retain their elite position) and have a correspondingly high monetary payoff.

In past years, I've suggested the *old* Cotton Bowl site or the Aloha Bowl in Hawaii as possible locations for this "Best of the Rest" non-playoff bowl. The status-quo friendly alternative would be to have this non-playoff bowl rotate among the four BCS bowl sites, as the BCS Championship Game currently does.

However, the "Football Final Four" (semifinals and final) should still take place at one non-BCS site, chosen by the NCAA in a similar fashion to the Final Four location for the Div. I basketball tournament, or put in one fixed location as is done with the title games for FCS (Div. I-AA), Div. II, and Div. III, as well as the College World Series.

At the beginning of this year, I suggested Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, TX, as this could also make an excellent fixed location for a "Football Final Four" (at least travel-wise), at least until a better stadium comes along.