College Football's Future: A Playoff System We Can All Agree To

The Future of College Football

Article written by: Nick Rossomando, December 7^th 2010 12:58am EST.

            For years now, the BCS has been a subject of criticism, a system that stirs up some of the most controversy in sports. College football lets the BCS continue to determine who gets a chance to be crowned champion based on technology. Since when is it that technology knows more about football than people do? Since when is it that we let technology decide who is the greatest? If technology got to decide these things, nobody would have gotten to see one of the greatest upsets of all time when the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl, and I am a Patriots fan so that hurts to say, but it was an unbelievable upset. Instead it would have been New England versus Dallas/Green Bay for the Super Bowl, whichever team the computers decided was best.

To avoid something as horrible as that we have the playoff system in place. In the NFL, teams get rewarded for winning their division, and then the 2 next best teams from each conference get rewarded with a wild card berth. A system that works pretty well in determining who is really the best team in the NFL.

Let’s take a look at the BCS and how they determine a champion. The computers decide who the best 2 teams are and they play a game. Sounds like a good system right? Not so much. What happens when, for example last year, there are 5 teams that have finished their seasons undefeated (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU and Boise State)? Three undefeated teams are not going to even get the chance to show they should be champion. What about in 2004 when Auburn was the third wheel and computers chose USC and Oklahoma for the title game instead? It leaves sports fans thinking “what if” and “if we had a chance to show everybody”, but that’s too bad, the computers decided that you weren’t going to get that chance so get over it, maybe next year.

Sports are played on the field, not on a computer, and not on paper. A team should not be penalized a chance to compete for a national championship just because a computer thinks that there are 2 teams better than them. And for this to happen, a playoff needs to be implemented into college football.

The biggest argument being put out by the BCS is that by getting rid of the “bowl season”, money would be lost in college football, when, in fact, money would be gained with playoffs. There are so many bowls in place, but only many of the higher caliber bowl games actually profit schools, while a playoff would profit schools and college football greatly. The schools who host the home games can keep the money earned off of everything (ticket sales, merchandise, ect.) and the TV ratings will be through the roof as fans will be more into it knowing that it’s a playoff and during a playoff, it’s a do or die, win and move on or lose and go home, the intensity is at a high and it’s what fans look forward to. The money made from TV ratings will be split. The television channel broadcasting the game will get say 50% of the money made, each team playing in the game will get 10% of the money, and the remaining 30% will get split in half, and distributed equally among the remaining teams in each conference involved in the game.  For example, in a matchup between Auburn and FIU, game played at Auburn. Any ticket sales, merchandise, ect. is Auburn's to keep and do whatever they want with. The money made from TV ratings, broadcasting, ect. will be split. 50% will go to the television stations. Both Auburn and FIU will receive 10% and then the SEC will get 15% to give out equally between the remaining 11 SEC schools and the Sun Belt will get 15% to give out equally between the remaining 8 Sun Belt schools.

People will remember, for example, a Nevada upsetting say an Oklahoma in a semi final playoff game, but nobody is going to remember that same upset if it comes in a bowl game. Why? Because if you lose a bowl game your season is over, but your season is also over if you win. Bowl games are just exhibition games for teams that don’t get placed into the national championship. They have no meaning.

So with all of this talk about a playoff system, let me finally get into it. It is a complicated thing to deal with since many people would need to be happy with the system for it to get put into place. I’m going to start off with rankings. Rankings are something that will never go away so for the playoff system, the AP rankings will be used. People, and not computers, make the AP rankings, and that needs to stay in place since one of my main points is going away from “technology determining which school is ranked ahead of who”. So in this system the AP top 25 will be used for our rankings.

The playoff consists of 16 schools. Within those 16, the 11 conference champions get an automatic qualifying spot as a reward for winning their conference and to keep the importance in winning the conference you play in. With that being said, the “independents” do not get an automatic qualifying spot and this rule applies to Notre Dame, they will not receive special treatment. With this, it causes the independent schools to join a conference if they want a chance at that AQ.

The last 5 spots open will be rewarded to the 5 highest ranked teams in the AP poll that did not win their conference. For example this years teams qualifying would look like this:

1. Automatic Qualifiers

• ACC: Virginia Tech 11-2
• Big 12: Oklahoma 11-2
• Big East: Connecticut 8-4
• Big 10: Wisconsin 11-1
• C-USA: UCF 10-3
• MAC: Miami (OH) 9-4
• MWC: TCU 12-0
• Pac 10: Oregon 12-0
• SEC: Auburn 13-0
• Sun Belt: FIU 6-6
• WAC: Nevada 12-1

1. At Large Bids (AP Rank in parenthesis)

• Stanford (5) 11-1
• Ohio State (6) 11-1
• Michigan State (7) 11-1
• Arkansas (8) 10-2
• Boise State (10) 11-1

So we now have 16 schools who played well enough this season to qualify for the playoffs. Onto scheduling. To reward the schools that had the best seasons, and to keep the importance of the regular season, the school with the higher AP ranking will host the game. This home field advantage will be used for the first, second and third rounds, with the championship game being played at a neutral site. In the first 3 rounds of games, the visiting team will be complied with the normal amount of tickets for their fans as they would get for any road game. These home games are the reward for teams like Stanford or Ohio State, who had great seasons in extremely tough conferences. With that being said I will now seed the schools 1-16 and put up the matchup including when the game will be played. The teams get re-seeded based on AP ranking, and if teams aren’t in the AP top 25, the schools receiving the most votes for the top 25 get the next highest available seed and then they get seeded based on record if no votes are received for the AP poll. Example, say UCONN wasn’t in the top 25 but received 10 votes and UCF didn’t receive any, UCONN gets the higher seed.

1. Auburn 13-0
2. Oregon 12-0
3. TCU 12-0
4. Wisconsin 11-1
5. Stanford 11-1
6. Ohio State 11-1
7. Michigan State 11-1
8. Arkansas 10-2
9. Oklahoma 11-2
10. Boise State 11-1
11. Virginia Tech 11-2
12. Nevada 11-1
13. Connecticut 8-4
14. UCF 10-3
15. Miami (OH) 9-4
16. FIU 6-6

• First Round: December 18^th 2010, at Higher seeded site

16 FIU @ 1 Auburn  Dec. 18 2010

9 Oklahoma @ 8 Arkansas Dec 18 2010

11 Virginia Tech @ 6 Ohio State Dec 18 2010

13 Connecticut @ 4 Wisconsin Dec 18 2010

14 UCF @ 3 TCU Dec 18 2010

12 Nevada @ 5 Stanford Dec 18 2010

10 Boise State @ 7 Michigan State Dec 18 2010

15 Miami (OH) @ 2 Oregon Dec 18 2010

            In this first round, teams like Auburn and Oregon who had unbelievable seasons are rewarded with easier games, while teams like Virginia Tech and Connecticut, who played in weaker conferences, have to travel to Ohio State and Wisconsin who earned home games by having great seasons in tough conferences.

• Second Round: January 1^st 2011, at Higher seeded site

1) Winner 16/1 vs Winner 9/8 @ higher seed Jan 1 2011

2) Winner 11/6 vs Winner 13/4 @ higher seed Jan 1 2011

3) Winner 14/3 vs Winner 12/5 @ higher seed Jan 1 2011

4) Winner 10/7 vs Winner 15/2 @ higher seed Jan 1 2011

• Third Round (National Semifinal): January 8^th 2011, at Higher seeded site

5) Winner game 1) vs Winner game 2) @ higher seed Jan 8 2011

6) Winner game 3) vs Winner game 4) @ higher seed Jan 8 2011

• Fourth Round (National Championship): January 15^th 2011, at neutral site

Winner game 5) vs Winner game 6) @ neutral site, higher seed home team Jan 15 2011

That is what the schedule would look like, with there being a 1 week gap between rounds 1 and 2 during the Christmas week to avoid scheduling issues. To keep some feel of the old BCS Bowls, the National Championship site will be rotated every year between the Rose Bowl, University of Phoenix Stadium (site of Fiesta Bowl), Sun Life Stadium (site of Orange Bowl), and the Louisiana Superdome (site of Sugar Bowl).

Now when it’s all said and done, the National Champ and runner up can play a possible total of 17 games (12 game regular season, possible 1 game conference championship, and 4 playoff games). Some might argue this is too much football for college athletes, but there are some high schools that play 16 games, and the NFL has a regular season of 16 games and then playoffs. And with more games, come more money, more fans and more coverage. It’s all a positive thing for college football.

This playoff bracket may not be ideal, as a few prestigious schools who’s AP ranking was close to getting in but not quite (LSU, Missouri, Alabama), but it places the importance on the regular season in ways that if LSU hadn’t lost to Arkansas in the end of the year, they would have gotten the playoff spot instead of the Razorbacks. If Missouri hadn’t fell to Texas Tech, they too could be in the bracket, and if Alabama hadn’t lost early to South Carolina, they also could have made the bracket.

All conference commissioners can approve a playoff system in this format, since each conference has an automatic bid. With this system, bigger conferences such as the SEC or Big 10 would be less likely to oppose, since they can still have 2 or 3 teams each in the bracket. The small conferences would want to agree to this since they’d get a team in every year no matter what, and that would give the conference recognition.

The system at hand not only fairly determines the national champion of college football while giving all worthy schools a chance, but it also gives the sport of college football a chance to make huge amounts of money. And by giving 16 schools a chance, there is an opportunity for a “Cinderella” story and schools making a dream run for the title. Fans love that. The playoffs would be the most exciting thing to happen to the sport, and there would be meaningful games played into January.

With this one playoff in place, there will also be another playoff going on, a playoff that is comparable to the NIT in college basketball. This playoff will also be a 16 team playoff, with automatic qualifying teams. The reason for this one is to get more teams playing postseason football, and have it be meaningful postseason football. Let me get into this one here.

The automatic qualifiers in this playoff go to the conference runner-ups. So those will be 11 of the 16 seeds. But lets say the runner up of a conference qualifies high enough in the AP ranking to make THE playoff, the one that counts, what do we do? Well, that team goes into the real deal playoff, and an extra at large team will get in. This playoff will be exactly the same as the one that gets played for the national championship, money wise and scheduling wise, except game dates. Below I will map out what it would look like if we had it this year.

• Automatic Qualifiers
• ACC: Florida State 9-4
• Big 12: Nebraska 10-3
• Big East: West Virginia 9-3
• Big 10: no automatic qualifier, as the runner up made the other playoff
• C-USA: SMU 7-6
• MAC: Northern Illinois 10-3
• MWC: Utah 10-2
• Pac 10: no automatic qualifier, as the runner up made the other playoff
• SEC: South Carolina 9-4
• Sun Belt: Troy 7-5
• WAC: no automatic qualifier, as the runner up made the other playoff
• Having 3 conferences not getting an automatic qualifier since their runner up’s made the other playoff, that adds 3 at large bids, so the top 8 schools to have not made the other playoff qualify for the NIT.
• At Large Bids (AP Rank in parenthesis)
• LSU (11) 10-2
• Missouri (14) 10-2
• Alabama (15) 9-3
• Oklahoma State (16) 10-2
• Texas A&M (18) 9-3
• Mississippi State (21) 8-4
• Hawaii (24) 10-3
• Maryland (30 top 25 votes) 8-4

Now I will re-seed the schools based on AP rankings, votes received and record.

1. LSU 10-2
2. Missouri 10-2
3. Alabama 9-3
4. Oklahoma State 10-2
5. Nebraska 10-2
6. Texas A&M 9-3
7. South Carolina 9-4
8. Utah 10-2
9. Mississippi State 8-4
10. West Virginia 9-3
11. Florida State 9-4
12. Hawaii 10-3
13. Maryland 8-4
14. Northern Illinois 10-3
15. SMU 7-6
16. Troy 7-5

• SMU gets the higher ranking then Troy because they reached their conference championship game.

And now to scheduling. To avoid conflict on the Saturdays where the other playoff is played, the NIT tournament will play their games on Thursday and Friday nights. Here is what the schedule would look like.

• First Round Games, Dec. 16,17 @ Higher seeded site

16) Troy @ 1) LSU Dec 16 2010

9) Mississippi State @ 8) Utah Dec 16 2010

11) Florida State @ 6) Texas A&M Dec 17 2010

13) Maryland @ 4) Oklahoma State Dec 17 2010

14) Northern Illinois @ 3) Alabama Dec 16 2010

12) Hawaii @ 5) Nebraska Dec 16 2010

10) West Virginia @ 7) South Carolina Dec 17 2010

15) SMU @ 2) Missouri Dec 17 2010

• Second Round Games, Dec 30,31 @ Higher seeded site

1) Winner 16/1 vs Winner 9/8 @ Higher seed Dec 30

2) Winner11/6 vs Winner 13/4 @ Higher seed Dec 30

3) Winner 14/3 vs Winner 12/5 @ Higher seed Dec 31

4) Winner 10/7 vs Winner 15/2 @ Higher seed Dec 31

• Third Round Games (NIT semifinal), Jan 6,7 2011 @ Higher seed site

5) Winner game 1) vs Winner game 2) @ Higher seed Jan 6

6) Winner game 3) vs Winner game 4) @ Higher seed Jan 7

• NIT Championship Game, Jan 14, @ Neutral Site
• This game will also be played at one of the 4 sites listed above for the other playoffs national championship (Rose Bowl, New Orleans, Phoenix, Miami), but will not be played at the same venue as the other playoffs championship. This location will also rotate every year.

Winner game 5) vs Winner game 6) @ Neutral Site, higher seeded school home team Jan 14

Basically everything for this playoff is the same, the money sharing, the way teams get in, and the way it’s run. The only differences are that more at large bids can be obtainable if a conference runner up makes it into the other playoff, and the dates of the games are different. This extra NIT tournament adds the element of more competitive postseason football for more schools. This playoff has meaning as there is a champion crowned when all is said and done.

These two playoff systems can correct the postseason of college football. We can correctly crown a school "National Champions", and also eliminate any doubt that they didn't deserve that title. This system has 32 schools playing postseason football, and provides a ton of excitement for a whole lot of fans.