Mark Cuban Is Not Far Off on a Playoff for the BCS...But Here Is a Better Idea

The owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, told ESPN Dallas Wednesday Night that he wanted to have a 12 or 16 team playoff in college football to determine a national champion.  Cuban went on to say he wanted the BCS replaced with that playoff format.  The format would consist of picking 12 or 16 teams to take part in playoff.  No specifications were given on how those teams would be picked by Cuban. 

However, I have an idea that works!  There are currently 120 schools that play Division One Football.  Out of those 120 only 69 of those teams get an automatic bid to a BCS game for winning their conference or winning a certain number of games-which is what Notre Dame has to do.  This includes the re-alignments for 2012.  That leaves 51 teams having to go undefeated just to get a sniff of a BCS game and there is still no guarantee they get in even if they do go unbeaten. 

With this being said I have a drastic and effective solution.  The first thing that must be done is to form eight 14 team conferences with two divisions in each.  You can call the conferences whatever sets your heart on fire but what this does is allows teams to play a 12 game schedule which includes 6 conference division games, two extra conference games outside your division and then four games outside your conference. 

The winner of each division then square off in a conference championship game and then take those eight conference winners and put them in a playoff.  I have long been a believer that you should not be eligible to play for a national championship if you did not even win your own conference.  This ensures that happens. 

With eight 14 team conferences that gives us 114 schools that have a legitimate shot every year at a national title.  That is far better than only 69.  The remaining six teams that make up the 120 division schools would placed down to the FCS. 

How would you decide which six teams would have to play down you ask?  Well very simply-it would be based on wins in the last 10 years.  The school with the six lowest amounts of wins would be asked to step down.  This would be a good thing all around for all parties.  Not only would it make these schools football programs competitive, but it would create a lot more buzz for the FCS having former Division One schools in the league. 

Also, you would re-evaluate every five years.  The NCAA would need to set a certain amount of wins a team would need to meet in a five year period to maintain their eligibility in Division One.  If a team did not meet the specifications then you have them step down to FCS and allow the top programs at the FCS level step up and play Division One to take the place of the team(s) that were moved down.

This is a fair system all around.  You get conference winners playing for a national title, which will be the top teams in the country.  You get a playoff system, where we don't have to guess who might be better than who.  You also get the NCAA holding the schools accountable for their programs that play Division One Football.

Perfection!