Death to the BCS: Birth to a College Football Playoff System

The BCS needs to be burned to the ground.  In its place a College Football playoff system needs to arise like a Phoenix from the ashes.  I am going to break down the pros and cons of the current BCS system and then give the details of the new College Football playoff system I am proposing.  The majority of the sports watching population wants a playoff system including President Obama, Mark Cuban and yours truly.  Give the people what they want, and feel free to send this to President Obama or Cuban so that they can hire me to be the National Sports Czar or as a consultant to bring down the BCS.

The BCS is bad.  It was created before the 1998 college football season.  However, the previous system was even worse.  In the previous system, conference champions were restricted to certain bowl games.  This led to the No. 1 and No. 2 teams not playing each other the majority of the time in a bowl game.  The obvious problem being that, for many years, a true national champion would be near impossible to determine.  This led to split national championships in 1990 (Colorado and Georgia Tech), 1991 (Miami (FL) and Washington) and 1997 (Michigan and Nebraska) in just the 1990s alone.

Since the inception of the BCS, there has only been one split national championship (2003 LSU and USC).  However, even one is too much.  To make matters worse, each of the last two years the bowl games ended with two undefeated teams.  In 2010 we had Auburn and TCU, and in 2009 we had Alabama and Boise State.  2009 saw FIVE teams go into the bowl games undefeated (Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, Boise State, and TCU).  Yet only two of them got to play for all the marbles.  Currently Auburn and TCU sit unblemished, and yet we will never get to see them play.  The madness needs to end.
 
Here are the pros; It does a better job of determining a national champion than the previous system that was in place as described above.  While doing so it still tried to maintain the history of bowl game affiliations that have existed for decades.  This history of affiliation is what makes college football so special.  Those are the pros.  If the best you can do is say that you stink less then your predecessor, you aren't doing a very good job.

Here are the cons.  The most glaring one is that the BCS system breaks antitrust laws.  That is why lawsuits have been brought against it and Congress has looked into the situation.  It restricts the ability of teams from non-power conferences to compete for millions of dollars.  Boise State and TCU finished undefeated each of the last two years, yet didn't have a chance to play for the national championship.  What more could you ask from them?  They beat each and every team on their schedule.

Second, the process for determining the top two teams is flawed at best.  If there are only two undefeated teams in the country and they are both from BCS conferences, the decision is easy.  However, that is rarely the case.  Too often we are comparing one-loss teams from multiple conferences and trying to argue the merits of each one.  There is no way to determine which of those one-loss conference champions deserves it more than another. 

Finally, the vast majority of the bowl games have been made irrelevant.  Teams have nothing to play for beyond bragging rights.  That is fine if we are talking about the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, but not the Orange Bowl. 
 
Before I get into the specifics of my playoff proposal I need to mention the main arguments used against a playoff system.  A playoff renders the regular season irrelevant.  A playoff would destroy the bowl system; a playoff would add too many games to the season; a playoff would drag out the season for too long, taking kids out of the classroom for too long; a playoff would result in less revenue.  I will address each of these claims in my proposal below.
 
I am proposing an eight-team playoff with the following participants: the conference champion from each of the current six BCS conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, and SEC), the highest ranked team from a non BCS conference (Mountain West, Conference USA, WAC, MAC, Sun Belt and this includes independents like Notre Dame, BYU, Army, and Navy), and then finally the best remaining wild card team with no conference requirements.  The seeding for those eight teams can be based on the current BCS system.
 
The playoff games will take place in the bowl games themselves.  The seven bowl games selected will be the current 5 BCS bowls (Fiesta, Orange, Rose, Sugar and BCS Championship) plus the Cotton Bowl and the Peach Bowl.  I know the Peach Bowl is now known as simply the Chick-fil-A Bowl.  However, as part of this deal they are required to bring the name Peach back to the title.  They can still sponsor the bowl and include their name as well, because quite frankly Chick-fil-A is delicious, but for the rest of this article it will be referred to as the Peach Bowl.

Each of the first six bowl game/playoff games need to be assigned a conference based on history.  The ACC gets the Peach Bowl, the Big East gets the Orange Bowl, the Big 12 gets the Cotton Bowl, the SEC gets the Sugar Bowl, the Big Ten and Pac 12 get the Rose Bowl and the top non-BCS team gets the Fiesta Bowl.  You use a BCS type ranking system for the eight teams involved and come up with a traditional 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, 3 vs. 6, and 4 vs. 5 matchup in the first round.  Bowl game assignment goes to the team with the higher ranking with this lone exception: a Big Ten vs. Pac 12 matchup supersedes a higher ranked Big Ten or Pac 12 team playing a non-Big Ten or Pac 12 team.
 
Examples make this easier to visualize, so we will use this year to demonstrate.  Here are the seeds: #1 Auburn (SEC champ), #2 Oregon (Pac 10 champ), #3 TCU (best team from a non-BCS conference), #4 Stanford (wild card spot), #5 Wisconsin (Big Ten champ), #6 Oklahoma (Big 12 champ), #7 Virginia Tech (ACC champ), and #8 Connecticut (Big East champ).

Auburn-Connecticut will play in the Sugar Bowl since the bowl game goes to the team with the higher ranking.  Oregon-Virginia Tech does not go to the Rose Bowl though.  Due to the Stanford-Wisconsin matchup they will go to the Rose Bowl instead to maintain bowl history with the Big Ten and Pac 12.  TCU-Oklahoma will play in the Fiesta Bowl.  By default that leaves Oregon-Virginia Tech in the Peach Bowl since it is affiliated with the ACC champ. 

Let's say Auburn beats Connecticut, Stanford beats Wisconsin, TCU beats Oklahoma and Oregon beats Virginia Tech.  That leaves matchups of Auburn vs. Stanford and Oregon vs. TCU.  Auburn and Stanford will play in the Orange Bowl and TCU and Oregon will play in the Cotton Bowl.  This would normally revert to conference affiliations, but neither the Big East nor Big 12 won, so a selection committee would pick between the two. 

Let's say Auburn beats Stanford and TCU beats Oregon.  We now get to see Auburn play TCU in the McDonald's National Championship Game.  By creating a playoff system, I improved the matchups in six of the seven bowl games (the lone exception being the Sugar Bowl since Connecticut stunk so much this year).  This creates a domino effect to the lower bowl games as well.  Ohio State and Arkansas would now match up in the Capital One Bowl instead of the Sugar Bowl.  Most bowl games will get slightly better teams than they previously would have.

As you can see the bowl games haven't been destroyed.  They have been enhanced with better matchups and more meaning.  The regular reason has not been made irrelevant.  Every game matters as it affects your standing in your conference (and hence your shot at the playoffs), your shot at the one wild card spot and your seeding for the playoffs.  Too many games were not added.  The four teams that lose in the first round will play exactly the same amount of games that they play in the current system.  In this case Stanford and Oregon played one extra game and Auburn and TCU played two extra games than they normally would have.  However, schools are typically allowed to play an extra game if they go play Hawaii.  TCU didn't even have to worry about a championship game for their conference so they wouldn't have to worry about extra games as much either. 

As for this being dragged out and affecting the students, this is when the games would take place.  The four first round games would take place two weeks after the regular season ended.  This year would have been Saturday Dec. 18th.  Imagine a quadruple header that day with games starting at 12, 3, 6, and 9.  What a glorious day of football.  You play the semifinal games about two weeks later on New Year's Day to maintain tradition. 

The championship game would be played a week after that so the season would end at the same time it does now.  As for the absurd claim that this would generate less money?  Balderdash.  Tostitos isn't going to pay less money for the rights to sponsor the Fiesta Bowl.  None of the sponsors will.  If anything, they would be willing to pay more money.  TV networks would be salivating at this proposal as well.  They aren't paying any less money either.  If you think fan demand, and therefore ticket sales, will plummet, well then I have some magic beans I would like to sell you.  This is a win-win situation for everyone.  Let's hope someone influential is listening.