The Eight Bowls of Christmas

Today NCAA Division I football is faced at least three problems—problems that are there just about every year:  the mismatch games schools generally start the season with, the blunt force trauma BCS, and the problems with academia and sports.

Mismatch Games

There is nothing more satisfying than sitting down to watch the University of Oklahoma dismantle Chattanooga 57-2.  You have to really spin it to explain who this benefits.  Yet yet year after year college football starts off with a whimper rather than a bang or even a pop.

Why do major college programs have games scheduled against teams like the Citadel, Florida Atlantic, Weber State and Chattanooga?  These games seem to be nothing more than padding for the schedule. 

In 2009 Florida drops Hawaii from its schedule and picks up Charleston Southern.  The Buccaneers do, however, look dangerous.  They were 7-5 this year pounding Edward Waters 48-6 and shutting out Coastal Carolina.  However, there might be vulnerabilities for the Gators to attack.  The Bucs lost a tough one to Stony Brook, 19-20.

In week two, the Gators face the Trojans, not the ones from Southern California, but the ones from Troy.  Do you think when the athletic director was working on this schedule he got his schools confused?  Of course this will be a home game for the blue and orange, so they will have that advantage.  They couldn’t use Troy’s stadium because it seats only 30,000.

To be fair, Troy is not that bad of a team, but why not fit a Penn State, USC or and Michigan into these slots.   The games would be great ratings draws and the fans would not have to be so embarrassed.  What is this deal with the Sunbelt League that Florida has made, and how can it be undone?  Aim for the Big 12 or the Big Ten. 

Some would make the argument that after conference games; the teams need some sort of a break from things.  Well, why not drop the first week patsy games all together and use the extra game as part of a playoff.  There are already conference championships in scheduled in many cases. 

Observers have long searched for ways to make the BCS more palatable, one way which includes making a workable playoff system.

Fixing the BCS

Let’s look at a reasonable plan for a national championship game that is true to completion and that protects the various bowl games. 

Teams should play a 10-11 game season including 7 conference games and possibly one conference championship game.  

The 10-11 games also includes 

• Seven conference games
• A conference championship game where warranted
• One non-conference rivalry game against a state opponent or whomever (Texas vs. Texas A&M); 
  
• And two or three non-conference games against teams from the same tier of Division I (Oklahoma vs. Penn State, not Oklahoma vs. Liberty). 
  

The bowl game participants should be determined through a consideration of the BCS rankings and the conference winners.  There still should be a BCS Poll, determined by the guidelines already in place. 

The BCS poll would be used to determine seeds.  The BCS already assumes in a way that there is a playoff system in place, played over the season and in the conference championship games.  But because the season’s results are determined largely by the polls, most people feel the system lacks precision.

Academic Inadequacy

I would recommend one change to the BCS which would likely cause a bit of controversy.  One additional ranking should be created, and should count a meager 3 percent in the final BCS. 

The school’s teams should be ranked according to overall GPA of active players.  The poll could be published by the Tuesday after the final week of regular season play, in time for the final BCS poll.  There are a number of possible effects here.  One is that academic cheating will increase.  A second is that a light will be shined on schools when sports pundits say Texas A&M might edge out the University of Florida based on GPA.

The Structure

The playoff system could be structured making use of the various bowl games that are already in place.  Take the eight biggest bowl games based on market size. 

This allows for a round-robin tournament with 16 teams.  You can take the 12 conference winners and add four at-large teams.  The at-large invitations go to deserving teams that do not win their conferences or to independents (Army, Notre Dame), and that are ranked in or near the BCS Top 10 at season’s end.  The guidelines here should be as strict as possible.

A variation on this would be to take the 12 conference winners four at-large bids.  From this group and have the eight lowest ranked teams according to the BCS have a first round one game wild-card playoff.    

In the second round the surviving four go up against the top rated 4 of the BCS poll.  This rewards teams that survived to the end of the season as undefeated or having only one loss. 

The third round would then pair the tournament down to two teams, and the BCS Championship would decide the season.  The BCS Championship could be a bowl on rotation or a non-bowl game.  

·         OPTION A: Utilizes eight bowl games plus the BCS Championship Game

·         OPTION B: Utilizes four bowl games plus the BCS Championship Game

Worst case scenario, this would mean a 15 game season for the two teams playing for the championship.  However, the championship actually is not played until the start of the next academic semester, so the impact on students is not as severe as it might seem.

A playoff system will for far to increase fan enjoyment of the game.  There are varied financial benefits to making the changes that insure the increasing and long term popularity the current bowl games.

The Benefits

A worthwhile result of this would be that in "Option A" the ratings for little watched bowl games would increase dramatically, as the winning team’s victory has an extended impact because the winners will move on to face better and better teams.

The NCAA could go a long way to create a playoff atmosphere for the games (not unlike March Madness), but promoting them together as a part of BCS Championship Series. 

The Wild-Card games could be televised in a single weekend, priming viewers for the coming bowl games. 

Games could still appear on competing networks, but should be scheduled in such a ways as to not directly compete with each other in the same time slot.  Under this scheme every game becomes more important.

This could also help to shed some meaningful light on some of the weaker conferences such as Conference USA, Sunbelt, and lately the ACC.  

Conferences often argue that their teams records would be better if they weren't always beating themselves.  This would give everyone a chance to see the best team in the Sunbelt take on an at-large team from the SEC.  This is a much better PR replacement to the patsy games most teams play at the beginning of the season. 

Breaking Down the Bowls

Bowl Games not included in the eight bowl games that make up the “playoffs” could still invite teams to play. 

The smaller market bowl games could rotate from year-to-year to be included in the playoff process.  One year the Meineke Car Care Bowl might be in, while the Alamo Bowl might not be. 

The big six bowl games (Sugar, Rose, Orange, Fiesta and the Capital One and Outback) would always be included, with four being for the second round, and two being for the third round. 

The second round could be played on or around Christmas Day while the two remaining could be played on New Year’s Day. 

The Rose Bowl could possibly be a permanent fixture on New Year’s Day.  Then the BCS championship would follow one week or more later, on the weekend.  If New Years is on Thursday, January 1st, then the BCS Championship would be held on Saturday, January 10th or perhaps Sunday, January 11th.

Teams could be placed in the various bowl games according to their geographical location when possible, to minimize the travel requirements of fans and help boost television ratings by creating a good match-up. 

For example, a California team would not very easily be invited to the Gator Bowl.   This might also help solve the conundrum of the Rose Bowl, who limits its invitations to the Big 10 and the Pac-10.

Can it Happen?

Experts and pundits have long rejected the possibility of a Division I playoff because it would mean scrapping the system that is already in place. However, if the NCAA can find a way to work with the bowls including them in a playoff system, in such a way as to increase their marketability, and so increase their revenue, then it can happen.