Every year around this time, the debate rages as to whether Division I-A should have a playoff system, and if so, what type of structure those playoffs should have. One of the best proposals drafted to date was submitted by our own John Boughter. John's Proposal has become a hot topic of conversation in a variety of college football circles, a fact that is greeted with a great deal of pride here at the Steve St. John Home Page. We are pleased and honored to be able to present to you the plan.
Twelve Teams
John's playoffs provide for 12 teams to participate, rather than the typical proposal of 8 or 16 teams. John feels that 16 teams is too many, and that the inclusion of so many teams would devalue regular season games. Such a proposal allows 3 and even 4 loss teams into the mix, which he criticizes as "This isn't the NHL." On the other hand, if you allow conference champions to take up some of the available slots, then 8 teams is too few. Once you give away spots to the conference champions, there would only be one or two at large spots available.
Conference Champions
One of the most controversial and innovative platforms in John's proposal is how it handles conference champions. John gives a free ticket to the conference champion of 5 conferences (with some restrictions): the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, and PAC-10. John views the WAC and Big East as too unreliable: this year's WAC champion was 10-2, but is not ranked in the top 15. The Big East champion (Syracuse) has three losses. John suggests a 3 year probationary period for these two conferences, so that for the first three years, these conference champions are at the same level as the SEC, ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, and PAC-10. But they may lose this right if they do not produce contenders each year. How or who is involved in this decision is not stipulated.
But John does go a step beyond that. He suggests some minimum record for a conference champion. Eight wins or three losses was a suggested breakpoint. If the conference champion does not meet that mark, then the slot becomes an at-large slot.
At Large Slots
The remaining 5 slots (or 7 if the Big East and WAC lose their automatic spot), or more slots if conference champs don't qualify, are given out by ranking. John doesn't specify exactly how this ranking is determined, except that it should be some combination of the AP and coaches poll. Whether each poll is given equal weight, or if each voter gets equal weight, is unclear. In any event, John suggests that this very often will include the entire top ten. This year, for example, at-large berths would go to UCLA, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio State, and Kansas State, ranked between 5 and10 currently.
Round 1
Once the twelve teams have been selected, start from scratch by ranking the twelve teams 1-12 based on their position in the
polls. The first four teams would get a bye, the second eight teams would have to play. Using the AP poll exclusively for
simplicity, this year's 12 teams would be:
A typical single elimination tournament would be employed, with #12 playing at #5, #11 at #6, #10 at #7, and #9 at #8. John feels that a strength of this plan is that the first round games being played on campus would virtually guarantee a sell out.
Round 2
Again the typical format. Assuming the favorites won, #8 plays at #1, #7 at #2, etc. If the favorites don't win, it is unclear what happens, though there are three possibilities from my perspective:
1. There is a rigid tournament structure: if #12 upsets #5, then #12 claims #5's position and goes on to play #4 in the second round. This is the way the NCAA basketball tourney works.
2. The teams are reseeded each round. The lowest seed in round 1 (#12) remains the lowest seed in round 2; thus, if #12 upsets #5, then #12 essentially becomes #8 and must play #1 in round 2.
3. The teams are reranked each round. This could only be suggested in college football. Here, the playoff games are essentially treated like any college football game, so after each round (each week) AP and the coaches produce a new poll. In this scenario, if Colorado State (currently ranked at #18 in AP but seeded #12 in the tourney) might move up in the rankings by beating UCLA, just like any week during the season. Say they move up to be ranked 7th. Then, their seeding in round 2 would be determined by their rank relative to the 8 teams that survive to round 2.
Comment: I have always been a fan of the rigid tourney structure. I hate to see a team pull off an amazing upset in round 1, only to face an equally tough opponent in round 2. So I favor plan 1. However, home field advantage could still be determined by the polls, either frozen at the week before round 1, or updated weekly.
Semifinals and Finals
John suggests these games should be played at a neutral site, possibly at the major bowl venues like the Rose, Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar.
Analysis of the Proposal
One of the first criticisms I had of the plan was that it somewhat arbitrarily divided Division I-A up into three groups: the deserving conferences (ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, and PAC-10), the sort-of deserving conferences (WAC and Big East), and the undeserving conferences (Big West, MAC, and Conference USA). One of the great things about a playoff is that much of the arbitrariness is removed, so I am at heart against a priori biases such as this. In addition to the problem of leaving some conferences out is the question of why these five? To me, the SEC and Big Twelve are the most deserving of special consideration, because they are both 12-team conferences with a conference championship game. Thus, these conferences have the best chance of producing high caliber teams. If the other conferences expanded to 12 teams and had a conference championship game, it would create a symmetry that could better justify the inclusion of all 5 champions.
One solution to the problem of leaving out teams from weaker conferences is to make a special exemption for undefeated teams. If Toledo had gone 12-0, I estimate they would have been ranked between 11-15, and would therefore have missed the playoffs under the John Proposal. Yet the ideal system should give every team a chance to win it all. It is painfully unfair to leave any undefeated team out of it, because what more could they do but win every game they play? I would even take it one step farther and stipulate that any team with 1 or fewer losses be automatically included. Would that dilute the playoffs? Not this year: every one loss team is in. Looking back in recent history, it appears that it is unlikely that too many one or zero loss teams could make it to the end of the season.
One of the benefits of John's plan is that the polls remain important, but not predominant. Polls, while they are often criticized, are beneficial to college football in more ways than simply giving fans something to talk about. Polls encourage teams to play a tough schedule: look at Colorado State's ranking versus Florida's (both teams have two losses but only one is ranked in the top 15). Polls also encourage teams to play well every week. Although polls are often blamed for "running up the score", it seems entirely fair and useful to me that a team like UCLA that suffered two losses by a touchdown or less deserves to make a hypothetical 12 team playoffs while a team like Penn State that got blown out twice should miss it. John's system, it seems to me, retains the benefits of the poll while providing a more "objective" means of arriving at a national champion. It is interesting that both the polls and the playoffs maintain one disadvantage in common: the severity of a late season loss. Polls have often been blamed for unfairly punishing the late-season loss (witness Florida State's rank versus Tennessee's), but the playoff is the ultimate punisher: An undefeated Michigan could end up with nothing while an Ohio State, earlier beaten by Michigan, takes home the national championship despite two losses.
The beauty of John's proposal is that all of the top 10 teams are covered, and there is a mechanism for teams with a tough loss or two to fight it out and win. But he has avoided for the most part diluting the meaningfulness of the regular season. Sure, no one game is all-or-none like it used to be (witness: North Carolina survives to play again in John's plan), but you can't push it too far. The Penn State-Michigan State game would have become all or none, giving college football some flavor of the pennant race (especially before baseball diluted its regular season with the wild card) in addition to the excitement of a playoff.
A final consideration is that this is a fan's plan, and as such does not address Reality. Reality being that part of sports that has to do with big money and TV exposure. How are the revenues distributed? Would the Citrus Bowl and Outback Bowl just roll over and die like that? What about Michigan, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida State? Would they be happy to have that first round bye, or feel cheated out of the chance to sell out one more game? The appropriate answer from players and fans is, of course, who the hell cares.