012 - Playoff Blueprint
NOTICE: This will be long, but read the first few
paragraphs to give it a chance. Lots of
time and correspondence has gone into this plan, so it isn’t just some
hair-brained scheme. You can skip all
the preceding arguments and get to the actual blueprint, it’s down the page
somewhere.
What are the reasons for wanting a playoff?
- More
than two teams deserve a chance to compete for the national championship.
- Minor
conference schools don’t have an equitable chance at playing for the
national championship.
1) OK, so more than two teams deserve to play for the
championship. But where do we cut it
off? 2 teams is not enough. 32 teams is too much.
- 4
teams would be the easiest to implement and the closest to the system we
have now, but would it be inclusive enough? It would probably eliminate any
controversy on a national scale relative to what there is today, but it
would be very difficult to squeeze in a minor conference team. And it is within the realm of
possibility that all 5 (or 6, depending on your point of view) major
conferences would have a valid contender for the national
championship. In that rare case, 4
teams wouldn’t be enough.
- 16
teams would be the most inclusive of all plans. But 16 teams? At least 10 teams would be from major
conferences. Do all those teams
really deserve a shot at playing for the national championship? On average there are 2-4 teams with a
legitimate claim for the national championship (not including minor
conference teams)
- 8
teams. I think this is both
inclusive and exclusive enough. It
maintains the importance of the regular season by allowing a relatively
small amount of teams into the playoff, probably 5-6 major conference
teams at least. But it is large
enough to cover the most extreme fluctuations in national title
contenders.
2) It is my belief that minor conference teams have a
inherent disadvantage in consideration for playing for a national
championship. Often the argument that
minor conference teams don’t play tough enough schedules comes up. Their strength of schedule is largely out of
their hands. Would any minor conference
team think twice about joining a major conference? Most likely not. The advantages of joining a major conference
FAR outweigh the advantages of playing in a minor conference. Minor conference teams don’t have the option
of joining a major conference, and not many schools can pull a Notre Dame and
go independent. Considering this I
believe minor conference schools deserve extra consideration when teams are
selected for a playoff. I do believe
that special consideration should be of a conditional nature though.
When speaking of major conferences and minor
conferences, I don’t necessarily equate them with BCS and nonBCS conferences,
though in reality the BCS/nonBCS tag fits pretty well. I believe the major and minor conferences
could be determined each year by ranking conferences by relative strength.
When choosing teams to participate in a playoff,
should conference champions be considered or should we use a rating system like
the BCS? The major problem I have with
using conference champions is that the conference championships are pretty much
the first round of the playoffs. In the
first round of the playoffs last year you would have had two top 5 teams in LSU
and Georgia playing each other. You
would also have Miami Ohio
and Bowling Green playing each
other in the first round. This makes for
a lopsided playoff and doesn’t reward the best teams for having excellent
seasons. This is my major gripe against
using conference champions to determine who plays in a playoff.
On the topic of playoffs:
- I also
believe that a playoff doesn’t mean all bowl games have to be
abolished. Most bowl games could
continue unaffected, drawing attention from the fans of the participating
teams and die-hard college football fans getting as much football in as
possible in that last month.
- University
presidents oppose a playoff because of the impact on the education of
their student-athletes. I
personally think it is pretty ridiculous.
If the playoffs start at the same time bowls regularly start, the
playoffs would go into the second week of January. I don’t pretend to know the academic
schedules of all 117 1A universities, but I do know we have to work around
finals and the start of the 1st quarter or spring
semester. I believe it could be
done. We’re talking two teams
playing a maximum of 3 additional games, two playing 2 additional games,
or two playing 1 additional game, or some mix of the three
possibilities. I acknowledge that
this is the second weakest part of my argument.
- Using
bowl games as playoff sites is a good idea, to an extent. If a team’s fan base had to travel to 4
different bowls attendance would drop like a lead balloon. The ideal number of bowls in a playoff
would be 1 bowl for the national championship. However, considering the BCS bowls as
they exist today, they have to be included to make this whole thing
work. Money is a big part of
college football. I think at most
you can have two rounds of playoffs at bowls and have it make money. You can’t get 50,000-80,000 people to
travel to 3 or 4 different bowls.
Even two bowls for one fan base would be tough, but I think there
is no choice. This is the weakest
part of my argument.
My Playoff Blueprint
- I
like an uncommon 8 team playoff, which can be considered a 4 team playoff
with two play-in games. The top 2
teams don’t play until 4 of the 6 other teams are eliminated. I think that the highest seeded teams
have the least to prove and the lowest seeded teams have the most to
prove.
- Since
I propose a playoff of 4 rounds, the first two rounds would be home games
for the highest seeded team. After
each play-in round, the two winners (and just the two winners, not teams
that had bye weeks) are re-seeded.
This gives those teams a chance to move up with their performance
in the playoff.
- I
also propose a consolation game between the losers of the semi-final
games. Those two teams would be reseeded
after losing, and the consolation game would be at the higher seeded
team’s stadium.
- Of
the 4 BCS bowls, 2 would be used in the semi-finals and 1 would be used in
the finals. The 4th BCS
bowl would host the two highest rated teams not included in the
playoff. The BCS bowls would rotate
so that each bowl is a part of the playoff 3 of 4 years.
- Choose
the top 5 BCS/Independent teams according to a BCS-like ranking.
- Choose
the top 3 nonBCS teams according to the same BCS-like ranking.
- All
teams participating in the playoffs must be in the top 15% (top 17) of all
1A teams. If one or more nonBCS
slots remain unfilled because of this stipulation, the remaining slots
would be filled by the next highest remaining BCS teams.
- The
teams will be seeded 1-8 using a BCS-like formula.
Using my own rankings from last season, prior to the bowls,
I will post an example. For simplicity I
will assume the higher ranked team always wins.
#1[01] lsu (sec)
#2[02] oklahoma
(big12)
#3[03] usc (pac10)
#4[04] michigan
(big10)
#5[05] miami
ohio (mac)
#6[06] miami florida
(bigE)
#7[07] georgia (sec) [replaces unfilled slot by nonBCS
team]
#8[14] boise
st (wac)
8 kansas st
(big12)
9 florida st
(acc)
WEEK 1 (first play-in
round)
Regular bowls taking
place.
#1-4 have a bye week.
#8 boise st @ #5
miami ohio
#7 georgia
@ #6 miami florida
WEEK 2 (second
play-in round)
Regular bowls taking
place.
#1-2 have a bye week.
#6 miami florida
@ #3 usc
#5 miami ohio
@ #4 michigan
WEEK 3
BCS BOWL 2: #1 lsu VS #4 michigan
BCS BOWL 3: #2 oklahoma
VS #3 usc
WEEK 4
BCS BOWL 4: 8 kansas
st VS 9 florida st
consolation game: #4 michigan
@ #3 usc
BCS BOWL 1: #1 lsu VS #2 oklahoma
[email protected]
Thursday 26 August
2004 0529a