BCS Playoff Anyone?

The early nineties brought about a change in the hearts of American sports fans as far as what they considered to be America’s game. In 1993 the NFL instituted free agency which transformed the league into a coaches league and created the parity the NFL enjoys today. A year later Major League Baseball went on strike and the passing of the torch was complete as football became, decidedly, America’s game.

Now in 2006 football is still America’s game but while it is great on the professional level, the college game falls short. I love the game, but for the life of me I cannot get into the college game and it is only because there is no playoff system. I know there are traditionalists out there who say the system is fine the way it is and a playoff wouldn’t make the game better, but they are the minority. As far as this year’s championship game between Ohio State and Florida, I believe those are the two best teams this season and deserve to be in the championship game and my mock playoff will show how.

This time of year every sports writer and sportscaster in the nation is creating their mock playoff with exciting match-ups and wonder why the BCS and NCAA division IA football still won’t institute a playoff system. The answer is simple: Money. Money talks and the NCAA and the schools involved are raking in the dough with the current Bowl system. My playoff-Bowl hybrid proposal is the best of both worlds and allows BCS and the NCAA to have their cake and eat it too. Here’s how it would work:

The playoff would be a 32 team tournament. “32 teams!?” you say “That’s too many, the BCS will never go for that!” You are forgetting the underlying factor here, money. There are 32 bowl games scheduled for this year and a 32 team tournament would include 31 games total so college football would be losing one bowl game(sorry Champs Sports Bowl, you’re out). Each game would be played at one of the current Bowl locations under the name of that particular bowl game. The first round would pit Ohio State and Clemson in the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl all the way down to Arkansas against Texas A&M in the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl and so on. The first few rounds would be the smaller Bowl games and the later rounds would include the bigger Bowl games. This year, the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl would be your Final Four games before the Tostitos BCS Championship game. The Bowls that are currently BCS bowl games would be on a rotating basis of importance just as they are under the current system.

A thirty-two team tournament in football would take five weeks to complete. “Five weeks, that would take too long!” you say “college students have to finish the season by a certain date!” Not so fast my friend! If the tournament started this weekend, on December 9, the Championship game would be on January 8, the same day they have it scheduled for now. “When will the student athletes take their finals?” Yes, the NCAA has said for years they cannot do a playoff because it would interfere with the students finals schedule, even though division II and division III and even division IAA have playoffs during the two weeks division IA has off before the Bowl games begin. However, these other tournaments begin the last weekend of November when IA is still in the regular season. In order to make the playoff work that would have to be the final week of the regular season as opposed to the first week of December as it is now. Hold the first two rounds of the playoffs the first two weekends of December, take a week off for finals and then start up around Christmas for the last three rounds and end the season at the same time it ends now.

“But what about the other thirty two teams that now don’t get to play in a bowl game?” Every year there is a new bowl game that wasn’t on the schedule the year before so why couldn’t there still be ten or fifteen bowl games that are non-playoff bowl events? The BCS and NCAA and all the schools involved would make a killing from this format. Not to mention the television advertising revenue would be greater for a playoff. Fans would tune in and care about the games. The bowl games would be more than just something to watch while you sleep off your New Year’s hangover.

Here’s how I seeded my bracket. I took the top 25 directly from the final BCS rankings. For the final seven teams I consulted the Harris poll for the other top vote getters and ranked them accordingly. (The Harris is the foremost authority in national polling, you may remember them from such things as the election. Say what you want about the AP or Coach’s poll, the Harris uses a scientific method which yields more accurate results. Besides, do you really want to split hairs over whether Clemson or Navy gets to lose to Ohio State in the first round?) Now with my teams ranked 1 to 32 I divided them into groups of 4 and seeded them similar to the NCAA Basketball bracket with four #1 seeds, four #2 seeds and so on. With Ohio State being the top number one seed, they get put in the same quarter of the bracket as the 8th ranked team, Boise State. Using the same logic LSU gets placed with 5th ranked USC. Based on the final rankings, this is as accurate as you can get to what a playoff would have looked like this year.

Look at all the great match-ups the current system is missing: Oklahoma vs. Nebraska, Wake Forest vs. Texas, Rutgers vs. Tennessee, Boise State vs. UCLA, and that’s just in the first round! A playoff would come with all the bells and whistles, marquee match-ups and upsets galore! Check out how I think a playoff this season may have ended up!