Here is a quic recap of a neat debate going on with some of my family about a playoff system for college football. Feel free to leave your thoughts...
1) 11 regular season games for everyone. Minimum of 6 home games. No conference championship games, so no conference can get hosed out of a chance. Regular season done the week of Thanksgiving. 2) 8 team playoff. We cna use the BCS ( or some form of it) to determine the 8 teams, with no conference tie ins or Notre Dame BS. High seed hosts in the first round.
Using this years final BCS, here's the bracket...
1. Ohio State vs 8. Kansas
4. Oklahoma vs 5. Georgia
3. Virginia Tech vs 6. Missouri
2. LSU vs 7. Southern California
Winners would move on to the semi finals, to be played on a rotation at the 4 major bowls. For instance, OSU would play OU at the Fiesta Bowl, and Va Tech would play USC in the Rose Bowl. OU vs USC in the Sugar bowl for the playoff championship. But what about the Orange Bowl, you ask? based on the rotation, the Orange would get first pick of ANY team that didn't make a playoff. How intriguing would 9. West Virginia vs 10. Hawaii be? After that, you still have 28 other bowls that get there games. Bowls for everyone, playoffs for the top teams. Everyone wins! Oh, but the schedule would be important.
Using this years calender... Dec 1. 2-3 bowls. Armed forces, papajohns.com, ETC
Dec 8 1st round playoffs
Dec 15 More bowls
Dec 22 2nd round playoffs
Dec 23-31 ALL remaining bowls, probably building up with the top "Bowl Championship"
Jan 1 Playoff Championship
Won't happen I know, but kinda fun. You can still have all 32 bowls, AND a playoff system. Feel free to add comments of suggestions. Would probably have to add in that no conference can have 3 teams. Tha would bump Kansas to the Orange Bowl, and WVU would play OSU in the first round.... Eric
You’ve got to have all the conferences in this thing or it won’t fly. I’d support your program with an additional four teams in the playoff that would get home site games and give the top four teams a bye in the first round so that they have an inherit advantage. This would make six conference champs and six at-large teams. The conference champs have to be in the top-20 of the BCS standings to get a bid and any team not in a BCS conference has to be in the top-12 to be CONSIDERED or the top-8 to be an automatic qualifier. I argue that there be no limit placed on teams from one league – I don’t think the SEC would either.
Your top-tier bowls are going to want nothing to do with there games being on December 22nd either. I’d suggest something like this:
A 12-game regular season that lasts 13 weeks, giving everyone a BYE. This year that season would have begun on August 25th and ended on November 17th.
No conference championship games. Leagues with divisions would need to decide how they would determine a league champion (ie, the Big 12 goes to nine league games).
12 teams advance to the playoffs with six conference champs and six at-large teams. See above.
First round games would be played at home sites on December 1st. Heisman ballots due on Sunday December 2nd.
The following week is taken off for the Heisman presentation on December 8th.
Currently there are 31 bowls games. We are going to use seven bowls for this system, leaving 48 teams (24 bowls) to play in a non-playoff game – all of which will take place between December 18th and the 28th. Only one game would be played on the 25th and 26th of December, but all games would be played by the 28th. See below for details. How fun would that be?
The seven bowls involved in the playoff would be as follows: Gator, Cotton, Holiday, Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar. The Gator, Cotton and Holiday would ALWAYS hold quarterfinal games with one current BCS Bowl also holding a quarterfinal. These will be held on December 25th and December 26th every year.
National semifinal games would be funneled to the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl this year and would be played on New Year’s Day every year. Ideally you’d pair the games to limit travel – Fiesta Bowl and Holiday Bowl winners would move on to the Rose Bowl and Gator and Cotton Bowl winners would move to the Orange.
The National Championship Game would always be on January 8th, unless it fell on a Sunday so that it would not compete with the NFL.
Ideally, you’d also funnel the bracket and bowls geographically as well to help with fans and travel. This year would go something like this. Also, in the first round games, I’d suggest that visiting teams be allotted tickets up to 15% of the stadium capacity.
December 1st Games
No. 12 Arizona State @ No. 5 Georgia
No. 11 Illinois @ No. 6 Missouri (Interesting rematch)
No. 10 Hawaii @ No. 7 USC
No. 9 West Virginia @ No. 8 Kansas
National Quarterfinals (Dec. 25 and 26)
Kansas, West Virginia winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State (Fiesta Bowl)
Georgia, Arizona State winner vs. No. 4 Oklahoma (Holiday Bowl)
Missouri, Illinois winner vs. No. 3 Virginia Tech (Gator Bowl)
USC, Hawaii winner vs. No. 2 LSU (Cotton Bowl)
National Semifinals (January 1st)
Fiesta Bowl, Holiday Bowl winners (Rose Bowl), 7 CST kickoff
Gator Bowl, Cotton Bowl winners (Orange Bowl), 2:30 CST kickoff
...My cousin Tony
I tried to space out the bowls to maximize TV possiblities. The NCAA makes WAY too much from the TV bowl contract with ESPN etc and no way would the NCAA want to see 20+ bowls played in 3 days. I also kept the playoffs at 8 to allow for the fewest playoffs to the shortest seson without just having a FInal 4.
My format has the 2 champioship teams playing 14 games, almost the norm right now. Yours could see a team without the bye have an additional game, and 15 is s crapload of games to be playing in college. Oh, and if we want to account for the HYPESMAN trophy, do it Jan 8, AFTER the entire season. You know Tommie would've won it in 95, not even a question. Imagine a playoff year, and Tebow gets maybe 3 more games. He could have a 30-30 year for td's.
If you go the geographic way, you might as well eliminate conferences. 8 regional champs and 4 at large, by your format. Mine would be 6 and 2. But that's an awful lot of regional games. 119 teams divided by 8 = 14.8 (15). 119/6= 19.8 (20). 20 teams in a region is just too much. 119/16 regions= 7.4 teams per region, and now we're a DII system. Just saying... Eric
2 comments:
I don’t think you even read my e-mail. The bowls are spaced out. 24 bowls in 10 days – you can do that easy. Where in my e-mail does it say those games would be played in three days?
And you don’t think a college kid can play ONE more football game. Geez. LSU will be playing there 14th game in the National Title game. Actually, there would be a chance for 16 games to be honest – if you had to play four in the playoffs. I still don’t see the problem.
And I don’t have a clue on your last paragraph. I only mentioned geography to keep schools who make the tournament as close to their respective bowl as possible. And that the bowls be paired together such that the two western-most bowls would funnel to the Rose and the two eastern-most bowls would funnel to the Orange.
... My cousin Tony
color me silly for reading too fast. dammit. 24 in 10 days could be done easily. and the regions I wasn't reading right. Too far into basketball already. dammit.
I still have a problem the the up to 16 game schedule. I almost threw out a 10 game regular season (like D II) but realized the schools want every possible home game for the revenue. That's also why I threw in the 6 home game minimum. With 12 games, we could still see a team like KU schedule 4 creampuffs, get a sluff of a conference schedule, and get a high seed, or even a bye.
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