What would a college football playoff look like this year?
First, my assumptions…
There will be an eight-team playoff, with the six BCS-conference champs getting an automatic bid. If a conference champ has three or more losses on the season, they give up their automatic bid and it becomes an at-large bid.
Seeds and at-large bids are distributed based on the current BCS standings. Certainly, these standings can be tweaked, but they are fine for now. If an at-large team has a better BCS ranking than a conference champion, they will get a higher seed.
There will be three rounds of playoffs. The first round will be held at the home stadium of the higher-seeded team. The semifinals and the finals will rotate amongst the four BCS cities (Miami, Pasadena, Tempe and New Orleans).
And off we go…
#8 Cincinnati @ #1 Alabama
#5 Oklahoma @ #4 Florida
#7 Penn State @ #2 Texas Tech
#6 USC @ #3 Texas
Unfortunately, #7-ranked Utah wouldn’t make the cut because #19 Cincinnati finished with just two losses (assuming they win out, of course) and #8 Penn State won the Big Ten with just one loss. The Utes would have a shot to move up with a win over BYU along with a loss by one or more of the teams ahead of them.
There were three at-large bids (since the ACC winner had at least three losses) and those bids went to Texas, Florida and Oklahoma.
Of course, as the season winds down, the BCS rankings will stay fluid, so we’ll re-visit this potential playoff schedule once the regular season is over.
So how does it look?
I like the idea of automatic bids, but that one might be hard to sell. If you do have that system, having a disqualifier makes a ton of sense. Tha said, I would not do it by losses – you don’t want to discourage teams from playing tough non-conference games. Maybe they could lose their spot if they are not in the top 15 in the BCS.
I love the idea of the first round being played at home stadiums. As a Big Ten fan, I’d love to see the SEC and Pac-10 teas actually have to play up north for a change in cold weather.
Having two bowls host the semifinal games makes sense as well.
Finally, I would just go to the top 8 teams in the BCS. That would help sell this to all the schools.
The automatic bids are to sell the playoff to the power conferences. The general consensus is that they won’t buy in unless there are automatic bids.
I like your idea of cutting it off at a certain point in the BCS, so that teams don’t avoid playing a tough non-conference schedule.
I would agree with Gerardo that you don’t want to encourage teams to schedule cupcake opponents just so they don’t suffer three losses. But the rest of the format is pretty sound.
Unfortunately, no matter what you’re going to have people bitching that certainly teams didn’t make the cut, but this system appears fair and logical.
I don’t understand why BCS supporters don’t grasp the concept that they’ll make more money with a playoff than with the current system they have in place. People would travel to go see their teams in a playoff game, just as they do to bowl games and you could still have the PapJohns.com Who Gives a Shit Bowl for teams that don’t make the BCS playoff.
I just don’t get it.