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Reactions: Who's the best? Users tell us how to establish college football's championPosted: Tuesday December 28, 1999 06:21 PM
As we head in to Bowl Week, the question of who will be the national champion should be resolved. But there are some fans (and players) who think there may be a better system to determine college football's best. Below are some ideas users have of implementing a new college football playoff system.
First, I would eliminate the voting system completely, taking "opinion" out of who the 16 best teams in the country are. A win = 10 points. Your opponents victories = one point for you. The sixteen teams with the most points at the end of the year go to the playoffs, based on an 11-game schedule (rewarding strong conferences and strong out of conference schedules). Second, forget appeasing the bowls. The playoff happens, as in pro football, in the higher seed's home stadium. The championship happens in whatever venue bids the highest to host the "College Super Bowl." Thus, every game, every week, means something for every team in the country.
Single-game elimination tournament with the top six teams, Nos. 1 & 2 get first-round byes and the other four play: 6 seed vs. 3 seed, winner vs. No. 1. 5 seed vs. 4 seed, winner vs. No. 2. Winners of second-round games will play in national championship. Five games in all, call each one a different bowl game.
When I was a freshman in college, I did a speech on this very subject. There should be a 32-team playoff system. This would include the top 32 teams decided on by the pollsters. A system similar to the BCS system could be used to pick the top 32 teams. You would then have a five-week playoff. This would cover a time span equivalent to the current one from the end of the regular season to the end of the bowl games. Actually, it may run a week or so over, but this would just mean more college football and there is nothing wrong with that.
I have two ideas about how a playoff could be set up, one based on the NFL system and the other similar to the NCAA basketball setup. The first playoff system would have the top 12 teams (based on a BCS-type standings) playing for the championship. The top four teams would have a bye for the first week of playoffs, and the other eight would fight it out in the first round. Then you have the quarterfinals, semifinals, and finally the championship. There should be some home-field advantage for the better teams as a reward. The second system would have the top eight teams playing for the national championship, while the next eight highest-ranked teams would play for a secondary title, similar to the NIT tournament in college basketball.
Make the schedule so that the last weekend of November is the absolute end of the season for everyone. Then on the first Saturday of December, teams ranked in the top 16 in the final poll would begin a playoff tournament. The second weekend, the "great eight" would continue in their quest for the national title. The third weekend of December, we'd have the Final Four. Then, after a week off for Christmas, the national title game would be played by the two survivors. If the bowl people still want their day in the sun, then I'm sure that each game along the way to a national title could be sponsored and put on by those bowl fanatics who think they're so important. And they could take turns hosting the title game like the BCS currently does. If they don't want to do this, then we could just make the bowls a thing of the past and get on with a playoff.
I think they should take the top four teams in the country and have a two-week playoff. No teams out of the top four complain about not having a shot at the national title. This would not interfere with finals. You could still have a Pac-10-Big Ten Rose Bowl with the three others hosting playoff games and using the rotation each year for the national title. This way no bowls are eliminated and there is a way to decide the national champion on the field.
A playoff of the top eight teams in the BCS rankings. The first round played at the current four BCS bowl sites with 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7 etc. Rotate the games each year so each bowl site gets an extra game and/or national championship every year. EVERY game has national championship implications, the BEST teams are in the playoffs, and the rest of the bowl structure stays in place.
Keep the BCS poll to pick the top eight teams. 1 plays 8 in a bowl. 2 plays 7 in a bowl. 3 plays 6 in a bowl. 4 plays 5 in a bowl. The winner out of 1 of 8 plays winner of 4 and 5 in a bowl. The winner of 2 and 7 plays winner of 3 and 6 in a bowl. Winner of 1 of 8 and 4 of 5 plays winner of 2 and 7 and 3 and 6 in a bowl. Keep the other bowls for the other teams with bowl eligibility, that way these schools can make their money. The playoff system would add three extra games for 2 teams in one season. Most bowl-eligible teams play 12 games in a year. This method would be 14 games for only two teams. BYU played 14 games in the '98 season, so this method would be good.
Select all of the conference champs and any at-large bids so that there will be 32 teams. Use the current bowl system as the first round of the playoffs and follow the rest of the playoffs just like the basketball tournament. There would of course need to be brackets to make the organization easier. You would need to start the playoffs the first weekend in December and would be finished by New Year's weekend.
The top eight BCS teams should play in the Orange-Sugar-Rose-Fiesta Bowls Jan.1. The four winners should play the next week. The two teams that win those games should play for the championship the week before the Super Bowl, at the same location the Super Bowl is to be played.
College football can easily create a playoff system which would only add one-to-three extra games to a team's regular season. The first step I would take would be to eliminate conference championship games. This reduces the regular season to 11 games and conference champions could be determined the old way. Next, I would take the top eight teams from the BCS poll to participate in the playoff. However, unlike the current BCS formula, I would place more emphasis on strength of schedule and use win/loss percentage rather than number of losses. The playoff would be single elimination and subsequent match-ups between the winning teams would be chosen randomly. The playoff system would assure that the best eight teams have the opportunity to play for the national championship, and would avoid having undeserving teams with BIG names (i.e. Michigan and Tennessee) play in the big payout bowls.
The bowls, overall, are very positive for college football and it would be a shame to lose them. A very simple solution is to keep the BCS bowls intact and just arrange the match-ups on a seeded basis so that the winners of each New Year's Day Bowl advances to semifinals to be played the next weekend. (The only catch is that the two at-large berths would have to be granted to teams that have earned them on merit as opposed to their "Q" rating and how they travel.) The championship game, in a normal year, could then be played on the Saturday during the extra week before the Super Bowl. This solution would be great because it would still allow the minor bowls to exist, it would only add a minimal number of extra games to a minimal number of schools, and the extra games would be played during the time of year when there would not be much academic strain placed on the student-athletes. It also results in an eight-team playoff, which at the Division I-A level, would probably suffice!
I would like to see a 12-team playoff. The top four teams would get a first round bye and get to host a second-round game. The next four would host a first-round game, and the last four would play on the road in the first round. The round of four would be hosted by the top two remaining seeds. By making seeding important, every team would have something to play for in the regular season, no matter where they are ranked. The national championship game would be at a neutral site. The 12 teams that make the playoff would be the conference champions of the conferences with the highest six RPIs and the six highest-ranked remaining at-large teams, according to the BCS poll (or the NCAA). But any playoff would be better than what is in place now.
Use an RPI type of ranking system to determine the top eight Division I-A conferences each year. The champions from each of the eight conferences would receive automatic bids to the playoff. A committee similar to the NCAA basketball tournament selection committee would then select eight more teams. All sixteen teams would then be seeded from one through 16 with the highest seed getting home-field advantage over the lower seed and so on. The championship site would be bid on and selected by the NCAA.
Sixteen teams are too many. Eight is not enough -- a true contender could be left out. So I propose a 12-team playoff, with seedings determined by the current BCS ratings system. (The current system is too flawed for a two-team selection, but not too flawed for a 12-team selection.) The top four seeds would gain byes in the first round. The bottom eight would face each other in week one. The top four would play against the first round survivors in round two. Round three would pare the field to two. Round four would crown the champion. Four weeks, 11 games, 12 teams, one True Champion. The Top seven bowl sites could take turns hosting the top-level games. The first round could be hosted regionally, or they could be hosted by lesser bowls. The rest of the bowl games could still take place, since their appeal is pretty limited already, and would not be affected by the national championship selection process. If a system like this could not be put together, I would be in favor of scrapping the BCS altogether, and going back to the way it used to be. The old system at least held the promise for a few interesting and important games, instead of making all but one a consolation game.
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