I think every idiot in the world has come up with a playoff system that will save College Football. So now this idiot has come up with an idea. I will probably come back and tinker with this from time to time. My system's goal is to get the best teams to play and determine who has the best season. The playoffs are not a cure all for finding the best team in the country, and a lot of times the best team doesn't win in other sports(College Basketball, MLB, NFL, etc.) where a playoff exists. There are several things I like about the BCS. Its unique and leads to lots of fun(sometimes frustrating) conversations about who should play in the championship and who is the best, the playoffs vs. the current system debate is fun too, and we at least get to see two of the best teams playing each other for the championship.(In the playoffs often the two best teams don't both make the final game and lots of times neither do.) The downside of the BCS is often the debate is more fun than the actual games. In years without two clear cut top teams often the final game can feel unsatisfying. But enough about reasoning that I'll probably change my opinion on before I'm done with this.
Now the first problem you face with a college playoff is the amount of teams that you want to put into it. Often you hear that 4 teams would be the right size, which I feel is too small and setting criteria for who is included would almost completely favor the big schools and leave almost no opportunity for a team like Boise St. Would you just take the top 4 teams in the BCS? That would eliminate Boise St. this year with them being unbeaten. That might just be one team this year getting screwed but most years there are multiple 1 loss teams and picking between them is an inexact science.
16 is the other popular option which I feel would be too much. I want this to be the best of the best and make sure the season still matters.
Any playoff system will exclude someone, just like in college basketball there are always teams on the bubble that miss out. The thing is when it comes down to the 34th or 35th team you don't feel as bad when one misses out. So I think finding the proper cutoff point is important. How many teams really deserve to make it on average year to year? In 1998 I figure that between ten and eleven would of been the cutoff. So I figure ten would of been the right number that year with no accounting for conference tie ins or automatic bids I will touch on that later, I'm just trying to find the right size right now. I'm only going back to 1998 since that was the first season of the BCS and it will still play a role in my system down the line. I'm not including bowl results since those would of been unavailable information at the time. I think I will just see what happens under the criteria of being in the BCS top 15 with 2 losses or less. 3 Losses just seems like to many for me of team making a claim to be the best, but that idea is not set in stone at this time.
1998-13
1999-10
2000-14
2001-12
2002-10
2003-10
2004-13
2005-15
2006-14
2007-11
2008-12
2009-12
This could never be a real criteria, because teams could qualify just because they never played anybody, but I guess if you didn't play anyone you wouldn't be in the top 15. The average number of teams that would make it in this system would be 12. 12 seems like a decent sized number with 4 teams receiving a first round bye. This isn't the only thing that should be factored in though so I will move on and use this only as a point of reference.
The second thing I would like to find out is how many teams had legitimate gripes about being in the National Championship game each year. With this criteria I include any team that went undefeated, or had the same amount of losses as a team in the NC game. So if there is only one unbeaten, it would include anyteam with the same amount of losses as #2. Once again I'm only counting teams in the top 15 of the final BCS.
1998-7
1999-3
2000-7 although I feel TCU is stretching it here I'm trying to not include my opinion.
2001-5 this excludes Colorado even though most considered them the second best team by the end of the regular season
2002-2
2003-4 once again miami(oh) is pushing it
2004-5
2005-2
2006-6
2007-10
2008-9
2009-5
So on average about 5 to 6 teams have a legitimate claim to the title game. So usually 3 to 4 teams are getting no chance when they have the same or sometimes better record than the number 2 team. Now I realize I'm not factoring SOS of schedule here and head to head matchups, but all in all only twice in twelve years have the two best teams played. This is also another strike against a four team playoff 2/3 of the time more than four teams have a legitimate claim to being number 2 let alone falling all the way to 5th.
So far I have determined usually there are about twelve teams at the end of each season in the top 15 that deserve a playoff berth and about 5 or 6 teams that have a claim to playing in the NC game.
The thing is though none of the Big 6 conference would want anything to do with a playoff unless that had an automatic bid for their conference champion. This can lead to teams with 3 or more losses in the game, or teams that aren't even in the top 15 of the BCS standings. I really believe this is something that couldn't be avoided though, and I'm curios how many times one of the Big 6's champions would be a totally undesirable team. Ex. Any conference champion with 3 or more losses or a ranking below 15
1998-1 Syracuse
1999-1 Stanford
2000-1 Purdue
2001-1 LSU
2002-1 FSU
2003-1 Kansas St.
2004-1 Pitt
2005-1 FSU
2006-0
2007-0
2008-1 Virginia Tech
2009-0
So giving the big 6 conference champs an automatic bid is not really an issue. There have only been 9 champs that had 3 or more losses, which is less than one per season. I know alot of people claim that all conference champs should make the playoffs, but I don't think you make a tournament better by adding 5 teams that in most seasons don't belong. Sorry but the Sun Belt, MAC, Mountain West, C-USA, and WAC don't all deserve to have a team in the playoffs each season. The mountain west is the only one I believe that is close to getting an automatic bid, but I also feel there conference champ usually is given proper respect and would have a strong chance of being an at large team. Also if we put all 11 champs in then the tournament would almost certainly have to be at least 16 teams which would mean 4 games to win it all. I'm trying to limit teams to no more than 16 games. Some would say make the season only 11 weeks then when u factor in conference championship games and 4 playoff games then that would only be 16 games. I don't want to cut out a regular season game for all 120 teams just 1 team doesn't play 17, schools would lose alot of money from the home game they were losing every other year(or in some teams cases every year).
Thats why I'm a firm believer that ten to twelve teams would be just about the right size. I also think that its easier for a tournament to start small and add bids, whereas no league ever eliminates tournament bids. So if we start at 12 and they are finding too many teams are in they would never be able to agree on eliminating bids. but if we start at ten and consistently teams that have a serious gripe are not making the playoffs then they would have less opposition to expansion. So I'll say the tournament should start with ten teams. There would be two games the week after Championship Saturday, pitting the 7 seed vs. the 10 seed, and the 8 seed vs the 9 seed. Of course these teams would have to win four games to win the championship, but these are the supposed weakest teams in this tournament and the winners would be playing against the top 2 seeds, so in all likely hood these teams will probably not be playing 4 games if by chance one of them do that would be ok too. I just don't like the idea of a Champ having to play 4 games each. A first round matchup with the Sun Belt champ is not a very intriguing match up and I don't think anyone outside of the Sun Belt conference would miss it. These first two games this year would occur on December 12th, which would give all the other schools a week off. On December 19th We would have #1 vs 8 or 9, 4 vs 5, 2 vs 7/10, and 3 vs. 6. December 26th would be the semifinals, and we could have the Championship on New Years Day.
Teams would not be able to get fans to travel to 3 different locations 3 weeks in a row, and I really hate the idea of every playoff game being a bowl which I find pointless. I do think that all games should be played on the field of the higher seed, except in Final game which could be played at one of the four major bowls. They could rotate it each year.
Some people claim this would take away the proud history of the bowls, which is laughable to me. There are far too many bowls that nobody cares about at all between teams with 6 or 7 wins that still make money. They have no affect on the title game at all and most people don't watch them unless there team is involved in them or they get lucky and have an interesting match up. I say they can still have as many bowls as they want besides the playoffs. The playoffs don't make all these games meaningless, most of them were already meaningless to begin with. The three major bowls could still have there pick of the litter and if they want to just take the two biggest names they can each year more power to them. I'm not to concerned with the bowls though since they don't truly care about what the fans want.
The next questions are who makes the ten team tourney, how do people qualify, and how are seeds determined. Now I did say earlier that I think the BCS standings should still be used and help determine at large berths, instead of fan following, ticket sales, or any other corporate reason. The top six bcs conferences champions would all receive a bid, and the four at large teams would be the highest unranked teams in the BCS. If bottom 5 conference or independent cracks the top ten they would also be guaranteed a playoff berth. It would not be a limit of one either, if TCU and Boise St. are both in the top ten they would both receive an automatic bid. In a highly unlikely situation where there were more than four teams from the bottom 5 or independents all in the top ten then only the top 4 would qualify. If a team goes undefeated it does not guarantee involvement in the tournament, but in the polls of more recent times they are less likely to keep an undefeated team out of the top ten. I also would rather have teams playing difficult schedules to prove they belong, then scheduling all poor teams just so they can go undefeated.
I do believe the BCS works in some ways to rank teams, but I would not let the coaches poll be any part of the system, at least with the AP poll they actually watch other teams play. The coaches poll gives coaches a vote in a situation where they would have obvious bias and misinformation. I also think that strength of schedule needs to be used once more often. If two teams have the same record, strength of schedule should be used as a tiebreaker or at least as an evaluation system. If team is 10-2 but has the 60 ranked sos and another team is 10-2 with a 25th ranked sos then it shouldn't matter what conference there in or the traditions their programs have.
End Part One.
