College Football Needs A Playoff

The purpose of this blog is to consider what could've been as it pertains to an eight team playoff in Division I-A (also called Bowl Championship) college football.

Since 1998, college football fans have been forced to accept the Bowl Championship Series' selection of #1 & #2 teams and their selection to take part in the National Championship game. The winner is crowned the "BCS National Champion" and is heralded as the champion of college football. However, this process is not without much controversy, and there will continue to be controversy as long as the teams are not allowed to decide who is the best team in college football utilizing the tried and true method that we call a tournament.

My proposal: College football should continue to use the BCS formula for ranking the top 25 teams, and use those rankings to identify the top 8 teams and enter them into a playoff. The three week playoff would start immediately after "Championship Week", and could conclude by the end of December, but would probably include a bye week so that the championship game could be played on or after New Year's Day. Every team not selected to the playoff could go play in the many Bowl Games (also known as "exhibition games") that exist currently.

Monday, December 7, 2009

2000 - A New Century, But Still The Same Ol' BCS


Actual BCS Bowls (w/ Final BCS rankings)
Rose Bowl: #4 Washington 34, #17 Purdue 24
Fiesta Bowl: #6 Oregon State 41, #11 Notre Dame 9
Sugar Bowl: #3 Miami (FL) 27, #7 Florida 20
Orange Bowl (National Championship): #1 Oklahoma 13, #2 Florida State 2

The 2000 season pitted undefeated Oklahoma against 1 loss Florida State, even though Miami was ranked #2 in both human polls. Add to the fact that Washington had just 1 loss, and there were three teams with legitimate claims to the #2 spot.

I like the potential for this bracket because it matches up #6 Oregon State, coached by Dennis Erickson against #3 Miami (FL), Erickson's former team. Also, #2 Florida State and #7 Florida square off in a rivalry game to open up the playoffs. You can't make up better story lines than this! Instead, college football fans got to see Notre Dame stink up Tempe and Florida State score two runs on a 7th inning double... wait, wrong sport. (Wait, they only got two points?!)
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)