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

2004 - The Undefeated Five & The End of The AP


Actual BCS Bowls (w/ Final BCS rankings)
Rose Bowl: #4 Texas 38, #13 Michigan 37
Fiesta Bowl: #6 Utah 35, #21 Pittsburgh 7
Sugar Bowl: #3 Auburn 16, #8 Virginia Tech 13
Orange Bowl (National Championship): #1 USC 55, #2 Oklahoma 10

The '04 season had five teams finish the regular season with unblemished records: USC, Oklahoma, Auburn, Utah, and Boise State. All but Boise State finished in the top 8 BCS rankings, and with USC, Auburn, and Utah all winning their bowl games, there were three teams at the end of the season with perfect records.

The unfortunate part of this proposed bracket is that two of those unbeaten teams (Auburn and Utah) would be paired against each other in the opening round. Otherwise, it would be interesting to see a potential second round matchup between USC and a motivated California team who was snubbed in the real BCS bowl selections in 2004 due to a late season loss and some very public lobbying by Texas coach Mack Brown. This lobbying for AP votes was the last straw for the AP poll, and they subsequently ceased their affiliation with the BCS after this season.
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