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

2005


Actual BCS Bowls (w/ Final BCS rankings)
Fiesta Bowl: #4 Ohio State 34, #6 Notre Dame 20
Sugar Bowl: #11 West Virginia 38, #7 Georgia 35
Orange Bowl: #3 Penn State 26, #22 Florida State 23 (3 OT)
Rose Bowl (National Championship): #2 Texas 41, #1 USC 38

The 2005 season provided a quiet year for the BCS opponents -- the two undefeated teams (USC and Texas) ended the year ranked #1 & #2 and squared off in an epic national championship game. The bummer for college football fans, though, was the fact that due to contractual requirements #11 West Virginia and #22 Florida State both made it into BCS bowl games, while #5 Oregon and #8 Miami (FL) both were stuck in lesser bowls.

This bracket would be an interesting test for USC and Texas, as both were very dominant in '05. I wouldn't be surprised if both made it to the final game, but you never know what kind of upsets might have happened if they'd actually played the games!
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