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.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

2007 - BCS Chaos


Actual BCS Bowls (w/ Final BCS rankings):
Rose Bowl: #7 USC 49, #13 Illinois 17
Sugar Bowl: #5 Georgia 41, #10 Hawaii 10
Fiesta Bowl: #9 West Virginia 48, #4 Oklahoma 28
Orange Bowl: #8 Kansas 24, #3 Virginia Tech 21
National Championship: #2 LSU 38, #1 Ohio State 24

The 2007 season saw tons of BCS chaos in the final two weeks of the regular season, as the top two teams in the polls were defeated in each of the two weeks. Ohio State, who was idle for the final two weeks, jumped from #5 to #1, and LSU was placed in the National Championship game by the polls. Add to that the fact that Hawaii went 12-0 and made a BCS bowl for the first time in school history (though they didn't fare so well against SEC powerhouse Georgia), and you had a messy end to the college football season.

This bracket is a bit interesting in that undefeated Hawaii (#10) and Fiesta Bowl winner West Virginia (#9) don't even appear in the 8 team tournament. However, Missouri, who was shut out of the BCS bowls this season, would have a shot at making some noise as a #6 seed.
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