One Possible Solution

I’m a little late in formulating my thoughts on this, but a discussion I heard on Mike & Mike this morning jarred my memory. Much discussion has been made regarding a playoff for Div. 1-A football and how that would work with the bowls and how to fit it all in and so forth. Well, I’ve come up with a reasonable idea, although I’m sure many others have come up with something similar.

My thought involves keeping the BCS rankings to determine seeding for 8 teams: the 6 major conference winners and two at-large berths. We could even keep the stipulation regarding Notre Dame and the minor conference bowls automatic berth if they finish in the top 12 of the BCS ranks. Based on this past year, the seeds would have most likely been: (1) Ohio St., (2) LSU, (3) Georgia, (4) Virginia Tech, (5) USC, (6) Oklahoma, (7) West Virginia, and (8) Hawaii. We might quibble over placement based off what we know now, but at the end of the regular season, this was pretty much how things were going to line up.

Now that we have seeds, they match up 1-8 in four bowl games that are placed around Christmas. Colleges will all be off by then and these four games will be given exclusive airing around the 23rd or the 24th depending on where this would fall relative to NFL football. For this past year, you could have loaded up Christmas Eve with the bowl games since it was a Monday and would not have been heavy with NFL games. What’s more, I think the four bowl games should be geographically oriented with the top four seeds allowed to select the bowl of their choice.

My initial thought has been that the first round bowl games would be something like the Holiday Bowl (San Diego), the Cotton Bowl (Dallas), the Liberty Bowl (Memphis), and the Motor City Bowl (Detroit). All of these either play in NFL stadiums or are large venues used to handling huge crowds. The top four seeds could then pick the venue they think would be the most favorable to them. So, in our mythical scenario, Ohio St. would have selected the Motor City Bowl and played Hawaii; LSU would have selected the Cotton Bowl and played West Virginia, Georgia would have selected the Liberty Bowl and played Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech would have been left with the Holiday Bowl and played USC (an ironic, nasty twist for them).

Once the first round was finished, the remaining for teams would have met in two New Year’s Bowls. I’m inclined towards the Sugar and the Fiesta, but I’m sure the Orange wouldn’t mind. The Rose would probably opt out of the whole thing so that it could at least have the Pac 10 #2 vs. the Big 10 #2. Let’s say that the winners of the previous four games were Ohio St., LSU, Georgia, and USC. Ohio St. could have matched up against USC in the Fiesta Bowl and LSU would have taken Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. The two winners would have then faced off in the National Championship Bowl Game as they do now, about a week after New Year’s. I think it would have been USC vs. LSU and I personally think that USC would have won, but I think everyone would have been satisfied with the result. I think this is the best option. It allows the bowls to stay in place and also works in a bit of a playoff. Obviously some teams would be left out (like Missouri and Kansas) but those things happen in any playoff scenario.

Some might argue that the great games such as the 2002 Ohio St.-Miami or 2005 USC-Texas would have been lost, but under this scenario, there is no reason to believe that having a playoff would have reduced the chance that these teams would not have met in the finals. As the 1 and 2 seeds, they would have been at the opposite ends of the bracket anyway. It would also have settled things regarding the undefeated Auburn team that should have gotten a crack at things in 2004.

Some of the other bowl games would have to be restructured to account for the losses that the first round games would be in, but hopefully the same number of smaller conference teams would be allowed in and we wouldn’t have to worry about the #6 Big 10 team vs. the #5 Big East team (games that very few watch anyway).

The current system is in place until 2010, but I’m hoping that something like this will get developed starting in the 2011.