The way the BCS should be

[TBGKon]

I've always pondered to myself, how could they make the BCS better. I can't say that I'ce come up with a final choice, but what would you guys think of a playoff system set up by using existing bowl games...for example (this is all theoretical)

Fiesta Bowl: Pitt vs. Louisville

Rose Bowl: Michigan vs. UCLA

Sugar Bowl: Fiesta loser vs. Rose loser for 3rd place game

Orange Bowl: Fiesta winner vs. Rose winner for nat'l championship

and the bowl games leading up to these games would be previous rounds of the playoff system.

Anyone think this type of system would work???? (or at least something tweaked slightly from this)

[paynomind]

After watching USC disassemble OU, I think the correct answer is the "+1" setup.

Play all the big bowls on Jan 1. Match up 1 vs. 3 and 2 vs. 4

Move the non-big to dec 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30

Then, on Jan 7th, play the 1v3 and 2v4 winners against each other.

Viola, National Champions

[TBGKon]

not a bad idea man...i like it

[NJTank]

I think a playoff is needed id like to see 16 but 8 would be ok.

Start it week before X-mas, have the semis on Christmas, and the Championship on New Years Day, with consolation Bowls for temas not invited spliced through out like the NIT in Basketball.

[Shmee]

Same idea as paynomind, but just a tiny bit different.

I'd put 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3 to make it more like professional (and most other) playoff systems. First place earns the right to play a weaker opponent, and if they get beat, then 4th place really deserves to be proclaimed national champions if they win the next game. Under payno's system, fourth place could become national champs without ever having to face the first place team.

So I'd keep most of what payno already suggested, with non-bcs bowls to the week between Christmas and New Year's, and then have the following:

January 1: 4 PM (Team 1 plays Team 4), 7:30 PM (Team 2 plays Team 3)

January 7: 4 PM (Losers Play for Third Place), 7:30 PM (Winners play for Championship)

Every year, the four major bcs bowls would rotate. The bowl that was the championship game would move to the 4 o'clock preliminary the next year. The third place game would become the championship. The 7:30 prelim would become third place, and the 4 prelim would become the 7:30 prelim.

[OMMF]

3rd place games? Why?

[CaolinaJoe]

3rd place games? Why?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[OMMF]

3rd place games? Why?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

But who would watch? Who cares if their team gets third place? Who would travel, possibly all the way across the country maybe after just doing so, to see a consolation game? TV money maybe but it looks horrible with empty stands.

[yh]

Viola, National Champions

What does a musical instrument have to do with college football?

[DEAD!]

Viola, National Champions

What does a musical instrument have to do with college football?

I thought he was talking about Frank Viola

[paynomind]

You misunderstand.. i was saying that in this system, the Viola would BE the National Champions. Every year, this particular string instrument would have more wins over more opponants than any other, and owuld get the little glass football to hold over its head.

[yh]

Now that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.

And, on topic, your +1 system seems to make the most sense. The only thing I'm not so crazy about is compacting all of the bowls between Christmas and New Years. I like having a handful of minor bowls to watch in the days leading up to Christmas. Without other games to compete with, it gives some of the lesser teams a few hours to get all of the attention.

[paynomind]

I'm not advocating that the TheOnion.com Husky Jeans McTarvish Rental Car Bowl that now plays on the 19th should move. I just mean this long drawn out deal playing on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, etc should stop. Push them back a little. even move some bowls pre-christmas where a TV market exists.

I think +1 works because everyone opposed to the playoff system doesnt want teams playing 16 games a year. These are kids, after all. Right now, every coach and player form Auburn and USC would volunteer to play each other to see who really is the champ. We should allow that to happen.

As far as the 1 v 3, or 1 v 4 issue, I could go either way, I just emant that we really dont know too much about Auburn or Utah, since neither one fo them played a top 5 team in their bowl. Auburn should have played Cal or Utah. (4 and 5, respectively)

[JQK]

I have heard something about the Plus1 from college football not too long ago. I could have sworn they were considering adding that 5th BCS bowl as a Plus1 game.

And now that they are using a "Selection Committee", they had better do something to add some sort of legitimacy to the BCS.

[yh]

I have heard something about the Plus1 from college football not too long ago. I could have sworn they were considering adding that 5th BCS bowl as a Plus1 game.

Close. What they have been planning to do is add a fifth bowl game to the BCS, but rather than follow my sentiment of bringing the Cotton Bowl into the mix, they're simply going to create a "national championship game" and rotate it among the four existing BCS venues and play it in addition to the bowl they already host. That game will not feature the winners of any of the BCS bowls but will simply up the number of BCS participants to 10 teams and will pit the #1 and #2 BCS teams against each other. It attempts to provide a better chance for mid-major conferences to get a team or two into one of the "Big Four" bowls but doesn't do jack squat to attempt a resolution of the "true national champion" debate.

[jkrdevil]

College football needs a playoff but they also need to fix the biggest problem with the system and that is the human polls. The championship needs to be decided on the field and not by a bunch of people who think these 2 teams are the best so they will play each other for the championship.

A 4 week 16 team playoff would do the trick. Start the week before Christmas and it goes through the week after New Years. There are 11 1-a conferences, each conference winner gets an automatic bid in the playoff. If the conference plays a championship game then the winner of that game would get the bid. That leaves 5 more slots to be field. Take the rest of the D1A teams including the independents (ND and Navy) and rank them by record, tie breakers would be head-to-head (if played each other), Conference record (if tie between conference teams), and strength of schedule (would be used most often). A selection committe could be used for seeding only.

The Bowls would be used to host the rounds. The BCS Bowls would host the semi-finals, third place game and championship game.

This to me is the fairest way to decide a champion. Biased polls aren't used, and there isn't dicrimination to non big conferences. Using strength of schedule as a tie breaker prevents teams from scheduling easy teams.

[yh]

A 4 week 16 team playoff would do the trick. Start the week before Christmas and it goes through the week after New Years. There are 11 1-a conferences, each conference winner gets an automatic bid in the playoff. If the conference plays a championship game then the winner of that game would get the bid. That leaves 5 more slots to be field. Take the rest of the D1A teams including the independents (ND and Navy) and rank them by record, tie breakers would be head-to-head (if played each other), Conference record (if tie between conference teams), and strength of schedule (would be used most often). A selection committe could be used for seeding only.

The Bowls would be used to host the rounds. The BCS Bowls would host the semi-finals, third place game and championship game.

This to me is the fairest way to decide a champion. Biased polls aren't used, and there isn't dicrimination to non big conferences. Using strength of schedule as a tie breaker prevents teams from scheduling easy teams.

Your solution is logical but impractical given the present state of the game. There are presently 28 bowl games and that number will likely go to 30 in the next year or so. A 16 team playoff utilizing the bowls would mean that 12-14 bowl games are going to have to be eliminated and 24-28 teams are going to be denied an opportunity to play in the post season. Like them or not, even a bid to a lower tier bowl gives an "emerging" or "rebounding" program the opportunity to market itself to recruits and just as importantly, to boosters/sponsors. Therefore, the schools will never go along with a playoff, especially the mid-major schools who will likely have a difficult time getting more than one team into the post season and also the schools that generally find themselves in the middle of the pack of the larger conferences. Also, if you look at the teams that would have qualified for a 16 team playoff this year, only a couple of 8-3 squads would have made it. That means that a team that gets off to a slow start, say 3-3, is going to be virtually out of bowl contention by mid October, thus negatively affecting attendance for the remainder of the season. A team that turns it on in the second half (like Colorado did this year) would have nothing to play for and no reward at the end of the season for playing to a winning record. The notion that most 8-3 and 7-4 teams would be shut out of bowls is not going to sit well with most schools since the practical reality would be that only about 24-25 of 120 D1A schools are ever going to have a chance to play in the postseason with any regularity.

There was a time when bowls were relatively scarce in number and bids only went out to the truly elite teams. But then in the 70's and 80's that number mushroomed as more sponsors and communities realized the moneymaking potential that hosting a bowl provided. The NCAA was more than happy to go along with expanding the bowl spread and now they are pretty much financially committed to the existing system. Adding a post-bowl title game between the 2 highest ranked bowl champs, the "+1" system is just about the best and only workable option to try and impose some order on the seemingly annual national championship debate.

[slapshot]

The NCAA needs to throw the BCS down the toilet and set up playoffs like EVERY OTHER NCAA SPORT. They might have to consider adding extra bowl games (like there aren't enough already) or set up a specific parameter for bowl game participation, like at least 7 or 8 wins. Period.

There are somewhere around 115 Division 1 teams. About 50 (more or less) go to bowl games. Almost half get post-season participation? That's crazy. If you combine the March Madness tournament and the NIT, that comes out to maybe 1/3 of Div. 1 Basketball teams in postseason.

From the start, the NCAA should set the minimum requirement for wins to go to a bowl game. And wins against non division-1 schools do not count, so no beating up on Maine and Delaware just to play in December.

I have counted 35 teams that won at least 8 games, 36 to add in the Sun Belt Conference Champion, North Texas (or maybe Troy), both teams were 7-5. That would leave 18 bowl games. This makes the bowl teams a little more exclusive, from almost 1/2 to 1/3. This does not take into account wins against non Division 1 teams, so maybe this number drops even further.

You could rank them all from 1-36 using math formulas similar to the BCS (strength of schedule a big part of it). You could then single out either the top 8 or top 4 for the Championship Bowl Series. If you do Top 4, then it would rotate between the big 4 bowl sites (the 4th would be left out for one year, then get the Championship Game the next year). If it's top 8, you'd have to add 3 other major bowl sites...Citrus, Peach, Cotton. 8 teams would extend to 3 weeks, 4 teams only goes one week extra.

The rest of the bowl games would be played any time between the second week of December and New Year's Eve. The first round of the title series would be played Jan. 1. The next round could be played Jan. 8, or the closest reasonable Monday night. The Monday after would be the National Championship. Somewhere around Jan. 15, you would have the NCAA championship. Football ratings would still be high, because everyone is still worked up over the NFL playoffs all weekend.

If a bunch of sports-addicted artists can figure out a solution, why can't the NCAA?

[CaolinaJoe]

Talk of the BCS and College playoff system is worse than talking about politics. It always the same suggestions and complaints. Nothing ever changes and it won't. Besides, does it really even matter.

At least in politics you have a vote.

[jkrdevil]

A 4 week 16 team playoff would do the trick. Start the week before Christmas and it goes through the week after New Years. There are 11 1-a conferences, each conference winner gets an automatic bid in the playoff. If the conference plays a championship game then the winner of that game would get the bid. That leaves 5 more slots to be field. Take the rest of the D1A teams including the independents (ND and Navy) and rank them by record, tie breakers would be head-to-head (if played each other), Conference record (if tie between conference teams), and strength of schedule (would be used most often). A selection committe could be used for seeding only.

The Bowls would be used to host the rounds. The BCS Bowls would host the semi-finals, third place game and championship game.

This to me is the fairest way to decide a champion. Biased polls aren't used, and there isn't dicrimination to non big conferences. Using strength of schedule as a tie breaker prevents teams from scheduling easy teams.

Your solution is logical but impractical given the present state of the game. There are presently 28 bowl games and that number will likely go to 30 in the next year or so. A 16 team playoff utilizing the bowls would mean that 12-14 bowl games are going to have to be eliminated and 24-28 teams are going to be denied an opportunity to play in the post season. Like them or not, even a bid to a lower tier bowl gives an "emerging" or "rebounding" program the opportunity to market itself to recruits and just as importantly, to boosters/sponsors. Therefore, the schools will never go along with a playoff, especially the mid-major schools who will likely have a difficult time getting more than one team into the post season and also the schools that generally find themselves in the middle of the pack of the larger conferences. Also, if you look at the teams that would have qualified for a 16 team playoff this year, only a couple of 8-3 squads would have made it. That means that a team that gets off to a slow start, say 3-3, is going to be virtually out of bowl contention by mid October, thus negatively affecting attendance for the remainder of the season. A team that turns it on in the second half (like Colorado did this year) would have nothing to play for and no reward at the end of the season for playing to a winning record. The notion that most 8-3 and 7-4 teams would be shut out of bowls is not going to sit well with most schools since the practical reality would be that only about 24-25 of 120 D1A schools are ever going to have a chance to play in the postseason with any regularity.

There was a time when bowls were relatively scarce in number and bids only went out to the truly elite teams. But then in the 70's and 80's that number mushroomed as more sponsors and communities realized the moneymaking potential that hosting a bowl provided. The NCAA was more than happy to go along with expanding the bowl spread and now they are pretty much financially committed to the existing system. Adding a post-bowl title game between the 2 highest ranked bowl champs, the "+1" system is just about the best and only workable option to try and impose some order on the seemingly annual national championship debate.

I see your point. My plan wasn't to eliminate bowls and not reduce the number of bowl teams. My plan was to put a playoff system in place that would get rid of the polls. So after that let me reword my plan. The BCS Bowl sites would host the games, with the championship game being ratated as is. The BCS Bowls themselves would be the semi-finals, 3rd place game, and National Championship game. Those 4 sites would also all host the 1st and second round games. Eaach site would have 2 games for round 1 and 1 game for round 2. The semi-finals would be 2 bowls with those bowls Champions facing off in the Championship Bowl. The loser would face off in the 3rd place bowl. 4 new bowls would be added to replace the bowls used in the tournament. Which means there would be more teams going to a playoff or a bowl game than there currently is.