College football playoff

[Mac the Knife]

I think there've been threads here before on NCAA football playoffs, but I'm going to throw a curve of sorts.  Let's say that you had carte blanche to set up a playoff system, but with two restrictions:

(1)  You must incorporate a majority of the current college bowl games into the structure; but

(2)  You cannot have bowls serve as qualifiers for other bowls (i.e., to get to the Sugar Bowl you must first win the Independence, Liberty, etc.).

How would you go about doing it?

[Mac the Knife]

(1) You must incorporate a majority of the current college bowl games into the structure

I like the idea, but it doesn't meet the restrictions as it seems to use only 4 of the 28 bowl games.  Anyone else?

[yh]

Here's how I would recommend that it be done - purely fantasy as it presumes a lot of cooperation among bowls, conferences, etc. which is highly unlikely.

Take the BCS formula and string it out to all 117 D1A schools.  The top 56 bowl-eligible teams, regardless of conference, qualify.  The 28 bowls are divided into tiers of 7 games each.  To wit:

Tier I: Sugar, Fiesta, Rose, Orange, Cotton, Gator, Sun

Tier II: Outback, Liberty, Independence, Holiday, Hawaii, Peach, Capital One

Tier III: Las Vegas, Motor City, Humanitarian, Alamo, Houston (bring back Bluebonnet!!), Continental Tire, Silicon Valley

Tier IV: San Francisco, Music City, Fort Worth, Insight, GMAC, New Orleans, Tangerine

Champs of the Big XII, Big 10, Pac 10, ACC and SEC are guaranteed a spot in one of the Tier I bowls.  The remainder of the Tier I bowl rosters would be filled out by the 9 highest ranked teams on the BCS 117.  Teams ranked 1-4 would not be eligible to face each other in a bowl game.  The desired matchups would be 1-8, 2-7, and so on, but two teams from the same conference should not be play each other in a bowl, so some adjustments might have to be made.  The remaining bowls will pick from the remaining field of bowl eligible teams. Tier II Bowl get to pick their teams, then the remaining list gets passed down to Tier III and so on.  There would be no obligation for the Tier II bowls to have to work with the next 14 highest ranked teams, but they will get first crack at them.  The bowls would rotate within their tiers as far as pecking order on a yearly basis, just like the BCS bowls do now.  After bowl season, the four highest ranked teams THAT WON THEIR BOWL GAMES play off on the second Saturday in January.  The national championship game would then be played on the Monday night following the third Saturday in January.

Again, this presumes a lot of cooperation among a lot of uncooperative parties and still allows controversy to permeate the mix.  It also diminishes the AP and ESPN polls to little more than factors in a larger equation, but it seems to me to be a decent way to preserve all the bowls and perhaps provide some sort of playoff system.

[jrh31584]

I think there've been threads here before on NCAA football playoffs, but I'm going to throw a curve of sorts. Let's say that you had carte blanche to set up a playoff system, but with two restrictions:

(1) You must incorporate a majority of the current college bowl games into the structure; but

(2) You cannot have bowls serve as qualifiers for other bowls (i.e., to get to the Sugar Bowl you must first win the Independence, Liberty, etc.).

How would you go about doing it?

I do not believe that with these restrictions one can create a viable playoff system.

[Mac the Knife]

Okay... now that I'm not at work, my take, though to make it work each NCAA team would have to go back to an 11-game schedule...

- 32 teams make the playoff.

- All 28 bowl games survive, but 16 are used for first-round playoff games and/or conference title tilts. The other 12 bowls could be used for at-large bids based on marketability.

- No city receives more than one 'playoff' bowl game.

- I'm using current conference alignments; I'm not completely familiar with all the changes forthcoming. I am, however, assessing some of these based on what little I do know future alignments will be. I'm also assuming that the NCAA will eventually allow conferences with only 10 teams to have conference title games (currently a conference must have 12).

- At least 8 slots available each year for at-large berths, to be determined by BCS ranking.  However, all conferences get at least one berth.

1-PEACH BOWL (Atlanta)

ACC #1 vs. ACC #2 (Conf. Championship)

2-COTTON BOWL (Dallas)

BIG TWELVE #1 vs. BIG TWELVE #2 (Conf. Championship)

3-MOTOR CITY BOWL (Detroit)

BIG TEN #1 vs. BIG TEN #2 (Conf. Championship)

4-ROSE BOWL (Pasadena)

PAC TEN #1 vs. PAC TEN #2 (Conf. Championship)

5-LIBERTY BOWL (Memphis)

BIG EAST #1 vs. CONFERENCE USA #1

6-MUSIC CITY BOWL (Nashville)

MAC #1 vs. MAC #2 (Conf. Championship)

7-LAS VEGAS BOWL (Las Vegas)

MOUNTAIN WEST #1 vs. SUNBELT #1

8-SUGAR BOWL (New Orleans)

SEC #1 vs. SEC #2 (Conf. Championship)

9-HOLIDAY BOWL (San Diego)

WAC #1 vs. AT-LARGE QUALIFIER

10-INDEPENDENCE BOWL (Shreveport)

ACC #3 vs. BIG TEN #3

11-ALAMO BOWL (San Antonio)

SEC #3 vs. BIG TWELVE #3

12-SUN BOWL (El Paso)

PAC TEN #3 vs. AT-LARGE QUALIFIER

13-TANGERINE BOWL (Orlando)

14-FIESTA BOWL (Tempe)

15-GATOR BOWL (Jacksonville)

16-ORANGE BOWL (Miami)

AT-LARGE QUALIFIER vs. AT-LARGE QUALIFIER

I know I'll catch hell for suggesting some of these ("Why does this conference get 2 entrants and this one only 1?"; "How can THIS bowl get teams from this conference, but not this one?," etc.), but I'm just thinking out loud here. Have a better idea? Post it!

[yh]

I don't think the NCAA is going to waver from its 12 team minimum for a conference championship game.  The reason for this is that in a conference of 12 teams, you are allowed to split your conference into divisions.  Each team plays their own divisional foes one time and then plays half of the other division's teams on a rotating basis.  The champ of each division plays each other in the championship game rather than the #1 and #2 teams within the conference as a whole.  What this is designed to do is maximize thei importance of every conference game and minimize the chances that teams are going to play each other twice in one season.  Yes, it does happen on occasion, but not nearly as much as it would if you had 8, 9 and 10 team conferences holding a championship game.

[shiznit1083]

Here's my thought to incorporate Bowls in the mix.  Why not some how have all of the losers in the tourney play bowl games in the week leading up to the Champ game.  i.e. the 8 first round losers would play bowl games according to seedings on the monday before the saturday champ game seeing as how they would have plenty of time to prepare for the game and by friday the losers in the semifinal round would play in a bowl game.  The later the in the week the game is, the more prestigious bowls finish off the week while still keeping a rotating championship bowl.

[shiznit1083]

Also, a really interesting thing would be that the comittees for each bowl woul be drooling at the prospect of having a team like Miami in the Las Vegas bowl after being upset in the first round.  It would be a March Madness type atmosphere.