What Could Be…

Earlier in the season, I explained my hatred of the current BCS system and what I believe could be a proposed solution.  To recap, I fully support an 8-team playoff.  At the most, it would require an additional two extra games from the two teams who have the honor to play in the national title game.  It is a small price to pay for a fair solution to the biggest problem that resides in American Sports. 

Now that the end of the season has arrived, and the bowl schedule has been completely released, let me describe to you the scenario I envision.  To start, wipe out the four major BCS bowl games including the national title game.  These bowls no longer exist and replacing them will be the games in the 8 team playoff. 

The 8 teams that comprise the playoff will be the 6 major conference champions followed by the two highest BCS ranked schools that did not win their conference.  The seeding would also be determined by the BCS rankings so the playoff seeding for the current year would look like this:

1)  LSU – SEC champion

                   2)  Alabama – 1^st At large Bid            

                    3) Oklahoma State – Big 12 Champion

       4)  Stanford – 2^nd At large Bid

        5) Oregon – Pac 12 Champion

          6)Wisconsin – Big 10 Champion

       7)  Clemson – ACC Champion

                  8) West Virginia -  Big East Champion

Sorry Boise, you would not be included in this year’s BCS playoff.  Yet in most other years, a Non-AQ school would have been in the playoff system which would have solved this whole Non-AQ problem years ago.  Regardless of that, tell me how much a college football fan would salivate at the sight of that lineup.

The first four games would each be played in a BCS bowl site.  During a four year rotation, each bowl site would have a chance to pick 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th for the respective quarterfinal game.  The bowls would also rotate the semi-final games as well as the national championship game over the four year period.  

In regards to dates and times, there would be at least ten days off in between each playoff game.  The quarterfinal games would happen before Christmas.  The Semi-final games would occur on January 1^st (the 2^nd this year) to keep the New Year’s Day bowl game tradition alive and the final game would occur on the first Saturday after the Tenth of January.  This timing structure would give teams plenty of time to recover from injuries and prepare for the next game.  So taking into account a few hypothetical situations, here is what the bracket would look like. 

Take a look at that bracket.  You want rematches; you have great rematches that start in the first round.  You want your one loss team to still have a shot at title, you now have that shot.  BCS Bowls you want money, tell me that system won’t double the amount of money you already make.  Yes, I am sure that there might some potential flaws that could be wrong with my system, but nothing the professionals couldn’t iron out.  With an 8 team playoff system, we keep the intensity of the regular season alive, make championship Saturday extremely relevant and give conference champions and one loss teams, a chance to play for the crystal ball.  This is it; this could compete with the NFL as the greatest sport out there.