College Football Playoff Scenario

A poster on PackPride.com described a potential playoff system that he thought would be great. I didn't like his proposal, at all. It involved back-to-back games on consecutive days at "neutral sites" for the first two rounds. That would have gotten you down to a "Final Four", which he never mentions....he only goes on to talk about the timing of the Championship Game, which he had on a Monday in late January, to avoid NFL conflicts. Of course, he never mentioned how he would play games on back-to-back days in December and also avoid NFL conflicts, which is another problem with his plan.

The "games on consecutive days" plan is horrible. Can you imagine Ohio State vs. West Virginia on a Saturday, only to be followed by USC vs. NC State (hey, I can dream) on Sunday?? If the stadium holds 80,000, are there four cities that can provide 160,000 people hotel rooms for a weekend? At the prices these games would command, I don't know that people would want to pay to go to both, since "their team" is only playing in one. What if it rains during game one??

The "pod system", which I assume this is modeled after, works in basketball because there are 65 teams in the NCAA Tournament, which means that fans know they will get a relatively local team to watch. A 16-team (the proposed number) football tournament provides no such guarantee.

Anyway, enough about that plan. What would be the point of this post if I didn't have my own plan??

I do.

First, we keep the BCS rankings, maybe the name changes, but you still need a way to rank teams across the country, because I'll need that later in my plan.

There are 11 Division 1-A (FBS) conferences. The champions of those 11 conferences will be joined by the highest-ranked team that did not win a conference, according to TPFKABCS (The Poll Formerly Known As Bowl Championship Series). Why do all 11 champions get invites?? Because this is an NCAA-backed competition, and I don't think the NCAA would organize a national championship that didn't include the champions of all conferences.

Are you complaining, Notre Dame?? Grow a set and join a conference. I don't care how much NBC pays you, you haven't had a good enough program lately to earn any automatic assurances in this system.

Anyway, back to "the plan". The season would begin one week earlier, which would put the conference championship games (for conferences that have them) being played the last week of November. Once you have your champions, you rank them according to TPFKABCS. The non-champion qualifier would automatically be the 12-seed.

The top four teams would get byes, and then 5 would host 12, 6 would host 11, and so on. Those first round games would be played the first week of December. The following week, the four teams that had byes would host games, with the seeding working like the NFL model. If the 12 seed wins, they play the one seed. If the 5 seed wins, they play the four seed. Every other matchup would depend on who won which game.

Once the Final Four was established, there could be bowl opportunities for the eight losers.

The remaining four teams would play the following week, again reseeded based on who wins and who loses. These games would also be home games for the better seed. The only neutral site game would be the championship game, which would be about 8-10 days into January. You wouldn't want to play the game close to New Year's Day, because there would still be a lot of traditional bowl games, and you want the Championship game to be the last one of the year.

The host stadium for the Championship game could be determined by presentations, not by just anointing the current BCS bowls as the rotating hosts. That way, the market determines what the game is worth. If Jerry Jones wants to pay $500 million to have the game at the New Texas Stadium, let him....unless the Fiesta Bowl thinks it's worth $600 million.

Home games work, because fans aren't going to travel 2 or 3 weeks in a row. I don't believe a playoff system can be successful, and keep the "real fan" college atmosphere, if it doesn't include home games.