A Playoff Proposal for the President-elect

President-elect Barack Obama expressed his support for a college football playoff during a pre-election Monday Night Football interview. Herewith is our humble proposal to remove the BS from the BCS system. Adopting this quickly will allow President-elect Obama to devote his time to less important matters, like the economy.

We submit this out of love of college football, a desire to keep every game relevant and to resolve the frustration of multiple possible champions at the end of the season. It will not eliminate controversy, debate or rivalry, and shouldn’t. Those elements are the mother’s milk of college football.

Keeping in place the current BCS ranking formulae, we would limit teams to 12 regular season games, not including conference championship games, if any. Only FBS (Division 1-A) games would count for ranking purposes. Play a FCS (Division 1-AA) opponent if you want, but it counts against your 12 game limit and doesn’t help you in the standings. Point differential above 25 or 30 should be removed as a rating factor from computer rankings.

Keep the current bowls (all of them) and BCS conferences, but expand the top bowl rotation slightly so that more “New Year’s Day” bowls can get a playoff game. There will be 10 playoff games in 3 rounds, so you need 10 bowls in the rotation, one of which would later host the National Championship game.  The Sugar, Orange, Rose and Fiesta Bowls could retain some weighted advantage in the rotation.  One of these would get both a playoff game and the National Championship game on a rotating basis. 

Playoffs are open to all FBS (Div 1-A) teams.

Here’s how it works:

–The top 10 ranked teams in the final BCS rankings automatically qualify for the playoffs. The next two teams (#11 and #12) receive automatic spots, unless there is an undefeated FBS team not ranked in the top 12, that team would receive the 12th bid. (Hard to imagine, but if there were 2 undefeated teams, neither #11 nor #12 would qualify.)

–Teams not ranked in the final 12 would be free to negotiate bowl bids with the 23 other bowls not in the bowl rotation according to conference contracts, regional attraction, etc.

–PLAYOFF FIRST ROUND: The top 4 ranked teams receive a first round bye. Teams 5 – 12 are seeded 1 – 8, with four games played at neutral bowl sites (lowest ranked bowl games in that year’s rotation) 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7, etc. This round would take place in the 2nd week of December, around the time many minor bowls are played now. (4 games)

–PLAYOFFS QUARTERFINALS (Great Eight):  The first round winners play the top four teams in seeded order (the highest number seeded first round winner plays the #1 ranked team, and so on.)  These four games could be played on New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day at the traditional bowl sites. (4 games)

–NATIONAL SEMI-FINALS (Final Four):  The winner of the game involving the BCS-ranked #1 and #4 teams would play in one semi-final, and the winner of the game involving the #2 and #3 teams would play in another, one week after New Year’s. (2 games)  

–NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP:  Winners of the semi-finals meet a week later, at that year’s championship bowl site (in the same way the BCS rotation works now), to crown the consensus National Champion.

Advantages:
-Finality. National champ is chosen on the field.
-At most, finalists play 17 games.
-Mitigates the problem of top teams knocking each other out of championship contention due to conference championship game losses.
-Only extends current bowl season one week.
-Greatly rewards top four teams. The regular season matters.
-Gives late-developing and late-loss teams a chance.
-Gives “lesser” conference teams a chance to earn a National Championship on the field. Sets up David/Goliath possibilities.
-Prevents fluke champions, to win the championship, the #12 team would have to win four games against top 10 opponents.
-Rewards all teams with “perfect” seasons.
-Keeps all bowls relevant, retains pre-eminence of older, traditional bowls.
-Retains attractiveness for television money, the real mother’s milk of college football.

Every other NCAA sport awards a single champion. It’s time to get this done. Let’s have a football playoff by the end of President Obama’s first term!