Keep bowls and BCS away from college football playoff
College football officials must realize they don't need bowls or the BCS for a playoff system.
In full disclosure, and at the risk of ostracizing myself from seemingly all except those who fondly recall memories of the inaugural 1902 Tournament East-West game in Pasadena — where admission was 50 cents, plus $1 for the family’s horse-and-buggy – here goes:
I like bowl games. I like tradition. I like the idea of an end-of-season reward for two college football teams, players and their families. It probably helped that I grew up in the shadow of the Rose Bowl (which the East-West became) and not the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl. But there was no urgency for a playoff, and the arguments over rankings were considered part of the fabric and charm of college football.
We’re past charm, of course. I’m not completely past the thought that bowl games serve some purpose, but I don’t want them anywhere near a college football playoff. Do you know what the dysfunctional combination of bowl games and a “playoff” has gotten us in the past 20 years? The BCS. It has created one oft-debated matchup and rendered most other games unwatchable.
College officials and conference commissioners finally agree we’re headed for a four-team playoff. But for some reason they appear unwilling to cut the cord with the bowls, which have contributed to the BCS mess and succeeded only in making money for their occasionally corrupt executives (see: Fiesta Bowl). This was reaffirmed Wednesday when ACC commissioner John Swofford, echoing the sentiments of his brethren, said his conference would like bowl games to be used as sites for playoffs and for the BCS structure to be kept for non-playoff teams.
Why … and why?
It makes no sense that the NCAA, which runs a successful basketball tournament, would allow outside contractors to stage potentially its most profitable venture. Imagine the NFL going through the regular season and then telling a start-up company, “OK, you take it from here. See if you can make the Super Bowl work.”
So here’s my plan. It won’t please everybody, but no plan will:
• The top four teams will be picked before the bowls get involved. Semifinals will be played on New Year’s Day. The championship game the following week.
• The semifinals will be held at campus stadiums of the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds. The thought of a game in Baton Rouge, Austin or Ann Arbor blows away the sterile atmosphere of a neutral-site dome. The home team obviously will have an advantage, but higher seeds should have an advantage in playoffs. I’m also not convinced that the fan bases of two college football teams can afford to travel in consecutive weeks in the postseason. This eliminates that problem. And please, no more whines about logistical issues and there not being enough hotel rooms. I’m in the media and even I don’t care about logistical issues. Every college has hosted major games of national interest.
• The championship game should be put up for bid, just like a Super Bowl. If Phoenix wants in, fine. But the host should be Phoenix, not the Fiesta Bowl subcommittee of “Dewey, Cheatem and Howe.” (Copyright: Three Stooges.)
• There will be no automatic qualifiers, not even from the mighty SEC. Sports are cyclical and with realignment Armageddon ongoing, nobody can be certain where the power structure is headed. All four teams will be at-large berths and can come from any of the FBS conferences. We can’t just assume that Middle Tennessee State can’t inexplicably field a great team in 20 years and eke in as a No. 4 seed.
• Playoff teams do not have to be conference champions. No other sport, college or pro, mandates this. This should be about the best four teams, period. That also means no cap on conference participants. That 1985 Final Four with three Big East schools — Georgetown, St. John’s and little ol’ Villanova — seemed to work out OK.
• The four teams will be picked by a panel. If the NCAA can come up with a tournament selection committee for basketball, it certainly can do the same for football. Wire service and computer rankings will not be part of any official criteria, even if it’s assumed everybody on the panel will be peeking at them.
• The bowls have free reign of participants after the four playoff teams are picked. The Rose Bowl can have its Pac 12-Big Ten matchup every year. The Sugar Bowl can take an SEC school. Let bowl officials scramble for teams again. The games are better. Everybody’s happy. The only mandate: All games must be played by New Year’s Day. Only the championship comes after.
College football gets a true champion. The bowls return to function as they should’ve all along. The BCS gets hit by a wrecking ball. What could be better?
By Jeff Schultz
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265 comments Add your comment
cdpridg
May 17th, 2012
2:55 pm
the tech man and his bug community like the conf champion scenario as they see scenarios where they may get a shot to have their brains beat in. Playing in possbily the weakest conference in America there is a shot in the dark scenario where they can win their conference with 6 losses….be unranked…therefore giving them a pass into the final four even though they have already been whipped by double digits on at least 4 occasions. Such is life in the ACC as a tech fan…hahahahaha!
Rodster
May 17th, 2012
2:55 pm
Pretty good plan Jeff. I also like tradition. The BCS has been an unholy alliance. It hasn’t produced better results than when the national champ was just a consensus pick by the AP and UPI.
GTBob
May 17th, 2012
2:58 pm
Last year was the first year the BCS championship game was on cable you nut.
No it wasn’t. The Auburn/Oregon game was, and it got much higher ratings.
Good Grief
May 17th, 2012
2:59 pm
I’ve always been a fan of an 8-team playoff, but I understand the logistics of the situation and how they basically conspire to keep anything more than a 4-team system, at least for now, as a possibility.
THat said, I like Jeff’s idea. I would love to see a national semifinal game played in the Big House. The Green Bay Packers play at least four games a year in those coniditions…are you telling me that the guys who want to play for the Green Bay Packers couldn’t handle it.
And if you bid out the Championship game, considering the rabidity of college fans, it could…maybe even would…be bigger than the Super Bowl.
And knowing that bowl officials would once again be securing the teams is a thing of beauty. Gone will be the days of Kansas vs. Virginia Tech or Clemson vs. West Virginia. In will be the days of Oklahoma vs. Florida, Nebraska vs. Georgia, Ohio State vs. Oregon. I would love it…
bali
May 17th, 2012
3:02 pm
dewey cheatum and howe…you knucklehead yuck yuck yuck
GTBob
May 17th, 2012
3:02 pm
Playing in possbily the weakest conference in America there is a shot in the dark scenario where they can win their conference with 6 losses….be unranked…therefore giving them a pass into the final four
Name the last time a 6 loss team won the ACC and was one of the top 4 ranked conference champions.
asdf
May 17th, 2012
3:03 pm
Heisman – fair enough, I did not play professional football. But you have not played competitive soccer either; otherwise, you wouldn’t have made that comment. You can’t therefore speak to anything about the physical nature of soccer. I’m not trying to downplay the physical play of football, but your random shot at soccer in general is strange – nobody mentioned it, but you randomly decided to include it in your post and, apparently, you have decided soccer players are sissies or something to that effect. That is not true, and quite frankly, ignorant.
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
3:05 pm
GTBob telling that Mo Ron the truth will not help. ABC had the game not just ESPN. It was on REGULAR Broadcast TV but you know that Mo Ron didn’t do his research before he posted.
Tdawg
May 17th, 2012
3:18 pm
Well Jeff, why I do like the idea of a playoff system, the 4 team play off system is not much better than the current system. So what you are trying to tell us is that winning your conference should mean nothing. Who is to say who the top 4 teams are? Who’s to say for arguments sake’s that if Alabama and LSU had been in the big 12 or whatever it’s called today, either of these teams may not have won that conference. No way can you say that Bama or LSU would have beaten Oklahoma State or Oklahoma for that fact. Conference champions should count and count the most. I mean, why even bother to play if being conference championships has no meaning?
Pick a panel to pick the 4 team’s that are going to be in the playoffs you say. Are you kidding me? I’m pretty sure that a person on the panel from California is going to pick a 1 loss Tennessee team over a 1 loss USC or Standford team or a Ohio man is going to pick a once beaten LSU team over a 1 loss Ohio State team. Get serious. The only fair panel one could come up with, is if the panel members were made up of European judges. I say pick the conference winners and have them go at it. If a conference is a split conference, then they only send the conference winner. If a conference is a split conference then the winner of their side of the conference should both play in the playoffs. You would let’s say have the winner of the SEC east play the winner one of the ACC winners and the SEC West play the other ACC champ, that way it is possible for the National Championship be between two teams from the same Conference. It the lower tier college can have a large playoff system, then so can the major programs. Use the bowl site’s for the first 2 rounds then do as you say. Have the semi’s and the finals at a neutral site. No! just because a team has a higher ranking should not give them home field advantage, because you don’t know for a fact that the higher ranked team would have been ranked higher if they had played in the same conference as the lower ranked team.
The bowls as they are now, I will say for the umpteenth time, flat out stinks. 10 years ago I use to watch almost all the bowls. I would never dream of missing the Orange, Cotton or Sugar Bowls. Even though the Rose Bowl was not a true bowl, I would usually watch most of them. The Rose Bowl was nothing more than a game between two conferences and would often have two teams not much worth watching. Always a great match up today, I rarely watch the Orange Bowl as most of these match ups are a joke. Conference tie in’s has for all intents and purposes, killed the bowl games.
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
3:20 pm
Bryant
May 17th, 2012
2:52 pm
5150 uoad What an idiot you are! People who only want conference champs included do not want
the best teams in. Last year was the first year the BCS championship game was on cable you nut.
BTW it was the second most watched cable event in history. Look it up moron!
Alabama-LSU produces third-lowest TV rating for national championship in BCS era.
NEW ORLEANS — Alabama loved a rematch. Not so much of the rest of the country.
It turns out most television viewers didn’t want to see Alabama-LSU again, at least not an uncompetitive rematch.
Final ratings for Alabama’s 21-0 victory over LSU were the third lowest for a national championship in the 14-year history of the BCS. The All-SEC affair, the first championship pairing teams from the same conference, drew a 14.0 rating on ESPN. The lowest ratings were a 13.7 for USC-Oklahoma in 2005 and a 13.8 for Miami-Nebraska. [Note: Updated with final ratings after initial overnight ratings.]
To put last night’s rating in perspective, Alabama-LSU on Nov. 5 drew an 11.5 on CBS. Last night’s game was down 8 percent from Auburn’s three-point victory over Oregon last year. It was also down from Alabama’s last national championship when the Crimson Tide defeated Texas in 2010.
You could watch the game on ABC or ESPN.
T Dawg
May 17th, 2012
3:28 pm
One more thing. If Notre Dame thinks that they are too good to join a conference, then oh well, good luck sitting at home when playoff time rolls around.
Dawg Doo
May 17th, 2012
3:29 pm
Split the current FBS into different levels so that weaker conferences like the MAC, Sun Belt and ACC can have their own champion.
gbal
May 17th, 2012
3:31 pm
8 teams is the right number….
6 confrence winners IF the winner ends the season ranked in the top 10. If the winner is not in the top 10 the slot goes to the highest ranked non confrence winner.
Last two slots go to – highest ranked non confrence winners.
First round games go to the highest seeds campuses…. GREAT IDEA…GIVE IT BACK TO THE SCHOOLS AND FANS.
Semi’s and finals go to bid cities.
Bowls take the role of and NIT in basketball which is basicall what all the bowls are now other than the top 2-3 games.
GOAL — PUT THE BEST 8 TEAMS IN A PLAYOFF – WITH THIS SYSTEM THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOME BUBBLE TEAMS BUT I WOULD FEEL FONFIDENT EACH YEAR THAT A RENKING SYSTEM AS THE BCS BUT RUN BY NCAA WOULD INSURE WITH NO QUESTION THAT THE BEST 4-6 TEAMS MAKE THE FIELD. THATS ALL WE CAN ASK.
gbal
May 17th, 2012
3:32 pm
THAT IS 6 MAJOR CONFRENCE WINNERS
gbal
May 17th, 2012
3:37 pm
TDAWG – DO YOU NOT WANT TO MAKE THE BEST EFFORT TO DETERMINE THE BEST TEAMS IN THE COUNTRY GET IN THTE PLAYOFF REGARDLESS OF CONFRENCE.
IT WILL NEVER BE PERFECT TO PICK THE 4 OR 8 BEST AND BE 100% SURE THAT THE BEST ARE IN THE PLAYOFF….BUT TAKING CONFRENCE CHAMPS AUTOMATICALLY WILL INSURE THAT THE BEST 4 OR 8 ARE NOT IN THE FIELD.
Tdawg
May 17th, 2012
3:38 pm
Dawg Doo I agree with you on the MAC and Sun Belt scenario, but most years the ACC is as good as the big Ten, 12 or whatever it is. FSU, Clemson and Miami won’t be down forever and that’s not even including VaTech and a once in a blue moot GaTech team. Also I have a feeling that North Carolina is gonna be a team to watch in the near future. Do as the 1AA school’s I say. Have a real playoff system.
ACC
May 17th, 2012
3:40 pm
The SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac 12 have received a combined 28 at-large BCS bowl game bids. The ACC has received ONE. Darn right we’re pushing to emphasize our conference champion. BCS bowl games only take our representative because they have to. We’d never make it based on merit alone.
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
3:42 pm
If You are NOT good enough to win the Season Playoff for your Own Conference Championship you don’t Deserve a Shot at the National Championship.
gbal
May 17th, 2012
3:45 pm
ACC – AND IF YOU CANT MAKE IT ON MERRIT SHOULD YOU JUST HAVE IT HANDED TO YOU AS A WEAK CONFRENCE CHAMP??? SOUNDS LIKE OBAMAISM. IF YOU CAN MAKE IT IN LIFE, WE WILL HAVE THE STRONG (OR FOUTUNANTE) GIVE IT TO YOU.
Chi Town
May 17th, 2012
3:47 pm
Respect Lord Saban, Schultz.
ACC
May 17th, 2012
3:48 pm
I hope FSU is listening to you, 5150. They’d better stick to a conference that’s easy to win. Bobby Bowden’s logic is still sound. The ACC is the path of least resistance to a national title shot.
gbal
May 17th, 2012
3:48 pm
ACC-LOAD – IF YOU CANT MAKE IT ON MERRIT YOU CHOULD HAVE IT GIVEN TO YOU HUH… NO… THE GOAL SHOULD BE TO HAVE THE BEST 4 OR 8 TEAMS IN THE PLAYOFF. SELECTING THE BEST 8 IS OBJECTIVE AND SOME ROOM FOR ERROR BUT IT AINT HAVING A WEEK 4 LOSS CONFRENCE CHAMP IN ONE OF THE 4 SLOTS BECAUSE THEY WON THEIR CONGRENCE.,. OBAMAISM AT ITS BEST DUDES.
T Dawg
May 17th, 2012
3:49 pm
global I like your way of thinking, but would go a bit further. The 6 major conference champion’s should be in the playoffs. If the conference has a split conference, then the winner of their respective divisions should make the playoffs. Also as you suggested teams in the top ten should also make the playoffs, not just the top 2 in the top 10, but all teams in the top 10. That would pretty much eliminate a team like Alabama being left out. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I would have to believe that would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 teams in a playoff series. Notre Dame is to good to be in a conference, so I say arrivederci to them.
GTBob
May 17th, 2012
3:53 pm
Split the current FBS into different levels so that weaker conferences like the MAC, Sun Belt and ACC can have their own champion.
Here is how I think the playoffs should be. 8 teams. Take the top 6 SEC teams and the NFC and AFC pro bowl teams from the NFL. Since the SEC is supposedly made of superhuman cyborgs, this is the only slightly fair way of doing it. If Alabama loses at anytime they get another chance in the next round, just to be fair.
ACC
May 17th, 2012
3:57 pm
I’m in favor of any scheme that would’ve left Alabama out last year and would’ve replaced them with the Clemson team that won the ACC championship and later was humiliated by West Virginia, 70-33.
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
4:00 pm
I know HOW to fix it. Make all the Players actually be as smart as the other students attending their respective colleges. The Playing field would be more level and the SEC would actually have to stop being the Special Education Conference.
SecFan
May 17th, 2012
4:23 pm
Good plan, except with only one week off, you give the teams 3 days to prepare for the biggest game of their lives. I guess that was another of Schultz’s brain cramps.
ACC
May 17th, 2012
4:25 pm
I’m with ya, 5150. When the talk turns to football, I always try to change the subject, too!
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
4:29 pm
SecFan…..BUT BUT BUT Every game the SEC plays against another SEC team is the Biggest Game of their lives according to all the Special Education Conference Fans.
Doug
May 17th, 2012
4:31 pm
6 conference champions plus 2 at large. Keep conference championship games as they would act as a first of preliminary round of playoffs. Committee to choose the 2 at large with no strings attached and seed the tournament. Could go without the at large and give the top 2 seeds a bye week. Bottomline is conference championships and conference champions should continue to first priority.
Charlie
May 17th, 2012
4:33 pm
Jeff — Such wonderfully sensible ideas! I wish the college football bureaucracy would be able to adopt a plan like this.
Auburn 2004 Never Forget
May 17th, 2012
4:38 pm
Jeff, great suggestions by you and they are just practical enough to please 95% of college football fans. The other 5% will never be satisfied with any plan. The goal should be to prevent those voices from hi-jacking the conversation and causing a delay of any kind.
Let’s face it: The four-team playoff will certainly spawn arguments and complaints about a “deserving team – a great 5th ranked team” that is being left out of the party. That is ok. At least it moves the conversation down from a “deserving team – a great 3rd ranked team” being left out of the party. Among the many BCS hair-balls over the years, the absolute worst situation was Auburn (and Utah) being undefeated yet left out in 2004.
This proposed four-team playoff would have fixed the 2004 travesty if it was in effect at the time. This proves that it is a significant improvement. By solving the worst scenario in the 20 year history of the BCS, this should be a playoff model that we can all live with (for a while.)
Thanks Jeff for bringing a pragmatic solution to your appreciative audience.
GTBob
May 17th, 2012
4:47 pm
I’m with ya, 5150. When the talk turns to football, I always try to change the subject, too!
Its always amazing that in the phrase College Football, the College part is the what people want to pretend doesn’t exist.
1eyedJack
May 17th, 2012
4:51 pm
Kids get a lot of neat free stuff from the major bowls. Will they get neat free stuff for the playoff games? What will they be able to sell on ebay if they don’t win the championship?
meh
May 17th, 2012
4:57 pm
it’s gonna be 4 SEC teams in the playoffs.
screwball
May 17th, 2012
5:02 pm
college footsy totsy don’t need no stinking round robin playoff schedule. It’s fine the way it is. College football is overrated and just an excuse to drink boonsfarm wine and get laid underneath the bleachers during the game. just let it go. I’m sick of folks who keep oinking about no playoffs in college pigskin.
5150 UOAD
May 17th, 2012
5:04 pm
1eyedJack the Bowl game I would have selected to go to was the Armed Services Bowl. They gave the Best SWAG last year by far.
War Eagle Every Day
May 17th, 2012
5:08 pm
Jeff, this 4 team playoff does address the BCS low-point of 2004, when Auburn and Utah were both undefeated and left out. Having more than four undefeated teams at the end of a college football season does not happen frequently enough to have the 5% percent whiners derail PROGRESS because they want a full blown 16 team playoff.
Hillbilly D
May 17th, 2012
5:08 pm
I’m not really into college football but for those of you who are….be careful what you wish for.
Beast from the East
May 17th, 2012
5:18 pm
I’m somewhat torn on this. If it’s only going to be 4 teams, then I think you need to be a conference champ. That said, I think last year Alabama was certainly the best team in the land and they would have not been involved in the playoff. My fear is that if we don’t require you to win your conference, then it may water down the importance of the regular season.
Also, Jeff, how are you ever going to find an impartial panel to make the selections?
Ron Roberts
May 17th, 2012
5:21 pm
Listen, I like the FCS and their 16-team playoff fine, but it only works for FCS schools because there’s MUCH more parity (and much less money – coincidence? I think NOT) in that subdivision. Go back the last 10 years and try to find more than four FBS schools who had a legitimate claim to being the best team in the nation that year prior to their bowl games. Four would be plenty.
I don’t like the on-campus semifinals; other than that I think this system would work fine. Use the former BCS bowl games for those semifinal matchups (giving those games huge relevance) with the higher-seeded teams having geographic proximity, but an even ticket split. At WORST, if the on-campus games must happen, at least make sure the tickets are split.
ACC
May 17th, 2012
5:37 pm
When the overwhelming majority of universities with cash cow football programs routinely admit football players as students who have no academic credentials to justify their admission, there is no “college” in college football. That’s not pretending; that is reality.
Dawg Doo
May 17th, 2012
5:46 pm
Don’t limit the field to only conference champs. Play the semi-final games at campus locations, and give homefield preference to a conference champ, even if a non conference champ has a higher seed. That doesn’t the four best teams from being included, but it does help to preserve the importance of the regular season.
Dawg Doo
May 17th, 2012
5:48 pm
should be: doesn’t prevent the four best teams from being included
1eyedJack
May 17th, 2012
5:57 pm
Who is Vidal Anderson?
JASon
May 17th, 2012
6:10 pm
“I’m not completely past the thought that bowl games serve some purpose, but I don’t want them anywhere near a college football playoff.”
It makes no sense to make a game a semifinal game a bowl. Leave it at that. I’m sick of money and its pursuit creating these retarded, logic-defying scenarios. We jump through these hoops we don’t have to because it makes someone money.
JSS
May 17th, 2012
6:27 pm
More useless crazy college football talk!
@Jeff Schultz…
Man, I can tell you this, wait until some SEC school has to go into Lincoln, Nebraska, Ann Arbor, or East Lansing in the dead of winter! You will see a death nail in that system so fast, it will be like watching the folks flow out the door the last day Bear Sterns was in business! I lived in that mess for 3 and 1/2 years in Washtenaw County… These aren’t NFL stadiums like Lambeau! Ha ha, wait till the winds off the plains or the Great Lakes hit them in the face! That would be priceless!!!
JSS
May 17th, 2012
6:30 pm
No, here is a better example, it will be like Mao’s Long March!!! All of those proud car flags, froze straight dang solid!!! And then trying to drive or fly back out of their element! Ha ha, a disaster is a coming!!!
Mediocre Bowl
May 17th, 2012
6:44 pm
And also require all bowl teams to have a winning record.
6-6 is not good.
BILLDAWG
May 17th, 2012
6:58 pm
THE BOWLS WILL ALWAYS HAVE A PART. TOO MUCH $$$$$$ TO FREEZE THEM OUT.