One of my longest running pet peeves is that division 1 (or whatever they are calling it now) college football does not have a playoff. Games and seasons are meant to have winners and losers. And I can't think of another team sport that does not have a playoff.
My main problem with the system we have now is that teams lie TCU and Boise State do no thave a chance to win the championship. And I believe that every season there are teams who should have a chance. And even more specific to this season Boise AND TCU could have beat Auburn or Oregon for the championship. And as long as we have the current system teams like them will never have a chance. And that is just wrong.
There are two reasons I have heard of for why there are no playoffs. The first being that the kids would miss too much school. Which makes sense, except for one thing,: all of the smaller divisions in college football has playoffs. That has never made sense to me. Are they trying to say that class attendance is more important at the bigger schools?
The second excuse I have heard is that having a playoffs would make the season too long. And I have also heard that the University Presidents don't want change the current bowl system because it makes too much money.
I think that I have a solution that would make most everyone who follows college football happy.
First of all, I don't think that just adding playoff games to the end of the season is the answer. I think you should start by shortening the regular season. It seems to me that the out of conference games that teams are usually paying against are very inferior teams. Getting rid of those games would not only shorten the season (by about 3 games) but would make more competitive balance.
At the end of the season the top eight teams should go into the playoffs. All other bowl eligible teams can still go to lesser bowl games as a reward for a good season. The big four bowls (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta) could host the first round of the playoffs. Since all four of those games are affiliated with conferences those tie ins should, and I think can, be maintained. As a way to show how this can be done I seeded what this years playoffs could have looked like.
For the seedings I looked at the last week of rankings for the BcS and AP. They both agreed on Auburn,Oregon and TCU as the top three teams. The main difference 4-9 was that the AP had Oklahoma ranked 6 and BcS had Standford at 4, but neither team were both top 8's. I took Oklahoma out of the top 8 and inserted Boise St in just because its the only revenge I can get against the BcS.
Since this is my seedings I made Oregon #1 because at the time I thought they would beat Auburn. In my playoff seedings I put them in the Rose Bowl. For the most part I like to keep the Rose Bowl tradition as Pac 10 vs Big 10. In my playoff system I would look to see whether the Big 10 or the Pac 10 had the higher ranked team. So my Rose Bowl would have been #1 Oregon vs # Arkansas.
The Sugar Bowl's only has an affiliation with the SEC. Under my plan #2Auburn would play #7 Arkansas.
The Fiesta Bowl's tie in is with the Big 12. Since I took Oklahoma out of the equation; I put #3 TCU vs (guess who) #6 Boise St. into the Fiesta Bowl.
The Orange Bowl is usually an ACC game. I don't think the ACC even had a team in the top 10 so I put #4 Standford vs #5 Wisconsin.
I did not predict how those games would go. I have heard that Jerry Jones would be interested in having an NCAA football game in his stadium and I say put rounds 2-3 in Arlington. And continue to rotate the NCAA Championship game between the four major bowl stadiums.
I think my idea is a lot better than what we have now and I hope others will agree.
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