Would College Football Playoffs Pay Off?
Stuart Nachbar
November 18, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama has stated that he would like to see the best college football teams in the land face off in a playoff. When he appeared on the November 16 edition of 60 Minutes, Obama suggested that he would prefer to see a shorter regular season and an eight team playoff to determine a national champion. I know that Obama called for change, but how can we make playoffs change we can believe in?
The solution is not as easy as ranking the best eight teams and setting them into some form of tournament. There are bowl games, and more recently conference title games, as well as recognition of unbeaten teams to be taken into account. So, I´m going to weigh in with some ideas for greater change.
Today, there are six BCS conferences: the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Big East, the Big Ten (with eleven teams!), the Big 12, the Pac 10, and the Southeast Conference (SEC) that draw no questions when it comes to setting match-ups for the major bowl games. And in past seasons, unbeaten teams from the Mountain West Conference (Utah and BYU) and the Western Athletic Conference (Boise State and Hawaii) have also figured in the national championship picture, though they have never been selected to play in the big game. Conference USA, the Mid-America Conference (MAC) and the Sun Belt Conference are stuck in between. They have never been considered BCS schools, although they always play BCS opponents from the other conferences. Then there are Army, Navy and Notre Dame, who play tough schedules, but do not play in a football conference.
And they don´t take the same direction to get into the championship picture. The ACC, the Big 12, Conference USA, the MAC, and the SEC have divisions, and therefore title games. The rest do not. I can not imagine the college presidents in these conferences want to give up these games. The games are played in major markets and they are a draw after Thanksgiving weekend. So why not make these five title games bowl games?
Use the Meineke for the ACC title game, for example, the Texas Bowl for the Big 12 title game, the Motor City for the MAC, the New Orleans for the SEC and the Sun Bowl for Conference USA. Or start a new set of bowl games in the largest markets for the conference. Either way, if I were a bowl organizer, I would prefer to have two teams that have a shot at playing for the whole ball of wax.
The losing team in the title game gets into another minor bowl game, so five other bowls will be populated with good teams while the winners go on to bowls with better pay-outs and national championship implications. Depending on their seeds, they would be matched with the champion of a non-title conference, or a highly ranked independent. The higher ranked team gets home field advantage, if that´s feasible.
With an eight team playoff, if the teams ranked 1 and #2 get byes, then the teams ranked three through eight get into playoff games that were also once traditionally bowl games. The winner plays on, and it´s up to the NCAA to decide if the losers go to another minor bowl or go home. The only game that´s likely to be on a neutral site is the title game, same as the NCAA basketball tournament.
I know this is not an easy solution, but the championship game is not the only problem. Major college football has thirty four bowl games, and thirty three of them mean absolutely nothing. They´re a reward for coming close, but missing the brass ring. Using some of the current bowls as title games and playoffs would give more of these games some meaning.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
The solution is not as easy as ranking the best eight teams and setting them into some form of tournament. There are bowl games, and more recently conference title games, as well as recognition of unbeaten teams to be taken into account. So, I´m going to weigh in with some ideas for greater change.
Today, there are six BCS conferences: the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), the Big East, the Big Ten (with eleven teams!), the Big 12, the Pac 10, and the Southeast Conference (SEC) that draw no questions when it comes to setting match-ups for the major bowl games. And in past seasons, unbeaten teams from the Mountain West Conference (Utah and BYU) and the Western Athletic Conference (Boise State and Hawaii) have also figured in the national championship picture, though they have never been selected to play in the big game. Conference USA, the Mid-America Conference (MAC) and the Sun Belt Conference are stuck in between. They have never been considered BCS schools, although they always play BCS opponents from the other conferences. Then there are Army, Navy and Notre Dame, who play tough schedules, but do not play in a football conference.
And they don´t take the same direction to get into the championship picture. The ACC, the Big 12, Conference USA, the MAC, and the SEC have divisions, and therefore title games. The rest do not. I can not imagine the college presidents in these conferences want to give up these games. The games are played in major markets and they are a draw after Thanksgiving weekend. So why not make these five title games bowl games?
Use the Meineke for the ACC title game, for example, the Texas Bowl for the Big 12 title game, the Motor City for the MAC, the New Orleans for the SEC and the Sun Bowl for Conference USA. Or start a new set of bowl games in the largest markets for the conference. Either way, if I were a bowl organizer, I would prefer to have two teams that have a shot at playing for the whole ball of wax.
The losing team in the title game gets into another minor bowl game, so five other bowls will be populated with good teams while the winners go on to bowls with better pay-outs and national championship implications. Depending on their seeds, they would be matched with the champion of a non-title conference, or a highly ranked independent. The higher ranked team gets home field advantage, if that´s feasible.
With an eight team playoff, if the teams ranked 1 and #2 get byes, then the teams ranked three through eight get into playoff games that were also once traditionally bowl games. The winner plays on, and it´s up to the NCAA to decide if the losers go to another minor bowl or go home. The only game that´s likely to be on a neutral site is the title game, same as the NCAA basketball tournament.
I know this is not an easy solution, but the championship game is not the only problem. Major college football has thirty four bowl games, and thirty three of them mean absolutely nothing. They´re a reward for coming close, but missing the brass ring. Using some of the current bowls as title games and playoffs would give more of these games some meaning.
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com.
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