National Expansion For College Football: PART IV
August 9, 2007 by bcsbusters
National Expansion For College Football: “A Regular Season Bracketed Playoff To Determine The Bowl Games.”
By now, most of you have probably read Ivan Maisel’s article today at espn.com It makes me wonder if Maisel has been reading this blog - incredible timing with a story like that coming on the heels of today’s article. I’ve been hyping it all week in this series concerning the national expansion issue relative to NCAA Division I College Football. Before I get into the nuts and bolts of this revolutionary system for the new emerging national pastime, you need to understand that I am basing this model off of four years of research.
The opening line of my book manuscript provides a hint that this isn’t your ordinary playoff proposal.
“The real dilemma facing the BCS and NCAA decision makers regarding a playoff type of system is how to change the system without causing, for lack of a better word, the most change. There are so many things that you would have to consider that the project seems massive in scale.”
The ill conceived, over-hyped, NFL-loser out playoff model, even if it involves the bowl sites, will NEVER happen in college football. My proposal goes beyond simply printing off a 32-team bracket and aligning the best teams. Anyone can do that…I gave it several attempts during my first month of research myself. I had a whopper of plan. A plan built around 16-team, 2 division super-conferences…but then reality set in. It would never happen.
The internet is loaded with similar models all built around idealistic mindsets and unrealistic hope, and although the authors that developed these models did a splendid job and most likely gained a joyous experience out of the enterprising project, they’re built around wishful thinking, not taking into account all the issues that doom most of these proposals.
So what makes this proposal I am selling any different? I’ve spent four years researching all of the issues. I have filled out thousands of mock brackets. Yes, the road blocks are plentiful, and range in severity from minor speed bumps to gaping pot-holes. If you fail to consider the true scope and full range of issues it will surely bring down a landslide of criticism. I’ve looked at the system from every possible angle, and narrowed it down to the least common denominator. How can we create time in the regular season to institute a bracketed playoff without destroying the bowl platform?
The answer is we shave the dead weight from the system, which is the ridiculous non-conference match-ups that dot the country side in the month of September.
The issues curtailing the system range from minor to massive in scope and include many of the following:
- Maintaining the current bowl structure and 12 game regular season.
- Enabling the primary stake-holders of the game - “the fans” to attend the playoff rounds which are announced on short notice.
- The big school-small school strength of schedule issues.
- Bias, discrimination and unionized alliances in the poll system.
- Traditional tie-ins between certain bowls and the major conferences.
- The monopolizing influences and destructive powers of television.
- Maintaing the sanctity of the regular season, which is a defining aspect of college football compared to all other sporting venues.
- Maintaining the integrity of the student-athletes while at the same time providing all athletes with a realistic and equal opportunity to succeed both in the classroom and on the athletic field.
- Minimizing or obsolving the 50 year feud between the unionized alliances of the College Football Association movement that have held the game back at the administrative level through-out the 85 Scholarship rule renaissance period; a period exemplified by the fact that on any given day, any team can win, which I believe has allowed college football to become the new emerging national pastime.
Speaking from agonizing experience, there are so many different angles to consider you often get lost in organizing an anchor point, or in remembering and identifying why you began the project in the first place. Organizing a playoff for college football goes beyond simply stating “Yes, I think it is needed.” The real adventure is solving it, and doing so with the least amount of change to an archaic, fragilistic and decaying ecosystem built around the Holiday Bowl Season.
There-in lies the challenge!
As you meander through this article try to avoid the impulsive urge to jump to conclusions by focusing on who I have picked to advance in the brackets, rather than analyzing if you think the system would truly work…causing the least amount of change.
So how do we eliminate the bias and discriminating factors of the poll system, maintain the current regular season at 12-13 games, and not only maintain, but enhance a decaying bowl system in order to define the national champion?
I believe the system I am going to describe has merit, but you may have to read it several times before the hidden simplicity of the proposal begins to reveal itself. For it isn’t just the top-32 teams in the BCS Bracket that we are concerned with, but the combatants within the other three brackets (The “Holiday,” “NIT” and “Eddie Robinson’s Sportsman’s Bracket”) as well (all 120 teams).
In the preceding article, Part III, I exposed the need for all the major conferences to become 12-team, two division super conferences, much like the ACC, SEC, MAC and Big-12. The three 1000-pound Gorillas to tame are the PAC-10 Conference, Notre Dame and Jim Delaney. All three are inter-connected with many of the present day controversies of the BCS.
The PAC-10 MUST add two teams, most likely Utah and BYU, although if it was my choice it would be Fresno State and Boise State - two of my all-time favorite programs.
There is a natural rivalry between BYU and Utah as both are bordered on opposite sides of Salt Lake City, which is well inside the travel basin of the PAC-10 Conference. Both the Utes and Cougars have played in Bowl Championship Series (Utah 2004 Fiesta Bowl) and Bowl Alliance (1996 Cotton Bowl) events. Both have excellent program’s not just in football, but sports covering both genders. Both are excellent academic candidates.
Notre Dame would do the college football world a great favor by aligning with the Big-10, although I’m not sure what we would call this conference since there is already a Big-12. If only these three elitist entities - Jim Delaney, Notre Dame and the PAC-10 Conference - could somehow understand that true leadership is serving others.
A common leadership communion I’ve shared with many teams I’ve led through-out my successful coaching career is geared around the following message:
“True athletic wisdom is the realization, knowledge and importance of being responsible and accountable to others, for our best efforts when combined with those of our teammates ultimately grow into something far greater and more satisfying than anything we could have achieved on our own.”
The world of college football would be forever grateful if these three titans would heed, abide by and understand this simple philosophy. It takes all of us to make the one, and college football is too important to place our own idiosyncrasies and self-fulfilling enterprises ahead of others.
I urge Jim Delaney, the PAC-10 Conference and Notre Dame to become true leaders and recognize their importance in solving this critical issue for they can’t see the tree’s through the forest because they are lost in their own resolve to win the 30-year running feud between those who supported the NCAA and those who supported the College Football Association movement.
All three have selfish intentions, none of the above have any compromising values. The fans and the players are stuck in the muck and deserve so much more. Based on my four years of research, I would estimate that over 90 percent of the current controversies we witness each year in college football can be traced, to some degree, pointing to this very issue.
So with out further ado, I give you the BCSBusters Regular Season Bracketed Playoff Model. As I mentioned yesterday, all 120 teams would begin the season with their conference slates first.
Gone would be the slaughter-house games, so typical of the month of September.
Our unbridled enthusiasm, passion and expectation for the coming 2007 season is tempered by the fact that we have some horrific games during the month of September. Why play these games, for if we started the conference slate first, in weeks 1-8, it would save the month of November for some thunderous match-ups? Imagine 4 weeks of games carrying the weight of USC-Notre Dame, Ohio State-Texas, LSU-Miami or Michigan-Louisville. College football would go into hyper drive!
College Football fans would get four weeks of non-stop heavyweight match-ups…and then we’d get the bowl games, icing on an already delicious desert. Everything would be settled on the field as 120 teams would be involved in one of the four brackets so desperately needed to determine conference and national superiority, during the final month of November, which would ultimately determine the bowl participants.
The scheduling controversy, as well as the ongoing misguided and misappropriated poll issues would be eliminated.
The enormity of this proposal is that all of it can occur within the confines of a 12-13 week regular season, saving - yet enhancing - the current bowl season, and it would maintain the “Sacred Cow” importance of the regular season, for you MUST perform well in your conference to EARN a place in the BCS or Holiday Brackets. This allows every team to have an equal opportunity to EARN their schedule in the final four weeks of the season, thus creating an avenue for all teams to have an equal opportunity to play in the elite level BCS bowl games.
The four brackets, defined as the “BCS Bracket,” “Holiday Bracket,” “NIT Bracket,” and Eddie Robinson “Sportsman’s Bracket,” would all occur simultaneously in the month of November. The “BCS Bracket” will determine all of the BCS Bowls as well as the upper-tier bowl game participants. Based on last years results, if this model was, in fact, in effect today, this is how the schedule would have played out in 2006.
Please don’t take exception to the results of my bracket. Like the March Madness affair, we all pick our teams and hope for the best. Rarely do we pick wisely for there are always surprises when we take our plans from a printed piece of paper onto the actual playing field. Please do pay attention to the mechanism for aligning the combatants to determine the best of the best!
Click Here and Enjoy the bracket!
The “BCS Bracket” involves the top-32 teams in the country, not to be determined by an archaic poll system, but by the results on the actual playing field. This past years Fiesta Bowl, where Boise State turned in one of the all-time great performances against traditional power Oklahoma was a defining moment in college football. The new era of the non-BCS factor has officially arrived, finally having access to the elite level bowl games.
Chris Peterson is right…all the up and coming non-BCS wonders want is the chance to get on the same field with the television darlings who have been fossilized as the elite fraternity, college football’s version of British royalty. And given that our country is based on the greatest underdog story in world history, representing the core values of choice, freedom and opportunity, the current system flies in the face of the American value system.
The basic premises of the BCSBuster Playoff Model is that the current BCS Conferences (ACC, SEC, PAC-10, Big-12, Big-10, Big-East) would get a total of four teams to be entered into the BCS bracket in the chase for the national championship and an elite bowl berth. I have included the newly created Rocky Mountain Conference as a BCS Conference considering Utah (Mountain West) and Boise State (WAC) have both earned a BCS payday in the last three seasons. Thus, I think it appropriate that they are included along the same level as they are allowed four teams into the BCS Bracket as well.
In contrast, Conference USA and the MAC Conference only get two participants into the BCS Bracket for a total of four teams, but the important concept is they are granted access to the BCS events, and we can also identify the best non-BCS team in the nation giving the non-BCS factor a branding identity in today’s BCS marketplace.
The first two weeks of the BCS Bracket is designed to determine a conference champion for each conference. There is a winner’s challenge and a losers challenge in each of the four BCSBuster Brackets (BCS, Holiday, NIT and Sportsman’s). If you win you will face another who has done the same. If you lose you will face another who has felt the same misfortune. All teams are guaranteed four games in the four week round-robin.
This model actually enhances the current conference championship system as in recent years of the SEC and Big-12 Conference championship events, rarely do they even match-up the two “best” teams in the championship event. For example, Nebraska and Oklahoma met in the Big-12 Championship game last year (2006) even though Texas (as the number two team in the Southern Division had a conference record (6-2) equal to Nebraska and beat the Cornhuskers in their head-to-head meeting. How can you call it a conference championship game when the two best teams are not even matched up in the elite event?
Due to this circumstance, the design of BCSBuster Bracketology is to align the top four teams in each of the BCS Conferences in week #9, in order to create a true conference championship event in week #10. Ideally, we would take the number one seed from the Big-12 North (Nebraska) and they would host the number two seed in the Big-12 South (Texas).
Likewise, Oklahoma (Big-12 South #1) would host Missouri (Big-12 North #2), but as we know, Texas A&M beat Missouri and has a better record even though they are the number three team in the Big-12 South. So instead of simply pigeon-holing the number one and two seeds from each division, I think the conference tournament gains more validity and credibility if you are taking the top four teams, even if three of the teams come from the same division.
The SEC had similar circumstance in 2006 with Tennessee. Three of the Volunteer’s four losses last year were against Arkansas, Florida and LSU. Therefore, given the BCSBuster tournament framework, Arkansas (as the SEC West #1) would host LSU (SEC West #3) due to the fact that the Tigers had a better record and won the head-to-head match-up with Tennessee (SEC East #3).
 North Division |
South Division |
| 1. Nebraska (6-2) | 1. Oklahoma (7-1) |
| 2. Missou (4-4) | 2. Texas (6-2) |
| 3. Texas A&M (5-3) | |
 West Division |
East Division |
| 1. Arkansas (7-1) | 1. Florida (7-1) |
| 2. Auburn (6-2) | 2. Tennessee (5-3) |
| 3. LSU (6-2) |
This same stipulation carries the same weight for all the conference match-ups in weeks nine and ten, with the winners advancing to the conference championship game and the losers moving on to the consolation rounds. With this framework in hand, we can match-up the conference champions in week #11 and Week #12, which will ultimately determine the bowl match-ups and change the entire history and tradition of the great college game.
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2nd Round: Week #10 BCS Bracket - “Winners Bracket” |
2nd Round: Week #10 BCS Bracket - Loser’s Bracket |
|
“Week #10 - Conference Championship Week” |
Week #10 |
| Wake Forest (1-0) vs. Georgia Tech (1-0) (ACC Championship) |
Virginia Tech (0-1) vs. Boston College (0-1) |
| Florida (1-0) vs. LSU (1-0) (SEC Championship) |
Arkansas (0-1) vs. Auburn (0-1) |
| Louisville (1-0) vs. West Virginia (1-0) (Big-East Championship |
South Florida (0-1) vs. Rutgers (0-1) |
| Michigan (1-0) vs. Ohio State (1-0) (Big-10 Championship) |
Wisconsin (0-1)vs. Notre Dame (0-1) |
| Texas (1-0) vs. Oklahoma (1-0) (Big-12 Championship) |
Nebraska (0-1) vs. Texas A&M (0-1) |
| California (1-0) vs. USC (1-0) (PAC-10 Championship) |
Oregon State (0-1) vs. BYU (0-1) |
| TCU (1-0) vs. Boise St (1-0) (Rocky MTN Championship) |
Hawaii (0-1) vs. Houston (0-1) |
| San Jose State (1-0) vs. C. Michigan (1-0) |
Ohio (0-1) vs. Marshall (0-1) |
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3rd Round: Week #11 |
3rd Round: Week #11 |
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“The Elite 8 - Winners Bracket” |
“The Elite 8 - Losers Bracket” |
| Wake Forest (2-0) vs. Florida (2-0) |
Virginia Tech (1-1) vs. Auburn (1-1) |
| Louisville (2-0) vs. Ohio State (2-0) |
Rutgers (1-1) vs. Wisconsin (1-1) |
| Oklahoma (2-0) vs. USC (2-0) |
Texas A&M (1-1) vs. BYU (1-1) |
| Boise St. (2-0) vs. C. Michigan (2-0) |
Houston (1-1) vs. Ohio (1-1 |
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3rd Round: Week #11 (Winners Bracket) |
3rd Round: Week #11 (Losers Bracket) |
|
Championship Consolation Bracket |
Losers Consolation Bracket |
| LSU (1-1) vs. Georgia Tech (1-1) |
Boston College (0-2) vs. Arkansas (0-2) |
| West Virginia (1-1) vs. Michigan (1-1) |
South Florida (0-2) vs. Notre Dame (0-2) |
| Texas (1-1) vs. California (1-1) |
Nebraska (0-2) vs. Oregon State (0-2) |
| TCU (1-1) vs. San Jose State (1-1) |
Hawaii (0-2) vs. Marshall (0-2) |
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Week #12: BCS Final Four - Winners Bracket “A” |
Week #12: Loser’s Bracket Final Four Bracket “A” |
Auburn (2-1) vs. Wisconsin (2-1)
Texas A&M (2-1) vs. Houston (2-1)
BCS Final Four Bracket “B”
<span style=”color: #3300ff; font-size: x-small;”Loser’s Bracket Final Four - Consolation Bracket “B”
Virginia Tech (1-2) vs. Rutgers (1-2)
BYU (1-2) vs. Ohio (1-2)
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Week #12: BCS Winners Bracket Championship Consolation - Consolation Bracket “A” |
Week #12: Losers Bracket Consolation-Consolation “A” |
| LSU (2-1) vs. West Virginia (2-1) |
Arkansas (1-2) vs. Notre Dame (1-2) |
| California (2-1) vs. TCU (2-1) |
Oregon State (1-2) vs. Hawaii (1-2) |
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Week #12: BCS Winners Bracket Championship Consolation - Consolation Bracket “B” |
Week #12: Losers Bracket Consolation-Consolation”B” |
| Georgia Tech (1-2) vs. Michigan (1-2) |
Boston College (0-3) vs. So. Florida (0-3) |
| Texas (1-2) vs. San Jose State (1-2) |
Nebraska (0-3) vs. Marshall (0-3) |
Obviously, the two teams finishing undefeated (4-0) through-out the duration of the BCS Bracket would participate in the national championship game. My mock bracket, based on last years (2006) results would feature the Florida Gators against the USC Trojans. Your bracket most likely would be completely different, but the key is you can begin to understand how the regular season playoff concept would work. On their journey to the championship game, Florida would have beaten Auburn and LSU (for the second time), Wake Forest and Ohio State, while the Trojans would have dismantled BYU, CAL (for the second time), Oklahoma and Boise State.
So much of the current BCS championship run (as Tim Brando of CBS states) “is a function of scheduling,” but the problem is so many of the teams are locked out of ever strengthening their schedule to the point of inclusion in the elite stratosphere of college football. The beauty of this system for me is that all teams must EARN their schedule and the only way to achieve it is by performing well within their given conference, which validates the current day ill conceived myth that “every game is a playoff in college football”, upholding the “sacred cow” concept of the regular season. With and only with this system in place can we truly make this claim.
The remaining BCS Bowl games are earned by the teams who finish the BCS Bracket with only one loss (3-1), and it doesn’t matter when the loss occur’s (1st round, 2nd round, 3rd round or championship rounds with-standing). If your strong enough to make it through this BCS Bracket undefeated or with one-loss, your team will have “EARNED” a BCS Bowl. As we trace this mock bracket to its conclusion, we are left with the following match-ups , again according to my bracket - yours would undoubtedly vary:
Rose Bowl: Ohio State vs. Boise State
Orange Bowl: Louisville vs. Oklahoma
Cotton Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Texas A&M
Fiesta Bowl: LSU vs. California
As you know, one of the 1000-pound Gorillas to tame, causing a great deal consternation to the entire BCS equation is the Big-10 / PAC-10 affection or sense of entitlement to the Rose Bowl. This is easy to resolve, much similar to Notre Dame’s conspicuous magnetic attraction…entitlement would be a better word… to the BCS throne. All we need is a stipulation that if a Big-10 and PAC-10 participant is eligible for a BCS Bowl, due to a (3-1) overall record within the BCS Bracket, they would gain automatic entry into the Rose Bowl. Pretty simple isn’t it? The key is they would have to earn it on the field! Therefore, this stipulation may have the following affect on this mock bowl alignment for 2006.
Ohio State vs CAL
Orange Bowl: Wisconsin vs. Louisville
Cotton Bowl: Oklahoma vs. LSU
Fiesta Bowl: Boise State vs. Texas A&M
More importantly, let’s analyze each of the remaining BCS Bowl participants schedule along their journey to BCS mega-millions.
Ohio State: Notre Dame, Michigan (2nd Time), Louisville and Florida.
CAL: Oregon State, USC (2nd Time), Texas and TCU
Wisconsin: Michigan and Notre Dame (2nd Time), Rutgers and Auburn.
Louisville: South Florida, West Virginia (2nd Time), Ohio State and Wake Forest.
Oklahoma: Texas A&M and Texas (2nd Time each), USC and Central Michigan
LSU: Arkansas and Florida (2nd Time each), Georgia Tech and West Virginia
Boise State: Houston, TCU, C. Michigan and USC
Texas A&M: Oklahoma (2nd Time), Nebraska, BYU and Houston
The remaining upper-tier bowl participants are determined by the descending order of finish, beginning with a (2-2) record. The remaining teams who finish the BCS Bracket with a (1-3) or (0-4) record would also earn the remaining middle-tier - to - lower-tier bowl invitations.
Available teams with a (2-2) BCS Bracket Record:
Auburn vs. Houston (Peach Bowl)
Wake Forest vs. Central Michigan (Gator Bowl)
Rutgers vs. BYU (Holiday Bowl)
West Virginia vs. TCU (Outback Bowl)
Arkansas vs. Oregon State (Alamo Bowl)
Michigan vs. Texas (Capitol One Bowl)
(1-3) BCS Bracket Records:
Virginia Tech vs. Ohio (Independence Bowl)
Notre Dame vs. Hawai’i (Insight.com Bowl)
Georgia Tech vs. San Jose St. (Champs Sports Bowl)
Boston College vs. Nebraska (Music City Bowl)
(0-4) BCS Bracket Records:
South Florida vs. Marshall (Meineke Car Care Bowl)
In the next article concerning this series on national expansion, I will break down and analyze the actual 2006 schedules compared with the schedules earned within this Mock BCSBuster Regular Season Bracketed Playoff Model. In this comparison, I will adress the travel issues, how the home team is determined within this model and the pro’s and con’s attributed with the much publicized strength schedule arguments attributed with the large school - small school debates.
i thought your article was pretty good and i really enjoyed those matchups…that would be a november to remember…best solution ive seen of the many possible
the only thing is that you need to change the conferences every so often in order to have say a national championship between sec-pac 10 one year then sec-big ten NC the next year
That is certainly an astute point, but one of the major playoff arguments, defended by the BCS downplaying the playoff’s is the fans cannot attend if teams are flip-flopping across the country. I believe if this system was instituted, the Newly created Rocky Mountain Conference would equal the Big-East and ACC Conferences and the MAC / C-USA would strengthen, especially when your considering that it is only the top two teams we are dealing with in the BCS Bracket. On the surface this looks like an issue, but ask Oklahoma if they think TCU and Boise State are weak opponents. Both have beaten the Sooners in closely contested contests in the last 3 years and C. Michigan lost to Boston College by 7 last season. When your looking at the top teams from every conference, the 85 scholarship rule has been a great equalizer because their isn’t that much difference between the better teams from each conference across the country.
Excellent point though!
What an excellent, well-written argument to the current “debacle”. My favorite point is conference scheduling right out of the gate, and getting rid of the meaningless I-AA teams, and other bum teams that top 20 teams schedule the first month of the season. I believe part of the mess that college football is in now, could be fixed by making teams schedule quality opponents outside of their conference.
Take the Univ. of Louisville for example. NOBODY wants to play a home and home with them. They all want UL to come to them, and play them once, and then not return a game. Kudos to Miami for playing them twice. ND backed out of UL, Georgia backed out, Auburn has backed out, UK has tried to get out of it, nobody wants to play the Ville in the Oven. These teams need to be pointed out and ridiculed until they are forced to play teams that they don’t want to play.
On a side note, what can we as fans do to make them change?
What can the fans’ do? The answer is simple, but I doubt if enough fans would sacrifice for the short time needed. A fan’s strike or walkout…and it wouldn’t take very long, I suspect only a couple of games, but if the fans walked out - some sort of a strike by not attending - it would place college football on its knee’s. As I see it, this is the only way we can get the BCS Godfathers to stand up and take notice - to push them towards a playoff movement of this caliber.
I whole-heartedly believe this system would work because it requires very little change, but the three 1000-pounds Gorillas would think otherwise I suspect.
What ND’s fans that say the university will lose money by joining a conference? Does that argument hold any weight?
What about ND’s fans the claim they will lose money? Is Florida, Ohio State, Virginia Tech, USC, Texas, Oklahoma or Miami losing money? The dirty little secret in college football is that Notre Dame was the ring leader in organizing the CFA movement. And because of this unionized alliance they are protected in the BCS, which is why they are the greatest of all the 1000-pound Gorillas. The hypocrisy of the system is that coaches all over the country talk about teamwork, cooperation and sportsmanship - A Team First Attitude - and yet the administrators who govern the sport can’t come together and fix this system. The rift between the large schools and small schools dates back to the creation of the CFA. Fan’s can fix this by a walk-out, but most fans are unaware of the history behind the controversy, which is the purpose of my book, blog and website.
What about the teams that get the guaranteed paydays in September by travelling to larger schools, wouldn’t this prevent them from making any money? Don’t those schools need that $100K payout?
Zach,
Two things. One, their is a bye week for this very purpose. The only draw back would be the potential for a 14 week season, which isn’t the end of the world because to date…in the last 5 years…over 15 schools have played a 14 game season, including both Oklahoma and Florida last season.
Two, you need to remember that there are three other brackets occurring at the same time as the BCSBusters bracket. Schools like UCLA, Iowa, Tennessee, Florida State, Miami, Boston College (etc) that did not make the championship BCS Bracket in the example I provided (based on the 2006 season results) would be involved in the Holiday bracket. These teams would be aligned with other programs involved in the WAC, MAC, C-USA (which is now the Rocky MTN Conference), MAC and Sun-Belt Conferences.
I don’t have time to break out the whole scenario this week as I am scouting the Northwest and Nor-PAC showcase amatuer baseball tournaments this week, but will try to give a total picture example in the next couple weeks when things calm down a little for me. Trust, me…when I say I have considered ALL limiting factors preventing a playoff, of which your scenario is definently one of them, I mean I have considered all limiting factors and believe I have answered them within my BCSBusters playoff proposal.
[...] - it isn’t much of a stretch in adding them to the conference. Why have I chosen to do this? See for yourself! By the way, Penn State will shake down the thunder in this one. Please tell me again why we fired [...]
This idea is great of course, but it would seem to be completely impractical. What about the teams that don’t make the playoffs? Is their season then truncated ? Scheduling these games would seem to be difficult unless you gave the higher seed home field advantage, which would be difficult to do in what are designed to be essentially conference championships when the division winners have the same record and may not have already played and thus no clear tie-breaker. Also, how do you schedule games between the teams left out of the playoffs? It would seem that your bracket would have to be much more complex and include a bracket for the lower finishing teams to setup the remaining games of their schedule. Maybe I’m just missing something.
Yes, you did miss something, but that is to be expected. There are FOUR brackets. The BCS Bracket involves the Top-32 teams in the country, which determines a conference champion and from there we whittle it down the the elite 8, final 4 and then the bowl match-ups. Each team is guaranteed four games. Most of it occurring in a regionalized format so fans can attend from week-to-week.
The Holiday bracket involves the next 32, The NIT the next 32 and finally, the Sportsman’s Bracket, which involves the final 24.
As far as who hosts, if it is a conference game, the higher seed hosts. If they are even seeds within the same conference, you would look at how many home games each team has played thus far and the team with the lesser amount of home games getting the nod. If it is even from there, a predetermined X is placed in the original bracket as a tie breaker.
The Brackets progress in a regionalized setting so there is really only one cross country travel date and Hurrican Katrina took care of this argument two years ago when the game was moved from Baton Rouge to Tempe on Monday of game week. It was a sellout with Tiger fans buying nearly 15,000 tickets.
Every team is guaranteed four games in each bracket, with 3 regionalized non-conference games and 1 cross country travel date. There are many ways to determine who the home and away teams are, which is really just semantics. The NCAA is really good at running tournaments.
The beauty of this is it is basically the same system - you will get many of the same type of match-ups we have seen for the last 100 years in college football, but now we would have a chronological sequence of events ending the chaos and finally determining on the field who the better teams in the country are via head-to-head competition. You need to read all 6 articles, with an understanding that I have yet to breakdown the NIT and Sportsman’s Brackets.
First of all, this site you created is tremendous. It’s amazing how the fans are not really anyone’s concern or we would have had a playoff already. I believe that Rutgers will be the 12th school in the Big 10. First of all, the rating Rutgers games had last year, especially in the NY market, were record setting. The entire tri-state area got caught up in scarlet fever. If the ACC were expanding today they probably would choose Rutgers over Boston College. BC doesn’t travel and the Boston market is a secondary TV market. Rutgers would bring the BTN the largest media market. It is a land grant state school like other Big 10 schools. It would bring an eastern travel partner. It has strong academics. Nebraska has a great football tradition, but does not bring a strong TV market. Nor does Missouri. I can’t see Texas leaving Texas A&M.
A great point about the fans…If the fans could ever get united they could bring this system down in a heart beat, and it wouldn’t take more than a couple of games. I’m talking about a fan walkout of course.
Nice points about Rutgers and I thought it was an interesting viewpoint coming from the East. In the West, Nebraska is still a team who carries some clout and I continue to watch their games regularly. I’m working on an article right now based on the viewpoints from the East vs. West. I may use some of your comments (cite you as well). I don’t think Rutgers would want to leave the East. The Big-East is on the Rise and I think this conference has some new formed alliances after the recent walkout of Miami, BC and Virginia Tech.
I don’t see Texas leaving either. I could see Arkansas and TCU moving to the Big-12, while Baylor might move to Conference USA (If I had my way they would become part of the newly created Rocky Mountain Conference) and I can see Missou or Nebraska being the newest Big-12 member. You are a very astute college football fan. I appreciate your feedback!
I don’t like a 32 team playoff. I think what the conference could do is have the 6 BCS conference go to the BCS games after securing their conference championship. Then have the runners up from these conference along with the top two non-BCS conference teams play an 8 team playoff for the final 2 BCS slots. Then when there are 8 BCS teams they would play a semifinal game the following week and a final game the week before the Super Bowl.
As for the logistics of these games. You have the conference championships played at neutral sites but should you not also have the conference semifinals at neutral sites to avoid giving colleges a week’s notice to host a game? I suppose that is a judgment call.
The same problem may arise in the 3rd and 4th rounds but these have simple solutions. For Round 3 designate 1 conference to host all games and have this alternate annually (ex. ACC 2007, 2009; SEC 2008, 2010). This way teams KNOW, win or lose, that they will host a game three weeks hence.
Alternate Round 4 every 2 years (South 2007, 2008, 2011,2012; North 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014). And this way hosting a game is not a scramble or a function of rankings and previous numbers of home/away games. Plus, students can safely plan vacations knowing the schedule a full month ahead of time.
Also enjoyable is the fact that mathematically at least 1 non-BCS team will make it into the BCS each year.
The only change I would make is to have the regions shift Round 4 opponents. Otherwise, the West (PAC10/Big12) will near always have 4 teams in the BCS. Teams may then have a 25% chance of a cross-country trip for Round 4, but I think it would be fair for eastern (and, in the end, all) teams. Regions would then host the 4th Round 3 years on, 3 years off (or 4-on/2-off if the non-BCS teams do not host).