Dear BCS: Please Shut Up!
From April 6, 2012
Not too long ago, D1 college football teams played 10-game regular seasons, and the lucky 28 teams that qualified for bowl games would get an extra game in. Everyone wanted more football, but the NCAA wanted to ensure the "student-athletes" were getting plenty of time to fulfill their academic responsibilities. Over the past two decades and especially within the past 6 years, we've seen an explosion to a 12-game regular season schedule, with the addition of conference championships and bowl games that expand into mid-January. Now, as the BCS prepares to deliberate over how to further complicate college football's process for crowning a champion, the NCAA claims an eight-team playoff is impossible, due to the time restraints it would place on student-athletes. Dear NCAA and BCS officials: Shut up!
Here's the quick and easy solution that supports student athletes, maintains the unmatched excitement of college football's regular season, and holds tight to the mystique of the bowl games, all the while actually crowning a true, authenticated, actually proven on the playing field national champion.
First off, we hold tight to the two greatest things the BCS has provided, an enhanced ranking system and a separate national championship game. Using the rankings and the results of the championship games for each of the six power conferences (assuming the BIG 12 will get back to 12 teams), we take the 6 conference champs and 2 at-large bids, and using the rankings, seed the teams for an eight-team, 3 round playoff.
Championship weekend is currently the first Saturday in December. The first two rounds of the playoffs will occur over the next two weekends in December, ensuring the players still get a break for Christmas and at least 2 weeks to prepare for their bowl games (3 weeks for the championship). Which is a much, much better situation than the current 4-5 week layoffs for all teams (Alabama had 45 days between its final regular-season game and the championship, and we all witnessed what an exciting football game that was.)
The quarter-finals and semi-finals will be played at the higher-ranked teams home stadium, meaning not only is the regular season still incredibly important, but for once, the conference championship games will actually be of the utmost importance, and will actually be treated by the American public and their conferences as if they were, you know, championship games! Florida has a perfect season but then stumbles against LSU in the SEC championship, they still get a chance to play their way back to the natty, they just have to fight their way through December playoff games at the Big House and South Bend. As for whether it is fixed or flex bracket, who cares, there's only 8 teams, it will be awesome either way.
When the playoff dust settles after those two incredibly exciting Saturdays, we will have a clear game set for the national championship of two teams who played their way to the title game by being the best-of-the-best, not by putting up style points against Florida A&M. We will also have the pageantry and excitement of the bowls to look forward to. The Rose Bowl still gets the best of the Pac-10 and Big-10, unless their teams are in the championship, and then they get replaced with the runners-up. The bowls are still exciting and meaningful, and could be extra dramatic based on what happens in the playoffs. For those that love the endless debate that college football loves to provide, there will always be the two at-large bids into the playoffs to argue about. Who's more deserving, a Florida State team that missed out on its conference championship due to an early-season missed field goal against Miami, or a 1-loss Houston team that rolled through everyone in its path except for a close loss to Texas, the top-ranked BCS team. The debate rages on, but at least everyone gets to prove it on the field.
Now, as with nearly everything in college athletics, there are another 19,876 angles and issues to address, but I am absolutely certain this system has a resounding answer for each one. So until we can address each of those. I leave you with this, BCS: Shut up!
