The Demand for a Playoff

So Boise State won. They beat the mighty Big 12 Conference Champion in Oklahoma, and now there is anarchy. Right?

Wrong. There will be no playoff, unless something earth shattering happens, like America converting to socialism. There are a bunch of reasons why the NCAA should adopt a playoff system for Division I-A, so I do not need to restate them. However, I do want to present what I feel would be the best format to adopt, if in 2057 the revolution finally occurs.

So there is a 12 team playoff, NFL style. Going undefeated matters, because you get a first round bye and you play at home for the first game, a doubleplus good. In addition, like the NFL, the top seeded team plays the lower of the remaining seeds, an added advantage. Teams earn more money the farther they advance in the playoffs, and the payout could be distributed in tiers. The playoff determines a champion on the field, and the complaining world is at peace, for five minutes.

The next debate would be who gets in. I feel the system could be exactly the same as it is. The BCS conferences can still monopolize the field with their automatic bids, and we use the exact same system used now to determine the at large teams, but we just choose more of them. The potential problem is now more of who gets ranked 12th versus 13th, but this is a much lesser evil than choosing the number 2. The system should probably be the same as the current BCS, as flawed as it may be. It is not the fault of the computers that Michigan became worse than 2 teams without losing. It was the will of those who vote.

The only difference from the BCS system I would call for is that any undefeated team automatically gets in, regardless of conference, so long as it plays 1 team from a BCS conference. So suddenly Duke will be the hottest team in the nation to play. There are ways the BCS conferences could sabotage this by denying to play non-BCS conference teams. In addition they may argue about strength of schedule issues. But in response to both a good amount of BCS teams play division I-AA schools anyway, so they should just replace the I-AA team with a WAC team, for example. A possible issue is the extremely rare chance that there are more non BCS teams that are undefeated than there are at large spots.

For the near 40 teams that would not make the playoffs that would be in a bowl game now, why not keep the random name sponsor bowl system for them? Bowl games between teams with average records, which I consider those bowl games where both teams have less than 10 wins, will not lose any viewers since a majority of those games run during the week anyway, when the playoff games would not be played.

If Ohio State wins on Monday, we will have an undisputed national champion. There will be no teams that have not lost a game that can complain about the system, and all will be well, right?

Except for everyone in Idaho.

-CB