So Barack Obama has weighed in and said there should be a playoff in the college football. That’s kind of like saying that we would like to end world hunger. Not the riskiest stance in the world to take.
Anyone’s that been unlucky enough to have to listen to me spew on the subject knows that I actually am against a playoff. (But for the record I would also like to end world hunger)
Well today at lunch in the Citizen Sports offices a few of my co-workers called me out and made me explain why I was against a playoff. After arguing the point I think I did realize that I’m not so much against a playoff but don’t really believe a perfect playoff can be created or rather will be created.
Ultimately, that is a pretty bad reason to be against a playoff. So before I go back to my anti-playoff stance I think it is important for me to actually construct the perfect playoff system.
One of my personal beliefs is that if we are to create a playoff system every team in every conference should have an equal chance at the playoff and there should be automatic bids for winners of each of their respective conferences.
So there are 11 FBS conferences and therefore 11 automatic bids. If we have a field size that can play through a perfect bracket with no byes then we need a field of 16 for these eleven teams to play against. Easy, five at-large bids selected by a committee similar to NCAA hoops. In fact all seeding would be done by this committee.
These sixteen teams would play a playoff down to one champion. The first round of games would be played in the higher seeds’ home stadium and then each subsequent round would be played in the BCS Bowl Stadiums. You’d get a total of seven BCS games so that would actually be more than the current number of BCS games.
Here’s the obvious rub. You’d be adding anywhere from one to three games to each teams’ schedule. So the first step would be to reduce the number of play dates for each team by one. Sure this would reduce one non-conference game from each team’s schedule but would that really be a bad thing? God forbid Florida doesn’t get to play Citadel in November again.
Next we’ll remove conference championship games from the equation. These are a new thing anyways and as anyone who follows the Big 12 can tell you, they are far from perfect. Also, given five at large bids to the “Big Dance”, having a championship game seems less vital.
So where does that leave us. Basically it leaves us with two teams playing an extra game and two teams playing two extra games. Not really the end of the world for the athletes.
So there it is… if we can get a playoff approved with the above format, I’m in favor of the change…
It is a very interesting debate though, and I’d love to hear your point of view.
Like I said, it’s easy to say you are for a playoff but figuring out how to actually end world hunger is a totally different story.
