Tuesday December 05, 2006

Shoeless gives his take on the BCS vs a Playoff System

Let me breakdown one of the most highly discussed topics in all of sports, especially during this time of year-- The BCS vs. the playoff system in College Div 1-A football.

First of all, College D-1 football is the ONLY level of sports that doesn’t have a playoff. Pee-wee league up to Pro football does it, pee-wee basketball all the way up to the highest level, volleyball, softball, soccer, baseball, … get my point yet? EVERY OTHER SPORT DOES IT! Even football, it’s only College and it’s ONLY Div-1… and guess what? It’s the only one people argue about needing to be changed.

Now a lot of people want a playoff system and if you don’t please keep reading b/c I’ll show you how it should be done to please EVERYONE.

Let’s start with the negatives… pretty much the main two reasons why people don’t want a playoff system or pretty much think it won’t happen are: 1. The bowls and 2. It’ll lead to too many games a year.

Here’s a simple yet perfect way to fix this without really changing or adding anything.

1st thing they need to do is eliminate the 12th game. Now, before you start running your mouth about all money that it brings in etc, hear me out. About half the teams playing in D-1 make a bowl thanks to the only needing 6 wins rule so most teams will get the extra game anyway. With a playoff system they’ll need that extra game just incase they make the playoffs.

2nd thing… why does everyone think that adding a playoff system would mean scraping the bowls? I don’t get it. You keep the bowls… all of them!

3rd thing… add a 12-team playoff. Why 12 teams? Do it just like the NFL playoff system minus the home field. 4 teams get bye weeks and for the most part that would only mean 4 games (at the most) to decide a winner. Why 12 teams? Well, you’ll need to take these 6 as automatic bids and 10 won’t be enough and 16 will be too much… esp when you look at the amount of bye weeks teams get and championship games some conferences have.

So the 1st 6 teams are decided the same as the BCS…The ACC, SEC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East and Pac-10 Champions get and automatic bid… there’s half your teams right there.

So your 1st 6 teams (but not necessarily your bye teams) would be:

Ohio St (Big 10)
So Cal (Pac 10)
Florida (SEC)
Louisville (Big East)
Oklahoma (Big 12)
Wake Forest (ACC)

With Florida, Wake Forest, Oklahoma getting and automatic bye for playing (and winning) in the Conference title game and Ohio St earning the final bye bid. Note: The reason for the bye is for consistency of length of schedule with the conference championship adding an extra game for the 3 teams.

The 2nd 6 teams will be at large bids, using this year as an example… the next six teams would be:

Michigan
LSU
Notre Dame
Boise St.
with Wisconsin & Virginia Tech claiming the last bids (VT gets the final bid over Auburn and Arkansas bc of the way they finished the season).

Now here’s how the bracket will look with the bowl games included so that people will get the best of both worlds.

These bowls would stay the same with no changes what so ever…

Credit Union Poinsettia
Las Vegas
New Orleans Bowl
Papajohns.com Bowl
New Mexico
Armed Forces
Hawaii
Motor City
Emerald
Independence
Holiday
Texas
Music City
Brut Sun
AutoZone Liberty
Insight
Champs Sports
MPC Computers
International
GMAC

These bowls would make up the playoff system and in what order…

2 weeks after the conference Championships:
Alamo
Peach
Outback
Cotton

1 week later:
Gator
Capitol One
Rose
Fiesta

1 week later:
Sugar
Orange

1 week later (the same date as this year’s National Title game): The National title game would be played in one of the alternating “BCS bowls”… This year it would be played in Glendale, Arizona

This year’s bracket would look like this:

If you think about it… if you drop the 12th game you really aren’t adding anything-special… just 1 game.

Ex: Ohio St will play 13 games this year. In this system they would play 14. That’s only one extra game to decide the “true” champion.

WF, Florida and Oklahoma play 14 games this year (including bowls) they would play 15 if they made to the title game in this system.

The ONLY speculation anyone would say about having a playoff would be who is the 12th team every year. Wisconsin and Virginia Tech were picked in my system but Auburn and Arkansas also would be considered this season. But isn’t having to pick between three or four 2-3 loss teams that a much better of a problem than having to pick between three and four 1 loss teams for one game? I think so.

Write it down, take a picture, call your momma, eat at Joe’s… The Shoeless Fearless Prediction for this week is:

Clemson basketball will start to make some noise!

Now let’s recap last weeks games predictions:

I went 10-6 this past week picking the other games, making my overall record 308-110.

Weekly Records:
Week 1: 28-4
Week 2: 24-4
Week 3: 20-8
Week 4: 25-3
Week 5: 23-5
Week 6: 18-9
Week 7: 22-9
Week 8: 22-5
Week 9: 19-7
Week 10: 18-8
Week 11: 16-6
Week 12: 36-19
Week 13: 27-17
Week 14: 10-6

Overall: 308-110 Clemson: 9-4

No football games to predict this week so I’ll take a break.