The Best Playoff System (Humor Me)

[War Stoops]

I'm going to pretend for a minute that everyone and his dog does not have an idea for a playoff system and that you people give a shit about mine. I think the best system for a college football playoff is a 12-team format with the top 4 seeds receiving a first round bye. Here's what the seeding would look like in 2007:



The rules are simple. Here goes.

(1) Qualifying teams are champions from the six major conferences, the two highest-ranked non-major conference champions, and four at-large teams.
(2) Two-team maximum per conference.
(3) Seeding and at-large bids are based on BCS ranking.
(4) First round games are played at the home of the higher seed.
(5) Second round games are played at neutral sites as near as possible to the higher seed.
(6) Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls rotate as championship site, final four site, and second-round site.
(7) Final four is always on New Year's Day.

I think this system solves a lot of problems. First, with only four at-large spots, it puts a very high premium on winning your conference. The regular season would still be very important. Second, it ensures that at least two "little guys" get a shot each year. Third, with the high probability that one of the top four seeds will win the tournament, this system will usually only add two games to the schedule for the winner and runner-up. Fourth, losers in the first-round could still accept bowl invitations. Fifth, the Big 10 wouldn't have to go 50 days in between games. Finally, there would be a mutha-fucking assload of money to split however the powers that be want to split it.

Why.

Can't.

This.

Happen?

[L45B]

For me, your idea has a couple problems.

First of all, if you're gonna have 12 teams then cut down on the at-large bids (to 2) and instead, include the winners of the other mid-major conferences (like Wetzel's plan).

Also, play the games--at least the first couple rounds-- ON CAMPUS. What better way to ensure that the regular season still has lots of merit by awarding the top teams a home-field advantage? As opposed to playing games in a dome in say, Detroit. Bahh.

This is still better than 16 teams, which is way too many.

[War Stoops]

I don't like more than two guarantees for the non-majors. If more are deserving, they will earn the ranking. The problem with home games for both first and second round is you need at least four neutral site games to keep the rose, sugar, orange and fiesta part of the system. Without those bowls' support, this couldn't happen.

[SoCalTrjn]

I thought USC was 6th in the polls

build something in to the system where teams from the same conference dont play each other in the first round.... Id even put teams from the same conferences in opposite sides of the playoff tree

[socal]

8 teams play the four bowls: Rose, Sugar, Orange, Fiesta.

The four winners play a semi-final.

Last two battle it out.

It adds two games after the bowl season.

If you want to open it to 16 teams, add four bowl games: Sun, Cotton, Holiday, and I Don't Give a Fuck.

4/50

[Terry in Crapchester]

1. I'd rather have more at-large teams than minor conference champions. In fact, I'd limit it to one automatic bid for the minor conference champions (although others, of course, would be eligible for at-large bids).

2. Eliminate first-round regular-season rematches. You have Missouri-Illinois and USC-Arizona State. Reshuffle the seeding, if necessary, to make this happen, but don't move any team more than one seed off their regular seed.

3. December 15 is WAAAAAY too early to start the playoff. Do that, and you're playing right into the hands of the university presidents and their favored argument against a playoff (academics). Most schools are still in finals on December 15. If anything, I'd be inclined to move the playoff farther back, since a lot of schools don't return to classes until mid-January, anyway. There's nothing magic about New Year's Day as the day for the finals. It has significance only from an historical perspective.

Other than that, I like it better than the 8-team proposal, but not as much as a 16-team proposal.

[RumpleForeskin]

3 words...

The Wetzel Plan

[M Club]

As opposed to playing games in a dome in say, Detroit. Bahh.

obviously you're not from the dtw area. home sweet home, yo. otherwise and furthermore, bahh.

[RadioFan]

I just got wood reading the first post in this thread.


Sorry all, but I'll just go ahead and get this rant over with, right now ...

Knowing that we all have the EXCITING Poinsettia, New Orleans, Papajohns.com, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Hawaii and Motor City bowls to look forward to ...

Boy, now THERE's some EXCITEMENT.

You have GOT to be fucking kidding me.


I barely give a fuck about OU's "big" game in a fucking month, much less every other goddamn meaningless bowl game out there, outside of maybe the MNC game, in nearly 5 fucking weeks.

Anybody talking about the "meaning" of bowl games in this point in the season is the equivalent of a straight, horny, real-life Rosie O'Donnell, blowing in my ear.

Can I have my imaginary Jessica Alba back?

Better yet, how about something real -- like a fat, Rosie wannabe, and a fucking CFB playoff.

FUCK.

[Terry in Crapchester]

1. I'd rather have more at-large teams than minor conference champions. In fact, I'd limit it to one automatic bid for the minor conference champions, and Notre Dame would get an automatic bid (although others, of course, would be eligible for at-large bids).

:P

Yes, an additional at-large bid would help ND. But it might also entice a number of erstwhile independents -- Penn State, Florida State, Miami, Virginia Tech, Boston College, and practically the entire Big East conference -- to return to their roots. College football was better with independents than with superconferences, my $.02.

Anyway, if you were to implement my initial suggestion to this proposal, Fredo (who essentially finished in a tie with Illinois in BCS standings) gets the final playoff bid over BYU. Is there really any doubt as to which of those teams was better?

And rack RF, btw.

[Shoalzie]

The one thing I'll say is we can't just come up with a system that'll work for this year...it has to make sense in future years be completely bullet-proof. How many years are we going to see like this where the best teams in the country lose once, twice and maybe three times in a year and where we have a half-dozen teams staking claim at the #1 and #2 spots? We might see more seasons where only 2 teams are unbeaten and you end up with a handful of one loss teams and there isn't a small conference darling like a Hawaii that goes unbeaten. Does it make sense to have more than 8 teams participate?

I think for as much as we rip the BCS for being flawed, we need to come up with a flawless playoff system. The idea of 12 or 16 sounds good but we'll have years where the 15th and 16th best team in the country could have 3 or 4 losses. Do we need them competing for the national title? If we go with 8 teams, it allows the regular season to be more an elimination round than if you allow 12 or 16 and let in the 3rd or 4th best teams out of a major conference. We need to limit this to the major conference champs and allow only a couple of wild cards/at-large teams.

I think you could've taken the 6 conference champs this year along with Hawaii and Georgia and had a very good playoff. You don't need to bring in more teams than that. I'd rather see a smaller playoff with more quality cross-conference games played in the non-conference season. No more D-IAA games...although they aren't also gimmes.

[indyfrisco]

Why does the first playoff system that is put into place have to be to Golden Child of playoffs? A college football playoff is kinda like pizza. Even if it is bad, it is better than nothing. Let's just get the fucking playoff in place and tweak as necessary.

[Shoalzie]

Why would there need to be tweaking after the playoff is put in place? Decide on the number of teams, decide on the qualification criteria, decide the dates it'll be played, decide where the games will be played, and decide on a selection panel (similar to that who picks the field of 64+1). The last thing we need is a consistently changing system. The Big Dance has changed some over time...went from 32 to 64 teams, added a 65th team via a play-in game, and went to the pod system for first and second round games. The overall concept really didn't need to change though.

[L45B]

The one thing I'll say is we can't just come up with a system that'll work for this year...it has to make sense in future years be completely bullet-proof. How many years are we going to see like this where the best teams in the country lose once, twice and maybe three times in a year and where we have a half-dozen teams staking claim at the #1 and #2 spots? We might see more seasons where only 2 teams are unbeaten and you end up with a handful of one loss teams and there isn't a small conference darling like a Hawaii that goes unbeaten. Does it make sense to have more than 8 teams participate?

I think for as much as we rip the BCS for being flawed, we need to come up with a flawless playoff system. The idea of 12 or 16 sounds good but we'll have years where the 15th and 16th best team in the country could have 3 or 4 losses. Do we need them competing for the national title? If we go with 8 teams, it allows the regular season to be more an elimination round than if you allow 12 or 16 and let in the 3rd or 4th best teams out of a major conference. We need to limit this to the major conference champs and allow only a couple of wild cards/at-large teams.

I think you could've taken the 6 conference champs this year along with Hawaii and Georgia and had a very good playoff. You don't need to bring in more teams than that. I'd rather see a smaller playoff with more quality cross-conference games played in the non-conference season. No more D-IAA games...although they aren't also gimmes.

This post is right on the money. The key is finding a system that accomodates, at minimum, a situation in which all 6 BCS conference champions deserve a shot at the national championship (like this year).

Not going far enough will just bring up another reason to tweak it again.

Going too far (16+ teams) allows non-deserving at-large teams (from a historical perspective) into a playoff in years where maybe there's only two undefeated teams (like '02 & '05). On top of that, there would be higher risk for the undefeated team to suffer injuries at key positions in games that really shouldn't be played in the first place. Why should a team like '05 Texas, for instance, have to play a 16th ranked team to advance further, when an injury to Vince Young or Limas Sweed is more prone to happen in that game? This isn't basketball or tennis, guys. 16=too many teams.

[War Stoops]

1. I'd rather have more at-large teams than minor conference champions. In fact, I'd limit it to one automatic bid for the minor conference champions (although others, of course, would be eligible for at-large bids).

2. Eliminate first-round regular-season rematches. You have Missouri-Illinois and USC-Arizona State. Reshuffle the seeding, if necessary, to make this happen, but don't move any team more than one seed off their regular seed.

3. December 15 is WAAAAAY too early to start the playoff. Do that, and you're playing right into the hands of the university presidents and their favored argument against a playoff (academics). Most schools are still in finals on December 15. If anything, I'd be inclined to move the playoff farther back, since a lot of schools don't return to classes until mid-January, anyway. There's nothing magic about New Year's Day as the day for the finals. It has significance only from an historical perspective.

I actually agree with your first point, but the system has to have support from the minor conferences or it will never happen. Two spots should shut them up.

As for your second and third points, I respectfully disagree. If you're going to give home games to higher seeds, I don't think its fair to move seeds around just to avoid conference matchups or rematches. Rematches will happen only a small percentage of the time and are a necessary evil of any playoff system. Maybe you could move the playoff start date back one week but the final four on New Year's Day would be sweet and you want to be careful not to compete too much with the NFL playoffs. I think it's important to finish the playoff as quickly as possible. Agree that Presidents would pitch a fit starting during finals.

[RumpleForeskin]

The only change I would make to the Wetzel Plan is have a qualifier for the Conference champions. The conference champions MUST be ranked in the AP or Coaches poll in order to make it into the playoffs. If they are not ranked, then they forfeit their seed in the tournament to an at-large bid, so this year would have ended up with Hawaii and BYU being the only mid-major qualifiers.

[Sky]

One thing we were talking at work about was an 8 team playoff with a consolation game. I.e., an 8 team playoff with the big 6 conference winners plus 2 at-large w/ consideration given to the mid-majors if they are ranked high enough.

First round - played at higher ranking teams field
Second round (semis) - play 2 of the 4 big bowl games here (i.e. Rose and Orange)
Third round (final) - this would be the rotating nationional championship game (Sugar)
Consolation game - The losers of the second round play in the final bowl (Fiesta) for 3rd place

This was you could include all four big bowls, allow access for the mid-majors, prevent a 3,4 loss team playing for the NC, and still use the other existing bowls (cotton, papajohns, motorcity, alamo, music city, etc) for those that didn't make the playoffs.

[Goober McTuber]

Sky,

A couple of things:

There is no more rotating national championship game among the four major bowls. It’s now the fifth bowl played in rotating sites, in addition to the other four.

Why play the consolation after the championship?

[indyfrisco]

Why would there need to be tweaking after the playoff is put in place?

Just as the BCS formula is tweaked year after year now, it might be necessary to tweak the playoff system. College basketball wasn't always 65 teams. Over the years, the college basketball tournament model has been tweaked to make it how great it is today. That is where I am coming from. Get something in place and if it needs to be modified in future years, so be it. You have to walk before you run. While I think the play in game for the basketball tourney is somewhat meaningless, it is an example of "tweaking" that has been done recently.

[L45B]

I see ya working, Sky, and I like where that is going.

Alluding to the issues Goober brought up, there are ways around it.

The semifinal games in your scenario (i.e. Orange, Rose) would remain. But whichever bowl site gets the NC game (i.e. Sugar) would host its bowl game as normal, picking from a pool of teams not in the playoff or that have already lost in the playoff (like the Cotton, Cap1, etc, etc).

Then a week later the Fiesta Bowl is played between the losers of the Rose & Orange. A day after that, the winners play in the NC game in New Orleans.

Would take some schedule re-shuffling, but what new system wouldn't?

[Sky]

Goober and LB,
I more meant for the consolation game to be held before the NC game. And while the BCS added a 5th bowl game, it isn't like we really need another bowl. So I propose going back to the original four bowls and doing away w/ the "BCS NCG".

[Terry in Crapchester]

I actually agree with your first point, but the system has to have support from the minor conferences or it will never happen. Two spots should shut them up.

I think one guaranteed spot is enough to keep them happy. They don't even have that much right now in the BCS, but the easier qualification route for the BCS for those conferences has kept them out of litigation.

And upon further review, I'd allow Army and Navy to be eligible for that guaranteed spot, in the event that one of those teams finished the regular season ranked higher than any non-BCS conference champion. That way, every 1-A team would begin the season at least theoretically eligible for the playoff.

As for your second and third points, I respectfully disagree. If you're going to give home games to higher seeds, I don't think its fair to move seeds around just to avoid conference matchups or rematches. Rematches will happen only a small percentage of the time and are a necessary evil of any playoff system.

I don't have a problem with rematches per se occurring in a playoff system, and with a more inclusive system, some rematches are bound to happen. But I do have a problem with rematches occurring very early in the playoff.

In this case, considering that you used the BCS rankings, the problem is easily fixable. Note that only .0200 points separated Missouri and USC in the final BCS rankings. Simply switch the rankings of Missouri and USC, and both rematches are avoided. Instead, you have USC-Illinois and Missouri-Arizona State in the first round.

[Terry in Crapchester]

The only change I would make to the Wetzel Plan is have a qualifier for the Conference champions. The conference champions MUST be ranked in the AP or Coaches poll in order to make it into the playoffs. If they are not ranked, then they forfeit their seed in the tournament to an at-large bid, so this year would have ended up with Hawaii and BYU being the only mid-major qualifiers.

I suppose I could live with this, at least for this year. That would have put pretty much the top sixteen teams into the playoffs, except that #16 Tennessee would have been replaced by #17 BYU.

My problem with the original Wetzel plan was that you would have seen Central Florida, Florida Atlantic and Central Michigan in the playoffs in place of Clemson, Illinois and Boston College.

[L45B]

My problem with the original Wetzel plan was that you would have seen Central Florida, Florida Atlantic and Central Michigan in the playoffs in place of Clemson, Illinois and Boston College.

And since when, as long as you can remember, would any of these "type" teams even be sniffing a chance at a national championship? At least the first three teams you mentioned won their conferences. I would take them over the other three.

It's already been argued that Illinois doesn't even deserve a slot in a BCS game much less an opportunity to play for an NC.

Boston College? What's the point of them even showing up for the ACC CG if they're already lookin' to make the playoff?

I question these "fun-to-think-about" playoff ideas that, in reality, would take away from the significance of the regular season and the importance of winning one's conference-- ideals that have existed in CFB for more than fifty years.

[Sky]

And since when, as long as you can remember, would any of these "type" teams even be sniffing a chance at a national championship? At least the first three teams you mentioned won their conferences. I would take them over the other three.

It's already been argued that Illinois doesn't even deserve a slot in a BCS game much less an opportunity to play for an NC.

Boston College? What's the point of them even showing up for the ACC CG if they're already lookin' to make the playoff?

I question these "fun-to-think-about" playoff ideas that, in reality, would take away from the significance of the regular season and the importance of winning one's conference-- ideals that have existed in CFB for more than fifty years.

You mean if my team finishes 3rd in the NFC West with a 9-7 record, that isn't good enough to get into the playoffs? I call bullshit.