The Dogg Pound (6/5/06) - Fixing college football

Dr. Giganto

One of my biggest pet peeves in all sports is the BCS and the Bowl system for Division I-A college football. It makes no sense, considering all other team sports, professionally and collegiately, are decided using a tournament format. It makes even less sense when you take into account that Divisions I-AA, II, and III all havetournaments, but the highest level of college football does not.

Not only that, but it's simply not fair. It's not fair that these young men go out and bust their busts all year, just to have their champion decided by a computer. Also, if you're a team in a non-BCS conference, you have a 0% chance of winning the national championship. Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch. You're an undefeated team from the MAC? Too bad. 12-0 in the WAC? You'd be better off being 0-12 in the ACC. It's ridiculous.

So, here is my proposal. A 10-game regular season (perhaps an 11-game season), consisting of 7 conference games (since the smallest conferences have only 8 teams) and 3 non-conference games (4 if you go with the 11 game schedule).

Then, a 16-team playoff. The 11 conference champions recieve automatic bids, and 5 at-large are selected. Also, if you still want to favor the "BCS" schools, you can automatically give the winners of these conferences seeds 1-6 in the tournament. What this does is it sets up a series of David vs. Goliath match-ups in the first round every year. The big, bad ACC champion versus the little team that could from the Sun Belt conference.

Plus, you can incorporate the Bowl games into the playoff structure. For instance right now there are 4 "BCS Bowls", with each rotating as the national championship game. You work the same system, except two of the other BCS Bowls are used for the Semifinal games. And, one BCS Bowl is reserved for a second-round game with the team of highest remaining seed.

Then, the teams that don't make the playoffs play in the lesser Bowl games, like the Independence Bowl, the Holiday Bowl, the Hawaii Bowl, and so on.


For instance, this is how it would have worked out using last year's results:

Tournament teams (listed according to seed):

1. USC: Pac-10 Champion
2. Texas: Big 12 Champion
3. Penn State: Big 10 Champion
4. Virginia Tech: ACC Champion
5. LSU: SEC Champion
6. West Virginia: Big East Champion
7. Notre Dame: At-large bid
8. Ohio State: At-large bid
9. Oregon: At-large bid
10. Auburn: At-large bid
11. Miami: At-large bid
12. TCU: Mountain West Champion
13. Central Florida: Conference USA Champions
14. Toledo: Mid-American Conference Champions
15. Nevada: WAC Champion
16. Arkansas St.: Sun Belt Conference Champion


Setting up these first round match-ups:

USC vs. Arkansas St
Texas vs. Nevada
Penn St. vs. Toldeo
Virginia Tech vs. Central Florida
LSU vs. TCU
West Virginia vs. Miami
Notre Dame vs. Auburn
Ohio St. vs. Oregon

You get 5 David/Goliath games, and 3 powerhouse vs. powerhouse games

Then, you have these potential second-round games:

USC vs. Ohio St
Texas vs. Notre Dame
Penn St. vs Miami
Virgina Tech vs. LSU

You mean to tell me the college football world wouldn't cream in their pants at the prospect of this??? It would be great for everybody involved.

Some people will say, "Well, that's too many games for these kids to be playing!" That's bull. Under the current system, the vast majority of teams play 11 or 12 games. Under my proposed system, exactly two teams every year will play 14 games, two teams will play 13 games, four teams will play 12 games, about half the teams will play 11 games, and the teams with losing records will play only 10 games (add one to each of those figures if you go with the 11 game schedule). Thus, the vast majority of teams will be playing exactly as many games as they played last year. Last year, 13 teams in Division I-A played 13 games. Under this sytem, only 2 or 4 will play more than that.

Not to mention the fact that last year, Northern Iowa and Appalachian St. of Division I-AA played 15 games, while two other I-AA teams played 14 games. So, if Division I-AA teams can do it, why can't the big boys?

My proposed system would be so much better than the current system, it's ridiculous. In fact, it makes so much sense, there's no way the NCAA would ever go through with something like this.

Alas...

Danny Diamond

Founder/Admin

Sonofa.... Apparently college football isnt peoples gig here.

I love your work though Tommy Boy. Every week its the best sports stuff we have.

Rock on with your bad self.

Dr. Giganto

thank you sir!!!

Dr. Giganto

I just wanted to bump this so that people can see how much smarter I am than the people who run college football.

Under my proposed system (and current records/BCS standings), this would be this year's tournament:

1. Ohio State (Big 10 champion)
2. Louisville (Big East champion)
3. Texas (Big 12 champion)
4. Auburn (SEC champion)
5. California (Pac-10 champion)
6. Wake Forest (ACC Champion)
7. Michigan
8. Florida
9. Notre Dame
10. USC
11. West Virginia
12. Boise State
13. Tulsa
14. BYU
15. W. Michigan
16. Middle Tennessee St.

So, these would be the first round match-ups:

Ohio St. vs. Middle Tennessee St.
Louisville vs. W. Michigan
Texas vs. BYU
Auburn vs. Tulsa
California vs. Boise St.
Wake Forest vs. West Virginia
Michigan vs. USC (ooooooohhhhh.......)
Florida vs. Notre Dame

On Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio this morning, they were talking about how part of the appeal of the NCAA basketball tournament is the Cinderella teams and the big first round upsets. Everybody remembers the time Princeton beat UCLA, or Bucknell beating Kansas, or Coppin St. beating South Carolina. That's something that's lacking in college football, and it would be awesome to see a team like BYU try to knock off Texas.

But, assuming all the higher seeds win, you would get this in the second round:

Ohio State vs. Florida
Louisville vs. Michigan
Texas vs. Wake Forest
Auburn vs. California

Those are pretty good match-ups.

Then, you would have:

Ohio State vs. Auburn
Michigan vs. Texas

Then, Ohio State vs. Michigan

and MICHIGAN would be crowned national champion. Well, thats what would happen in my perfect world...

Suntan Superman

WC's Resident Samoan

I agree with you they should go to a playoff system along with the bowl games would be great. But will it happen? No. I don't see them incorporating a playoff system until they get some new personnel in the NCAA. Plus with that Schools might lose some more money because would the playoffs be played at a remote location or would they go to the higher seed? Either way that's more travel for teams like what if BYU won and had to travel all the way to Carolina to play the Deamon Deacons? Then if they beat them they'd have to travel either to Michigan or Kentucky. I love the idea soooo much and I think we'd finally have a true Nat'l Champ but I just don't know if it would work all to well with some of the smaller schools. I mean look at College Hockey, The WCHL pays Alaska-Anchorage to play in WCHL as does the CCHA with Alaska-Juneau(how Alaska-Juneau is Central I'll never know). But I digress, I love the system, Just some skepticism as to how well it would work

Blitzkrieg

Administrator

I love your work Tom and I somehow missed this I guess when you 1st did it.. Anyway, it was a great read. It makes perfect sense..

However, they just won't get rid of the bowls and even if they incoporated the bowls into the playoff system, I'm not convinced that they can sell out all the 1st round matchups..

A game like the Holiday Bowl I'd imagine gets sold out every year or at least draws a huge crowd..

But could they get the same crowds for a 1st round game when the students would assume that their team will be in the next round anyway?

I'm just not convinced that they'll travel for 3 weeks. The alumni.

It's different with the college basketball tourney. They are playing in 16,000 seat arenas and don't have longstanding ties to the people at the regional site.

Dr. Giganto

Well, I think I would make the first two rounds home games for the higher seed, so the Ohio State fans/alumni wouldn't have to go anywhere, but the Middle Tennessee St. fans/alumni would DEFINITELY travel to Ohio State, because they can't assume that their team would make it to the finals. They would definitely sell out the games because:

1. There are only like 6 home games a year in the regular season, and there is excess demand for tickets at big schools like Ohio State and Michigan

2. The appeal of a playoff system would even increase demand

And, I think the fans of the teams would travel to the semifinals and final game.

Jayman

Super Moderator

No, you have to remember that many of the fans are college students themselves. They all have commitments such as school, exams...not to mention many college students are "poor", which means they don't have the disposable income to pay for a plane ticket or take a long car ride.

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Simon

Dr. Giganto

They still travel to the Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, etc. every year...Why would it be different if it's a playoff system? Answer: it wouldn't

And, the alumni have money to go the games. Remember, if you have an 80,000 seat stadium, and a good portion of the stadium is friends/family of the teams, corporate sponsors, contest winners, etc. That means each team only has provide about 25,000 fans. Ohio State has 40,000 enrolled students, and like a million living alumni (thats an exaggeration, but you get my point). There would be no problem at all selling out the semifinal and final games.

Freak

I used to argue against you Tom, simply on the basis that college kids are too young to play so many games, but you've got me convinced. This tournament would be fucking awesome, and with most teams going to 12-game scheds this year, combined with conference championship games and bowl games, that's a moot point.

Props.