If I asked a room full of people to share solely positive opinions about college football's Bowl Championship Series, I wouldn't hear anything but chirping crickets and muffled swears. When you compare the BCS to other NCAA events, such as the Final Four or the College World Series, you realize how much the highest grossing collegiate sport would benefit if we implemented a simple playoff system.
Every year, countless people complain about the unfair process of crowning a national champion. Many cried foul when two members of the same conference who had already played each other during the regular season dueled for the crystal trophy. Both Oklahoma State and Stanford had the same record as Alabama, and both deserved a shot at the championship. Basically, countless teams have been screwed over worse than Chris Humphries when Kim Kardashian convinced him that marriage was a good idea.
Thankfully, the BCS finally wilted and approved the implementation of a four-team playoff system. No one wants to ditch the bowl system, and a March Madness-style bracket is impossible to pull off because of the grueling nature of college football.
No specifics have been released yet for the proposed system. Eleven conference directors and Notre Dame University's athletic director have all agreed to implement a playoff system, but the group was unable to hammer out specific details. Because the NCAA has shown its incompetence time and time again, I've decided to step in and suggest the perfect format for this new BCS playoff system.
Location, Bowls and Dates
The only thing the conference directors agreed upon is that they want to keep the current system in which the top-ranked teams and conference champions play in large BCS bowls. The current system has five major games: the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, the Sugar Bowl and the National Championship game. Ideally, the framers of the playoffs want to keep four BCS bowls and have the top four teams play in designated semifinal games, which means that we need to figure out six bowls for 12 teams.
I think the best solution would be to elevate two non-BCS bowls and turn them into the official semifinal bowls. The best two bowls for this would be the Capital One Bowl in Orlando, Fla. and the Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas. Both bowls historically host major conference matchups and are already sponsored by major companies Capital One and AT&T, respectively with enough cash to support major events.
The top-ranked playoff team would play in the stadium closest to home against the fourth-ranked school and the second and third-ranked schools would play at the other venue. Both of these games would be played on New Year's Day, and the championship would be played exactly a week later.
Between the semifinals and the championship game, all four BCS bowls would be played, which would build up the hype for the championship game. Keeping true to the current system, the National Championship would rotate between the four current BCS bowl locations: Miami, Fla., New Orleans, La., Pasadena, Calif. and Glendale, Ariz.
The Teams
Although choosing four teams is slightly less difficult than selecting only two, it's still a tedious process. It's a process that I believe needs both human and computer input, so I have devised a system that fairly selects the four best teams. First, in order to be eligible for the semifinal games, the team must be ranked in the top eight in two out of the following three polls: the AP Top 25, the Coaches Poll and the BCS rankings. Second, teams that lose in conference championships are not eligible for the semifinal round. Third, at least three conferences must be represented in the playoffs. Finally, no two teams that have already played each other can face each other in the semifinal round.
If these rules would have been implemented last season, No. 1 LSU would have played No. 4 Stanford in the Cotton Bowl and No. 2 Alabama would have played No. 3 Oklahoma State in the Capital One Bowl. Alabama and LSU still might have ended up facing each other in the National Championship, but both semifinal matchups would have been wildly entertaining.
The implementation of a playoff system adds two games to an already fantastic bowl season and gives twice as many fans the opportunity to cheer on a contending team. Great move, BCS everyone wins with this new system.
