How NCAA College Football Can Create an 8-Team Playoff Next Year

Dozens of college football teams vie for the coveted top ranking spot. After almost four months of football, a computer and dozens of sports writers argue about who the #1 and #2 teams. Those lucky teams get to play for the national championship - while the other great teams are left playing second fiddle at lesser bowl games.

Many sports began their championships as one game or one series. Until 1969, the World Series was simply played between the American League and National League Pennant winners. As leagues grew, though, most sports have trended towards at least an eight-team playoff.

For several reasons, NCAA football has shied away from this. The national champion continues to be determined by a single game between two teams that were picked by a computerized ranking system and a group of sportswriters.

The 2007 season is a perfect example of the flaw in this system - the #1 and #2 teams lost repeatedly, many times to unranked teams. There is no longer a "dominant" #1 team, and all of the competing teams deserve a chance to battle directly for the national championship. Enter an 8-team playoff.

Working Out the Schedule

One reason that a playoff has been avoided is that it would lengthen the football season. Until recently, college football ended on New Years Day with a series of bowl games - and that was that.

The season has now been extended an extra week so that the final bowl game is played a week after New Years. Opponents of a playoff suggest that a playoff would push the season until the end of January. Not so.

First, utilize the existing bowl series as the first round of the playoffs. Four major bowl games form the perfect series - eight teams play in these bowl games, and the four winners advance to the next round. The Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and Orange Bowl would become the quarter-finals of the Bowl Championship Series.

A semi-final round will be added with in the week following the the original bowl games. The winners of these two bowl games will face off in the Bowl Championship Game.

If the quarter-finals begin on January 1 - the historical date of the Rose Bowl - then the championship game will merely be pushed back one week to January 14.

A better solution, though, would be to push up the original bowl games to the weekend before Christmas. The latest regular season games are played around December 1 - why should teams have a full month off before the bowl games? It just allows them to get out of practice and play poorly.

Under this plan, the quarter-finals would be played on or before Christmas. The winners would have at least a one week break, and the semi-finals would be played on January 1. The Bowl Championship game would then be played on the Saturday on or following January 8.

Picking Teams - Who Gets to Play?

With a schedule set, we need to devise a system to pick eight teams to play for the championship. The current system... well... sucks. So hopefully we can do better than that.

Currently, the BCS has six affiliated conferences. It stands to reason that the first six teams to play in playoff series would be the champions from these conferences - Big Ten, Big East, Big Twelve, ACC, SEC, and Pac Ten.

The final two spots would be decided at large - with a wild card type system. The two highest ranked teams at the end of the season, who are not champions of a BCS conference, are selected to play in the #7 and #8 positions. This gives non-affiliated teams - like Hawaii and Boise State - a fighting chance to get into the playoffs.

The teams could then be ranked from #1 to 8 - using the BCS rankings - to seed them into the bowl games. As per normal playoff rules, the #1 team would play the #8 team, so on and so forth. In order to be fair to the bowl games, the games should rotate each year. For example, in 2009 the Rose Bowl would be the #1 vs. #8 game, in 2010 the #2 vs. #7 game, so on and so forth.

How Would This Look This Year?

That's all well and good. What would we end up with if we used this system this year? Would it look better than the current LSU - OSU showdown?

Quarter-final Matchups:

• Rose Bowl - Ohio State (#1) vs. Kansas (#8)
• 
  
• Sugar Bowl - LSU (#2) vs. USC (#7)
• 
  
• Orange Bowl - Virginia Tech (#3) vs. Missouri (#6)
• 
  
• Fiesta Bowl - Oklahoma (#4) vs. Georgia (#5)

Note: A rule could be introduced to prevent a conference from sending more than two teams to the playoffs. In that case, Kansas would be dropped for West Virginia.

After these four teams duke it out, the winners go on to play in two new Bowl Games on New Years Day. The winner of the Rose Bowl would face off against the winner of the Fiesta Bowl, while the winner of the Sugar Bowl would face off against the winner of the Orange Bowl.

Finally, the winners would face off in a true national championship game.

Why Do It This Way?

There are plenty of advantages to this method.

The old bowl games regain some of their importance. Currently, none of them get a chance to see the national championship contenders. OSU is the #1 ranked team, but they won't be playing in the Rose Bowl - they'll be playing in the Championship game. With this playoff system, each BCS bowl would be integral to the national champion.

Downtime is reduced. There's no reason that teams should have an entire month off before playing the most important games of their season. By pushing the schedule up one week - two would be even better - teams are given time to rest but not time to get lazy.

A broader field can contend for the championship. LSU and OSU were given the #1 and #2 spots because they were favorites going in. There's nothing to definitively say that they deserve the spot more than Missouri or Virginia Tech. It makes perfect sense that the conference champions should be the ones to play off for a national championship.