College Football is my favorite sport. I love the traditions. I love the pageantry. I love the crowds. And I especially love the regular season. But each year, the season ends, and it's like an election: everyone picks a side and gets all pumped up, then someone wins and nothing gets solved and the entire country is bummed out.
Honestly, until recently, I loved the BCS. I thought it made college football unique and maintained the intensity of the regular season in a way a playoff would not. My main argument is that in 2006, No.1 Ohio State played No.2 Michigan. Two hated, tradition-rich rivals playing to advance to the BCS championship. I was more hyped for that game than maybe any other sporting event I've ever watched. And if there was a playoff system, more than likely, that game wouldn't have mattered. Both teams would have made it into the playoff. If you can take the importance out of an Ohio State, Michigan game, then you've ruined college football. The rivalries and the traditions matter more than a champion—or so my argument went.
For the most part I still believe that. But I'm adjusting my stance a little bit. What I present represents, what I believe, is the ultimate solution for college football because it keeps traditions intact, removes certain biases that wreck the current system and delivers a true champion.
• No more scheduling Florida International or Youngstown State or Tulane. Kind of. It's better for us fans to watch the big boys play the big boys—but it's unfair to keep Florida International's players from playing in the Swamp, and it's unfair for that school to be shut out of that substantial payday.
What I propose is a play-in system for these non-major conference teams. Win nine or more games a season for three consecutive years and you qualify to play against a major conference team. Major conference teams can only schedule one a year. This will let those teams earn it—and then when the teams do earn it, like Boise St, major teams can't avoid them. I envision it being much more like the NFL. One or two games of the schedule will be determined by previous success and preseason polls by the schedule makers—not administrators and coaches with an agenda of reaching the end of the year unscathed.
• More major interconference regular season matchups. Say what you want about Ohio State, but once a year, they schedule a major team from another conference. No neutral field BS either. Florida, on the other hand, hasn't played an out of conference game out of the state of Florida in almost two decades. Teams shouldn't be allowed to make up their own rules with these games, especially with so much money on the line in the BCS.
Again, taking the NFL's lead, each year conferences are forced to matchup. Kind of like the ACC/Big Ten challenge that happens each year in college basketball. Games will be determined by the previously useless preseason polls in some fashion. And these teams will play two years in a row (I like the home-and-home formula). This will create compelling games, force teams to travel to play out of conference and add to the conference bragging rights.
• No more conference championships. Sometimes they work (Florida v. Alabama) and sometimes they don't (Texas v. Nebraska). I think it's better to just scrap them. The Pac-10 has the best system. It's a round robin regular season. Everyone plays everyone. Don't completely hold me to this statement—but I think it always works out with no messy Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech situations because of the tiebreakers involved.
• Keep the inter conference rivals. With all of the schedule changing, we have to be sure to keep traditional rivalry games like Clemson v South Carolina and Georiga v Georgia Tech.
• Have a TRUE rivalry week. This doesn't help anything, it's just a cosmetic fix I'd like to see. Rivalries are always staggered on different weekends. Lump them all on one Big Ass Rivalry Weekend. OSU v Michigan, Auburn v Alabama, USC v UCLA, Colorado v Nebraska, Notre Dame v Little Sisters of the Poor, Florida v soap, etc, etc.
• Figure out what to do with Notre Dame. Here's the problem. It should be easy to just throw ND in a conference and be done with it, but the program has too much tradition and too many rivalries. My solution is to add ND, Army and Navy— the remaining independent teams—to the Big East. That gives the Big East 11 teams and fills out the conference schedule. Notre Dame can then keep its game with Navy, which is tradition, and it can keep USC as its rival, but not play them during rivalry week because USC will be playing UCLA. Its Michigan game will only happen when the Big East plays the Big Ten, and maybe not then either. Sorry. Some sacrifices must be made.
• Longer regular season. I tried to avoid it, but after all of my changes, a team like Florida would have a minimum of 14 games (11 conference games, one inter-conference game matchup, one out of conference rivalry game, and one other game for a quality mid-major). Is that too long? Maybe. But that's what will help create a fair and balanced regular season. The teams in the Pac-10, the smallest conference, would have the two extra games filled by a complicated formula the schedule makers will determine. Could be a mid-major, could be a decent opponent. This is just a murky part of the plan we all have to live with. The Browns don't complain about their extra games, conferences without 12 teams can't complain about theirs.
• Playoffs. The season will start the first of September. There will be one bye week. This means the season will end in mid-December. At that point, each team will have amassed a much larger, more well-defined body of work. This gives poll voters more data for informed decisions. There is one final poll taken (or we still use the BCS here to keep those people happy). The top four teams will be seeded and put into a playoff. Higher seeds get homefield in round one, which means some of these wuss Southern teams might actually have to play in weather below 60 degrees and not have the regional advantage. The championship game will then be played on New Year's Day on a truly neutral field. If USC and OSU are in the title game, the game will be in the Sugar Bowl. If it's Florida and Texas, the game will be in the Rose Bowl, etc. And to keep the bowl system alive, during the first week of the playoff, all of the lesser, exhibition bowl games can start and continue all the way up to and including New Year's Day.
Why four teams? After expanding the regular season, I felt an eight-team playoff stretched the season a week too long. And after the longer, tougher regular season, I see no reason for a beefed up playoff because teams will have already proven their worth on the field. And seriously, how many years have there been eight teams that really deserved to be in the title hunt? The only real caveat to being in the Top Four is you have to win your conference. This keeps the bias for one conference out of the polling discussion. And keeping the polls will keep the arguments and debates alive—but there is enough settled on the field where a team won't get completely and utterly screwed.
There it is. Fixed. You're welcome.
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