[NOTE: Original post with comments here.]
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but GTP’s second poll is all about the D-1 football postseason and which format you’d prefer to see. For the purpose of this exercise, don’t worry about the horsetrading it would take to get where you want to go. I simply want to see what everyone likes the best.
Here are some details on your choices:
- Blutarsky’s eight-team, conference champs only playoff: reduce D-1 to eight ten-team power conferences, with some judicious rejiggering to balance out conference strength.
- Eight-team, current conference champs only playoff: Troy would be in, Florida would be out. So would the polls and computers, though.
- BCS Guru’s “plus one”.
- Mike Slive’s “plus one”.
- Eight-team playoff, based on top eight teams in BCS rankings.
- Sixteen-team playoff, based on conference champs plus eight other highest-ranked teams in BCS standings.
- 1-AA sized playoff (20-24 teams)
- The BCS
- Your father’s postseason: bowls without BCS. Ahhh, the way we were. JoePa’s favorite.
- Other (describe in comments)
Alrighty then – let’s see what we’ve got.
Factor the sixteen-team playoff system into 15 of the the bowls:
Make 2 additional bowls “BCS” level bowls (ex Cotton, Chick FilA).
Rearrange the bowl schedule so the first round of the playoffs occurs weekend of Dec 24 or thereabouts (8 games); 2nd round Jan 1, (Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Chick); semifinals Jan 8 (Orange, Fiesta–rotate the Big Six bowls year to year); Championship Jan 15.
Bowl system benefits: much more interest in Outback, Holiday, Gator, Alamo-level bowls if they’re Round 1 of a College Football Championship playoff.
Leave the lower-tier bowls as they are, no harm to them; Weedeater Bowl will be just as significant as always. If you’re a traditional New Year’s weekend bowl game who doesn’t want to change your date just to be a Round 1 site (Capital 1, maybe) fine, play whenever you want, just not as a part of the playoff.
Have four regions. NW, SE, SW and NW. Let each region determine how they will pick a representitive school from their region. They may use a BCS type system or whatever. That will give you four teams.
Have a national BCS added 5th thru 8 teams. These would be the highest ranked teams not already included in the regional four.
Draw matchups out of a hat….Play the first round….four winners draw again…play round two….two winners left for MNC game. (I gave this very little thought. I have no problem wasting people’s time)
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Uglydawg. I like it but would never happen
First take back the 12th game. Reduce regular season back to 11 games. Six Conference Champs (must have Conf Champ game) plus 2 next highest ranked teams not already with a conf championship. 1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6, 4 vs 5. Use bowls as play off sites with NC rotating site every year.
With slight modifications, this is close to mine.
1. I would have the 5 conference champions (based on current/today alignment) and the next three highest rated in my 8 team playoff. Could be 6-2 or 4-4 depending on where alignment goes—-but 8 regardless. If we went to four 16 team Superconferences, the conference championship game would be my first round playoff so there would still be 8 teams in the beginning.
2. First round would be at the stadium of the four highest rated teams in mid- December. Weather should still be decent everywhere, and the infrastructure to issue tickets is already at the schools. Visiting team would be treated the same way they are during the regular season (5-8K allotment).
3. Second round in two of the current BCS bowls around January 1.
4. Championship game mid-January at a domed, mid-continent location (Indy, St. Louis, San Antonio, Dallas, etc.) to ease travel issues. Let the cities bid on the game, and guarantee hotel rooms and at least 25K tickets for each school. If they cannot sell them, let the ticket brokers handle the leftovers.