Here’s something I’m curious about, based on a comment in a previous thread.
This is what the last 2008 regular season BCS standings for the top 16 teams looked like:
RK TEAM RECORD 1 Oklahoma 12-1 2 Florida 12-1 3 Texas 11-1 4 Alabama 12-1 5 USC 11-1 6 Utah 12-0 7 Texas Tech 11-1 8 Penn State 11-1 9 Boise State 12-0 10 Ohio State 10-2 11 TCU 10-2 12 Cincinnati 11-2 13 Oklahoma State 9-3 14 Georgia Tech 9-3 15 Georgia 9-3 16 Brigham Young 10-2
What playoff format would you have found most satisfactory to settle the national championship debate last season?
There are flaws with any choice. Mike Slive’s plus one would have omitted Southern Cal and both undefeated mid-majors. (Ironically, it also would have rendered the SECCG a fairly meaningless exercise.) BCS Guru’s playoff formula would have excluded Texas and Alabama. An eight-team playoff would have kept Boise State out. So would Brian Cook’s six-team proposal. (More irony: Cook’s format would have left out a one-loss Big Ten conference champ in Penn State.) And a sixteen-team playoff would have included three three-loss teams, none of which even played in their respective conference title games.
With that in mind, what would have worked best? I’m not asking this to make a point that playoffs suck. I think, though, what we might have seen happen last season if a four-team format were in place would have been a lot of talk about the need to expand the size of the postseason. Especially after 2007.
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