I believe there are few people left who wouldn't agree with the following statement: something needs to change in college football.
Now, we can argue until we're blue in the face about the what-ifs and propose theories for a college football playoff system as the majority of college football fans have been doing since the BCS came into existence and even before, but we'd be saying the same things we said last year, and the year before, and the year before...
There are many things we can't change about college football, but let us speak of two things that can be changed that will quite easily make the game better.
This year, I'd like to propose something simple to begin with: a standard number of games played by every team in NCAA Division I football.
It continually gets overlooked, but is it really fair to the record books that in a four-year college football career, one player may play up to 8 games more than another player? I don't think so. The answer is simple. Each team plays 12 games of a regular season and any championship games or bowl games are not counted toward their career statistics, but counted as playoff statistics (like all professional sports are so good at doing), so that no player can ever record more than 48 games of college football. It wouldn't even be difficult to go backward and have this rule apply to previous seasons.
This season was truly an anomaly showcasing five undefeated teams, three of them from so-called power conferences. In previous seasons, fans have been forced to argue about which one-loss team should be in the national championship and occasionally if a two-loss power conference team should be ranked higher than an undefeated Hawaii, Utah, or Boise State. I prefer the previous arguments.
Is there a way to look at these five undefeated teams and give them any sort of fair shake in which bowl games they get to play in? No, not entirely. Even if you tried to make a playoff, you'd never be able to make it big enough to include all teams with a claim to being the best team and small enough to be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
The selection of those 4, 8, 16, or 32 teams for a playoff would be just as subjective and just as arguable as the current system. Any playoff system would have to change and be re-arranged with every season to be anywhere close to effective.
For instance this season, what would you do? I'd argue for a six-team playoff this season with the five undefeated teams along with Florida giving Alabama and Texas a bye, but even that isn't completely fair because deciding who gets the bye is subjective and who gets the sixth spot is subjective. I think it would be the best way for this particular season, but it is not even close to perfect. Only three of the six power conferences are represented.
So my second very simple proposal is as follows: if a team ends the season undefeated and wins its bowl game, whether it be the BCS Championship Game, another BCS bowl game, or even a non-BCS bowl game, they should be rewarded in money just as the BCS champion is awarded and that figure should be higher than a non-undefeated team winning a similar bowl game.
What that means is that even if the BCS decides that a hypothetical 12-1 Florida should play a hypothetical 12-1 Texas in the BCS Championship Game next season and there is a hypothetical 13-0 Boise State that wins its bowl game over a hypothetical 10-2 Ohio State, Boise State should receive more money for their win than whoever wins the actual championship game.
No, of course it isn't perfect, but it provides some sense of evenness between teams that go undefeated, which is an accomplishment I believe worth rewarding whether you are from the WAC, Mountain West, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, or any other conference.
Money is a simple way to level the playing field in the slightest bit since there is no apparent way to level the playing field when it comes to glory.
In the end, yes, college football is unfixable in that it will never be perfect. It will never please everyone. That is impossible. There are still measures that can be taken, however, that are simple and would improve the game.
Yet we should be thankful that the BCS has at the very least granted us five very enticing bowl games this year. It will be interesting to see if three teams will be able to lay claim to some portion of the imaginary title of "champion."
December 9, 2009
Marc James:
I like your idea of playing an even number of games, but even that would be hard to regulate with players redshirting partially through the season…
I don’t like the idea of making this all about money. I don’t think these programs care about money as much as they care about winning a title. Sure, money’s an issue, but it doesn’t solve anything…
Frankly, I’d rather see some analysis of the actual bowl games we have than another BCS complaint article.
December 9, 2009
Dennis:
The BCS is BS and it always has been! After watching Texas and TCU this season, how can anyone definitively state that Texas is the better team? And what about Cincinnati and Boise State?
It’s time for a 16 team playoff with automatic bids for EVERY conference champion, just as conference champs are treated in EVERY other NCAA sport. It is totally ridiculous that upwards of 50 Division 1A schools NEVER have the chance to play for the national title simply because of the league they play in! Imagine what the NCAA basketball championship would be like without the smaller league champions?!?
Pattern the selection on the NCAA hockey championships with power rankings and pairwise comparisons based on actual records, not computer rankings. This would give you the fairest selection of teams and matchups. Begin the playoffs right after the conference championships so teams like Ohio State would not be waiting 6-7 weeks for a bowl game after the regular season has finished, which is insane as well (No wonder the Big 10 loses every Rose Bowl!)
December 12, 2009
Anthony Brancato:
Believe it or not, a playoff system would be made a lot smoother if you allowed some games during the (regular) season to end in a tie! The simplest way to do this is to have a 10-minute clock run during the overtime (with the clock, of course, being stopped for the same reasons as it would in regulation), and if the game is still tied after the 10 minutes have expired, that’s the way the game ends.
The point being that instead of having a raft of 9-3 teams arguing over the last few spots in a 16-team draw, some of them will finish 9-2-1, others 9-3, and still others 8-3-1, making the teams a lot easier to rank.
Another possibility is, say, a 12-team playoff, with the top 4 seeds earning a first-round bye, and the higher seeds getting home-field advantage in the first two rounds (but with the semifinals and title game being held at a predetermined site - just like the Final Four in basketball).
December 18, 2009
BigBlueWall_fan:
We could even use the existing bowl games to help decide the NC teams…If there were twelve conferences, the champion of each conference could earn a bid to the playoffs. If there were ties, a championship conference game could decide that. Then some of the bowls could be the first round games, and then the major bowls the semifinals round and the top two go to the nc game. No problem.