Offical How I Would Fix The BCS Thread

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mnboiler

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I know people have posted there ideas other place but I thought it would be easier to have one place for I'll the ideas. This way people could easily ask question, critique, and poke holes in other peoples ideas.

I'll start.

You keep the current 4 BCS bowls, and maybe add a 5th-I think the Cotton Bowl would be a good game to add-then play all 5 games over New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, then the weekend depending how the calender falls. This allows all the traditions to continue, Rose Bowl will still be Big 10 vs Pac 10, etc.

After all 4/5 games are played the AP, Coaches, computer polls do one final ranking with just the 8 or 10 teams that played in BCS bowls. Then you take the #1 and #2 team and they play the next weekend.

While some will say thats unfair to the Big/Pac 10 teams because they will always play each other therefore both will never play in the NC game. My response is that there is no rules saying that a losing team couldn't be in the NC game.

For example this year the schudule could be
Cotton Bowl-Dec 31
Rose Bowl-Jan 1(Afternoon)
Orange Bowl-Jan 1(Night)
Suger Bowl-Jan 2
Fiesta Bowl-Jan 3

National Championship Game-Jan 10

So I guess it would be verison of the +1 format.
 


Sixteen team seeded playoff over four weeks. 8 games, 4 games, 2 games, Championship game. First round is home game for top eight teams. That is fifteen games, the last seven games (weeks 2,3,4) can be "bowl" games. There are 34(?) bowl games now, so if that stays the same, then there are still 27 "bowl" games to be played by teams that didn't make the Championship tourney.

Today's bowl season stretches out over almost three weeks now, so it would either need to start one week earlier or go one week later than now. Not that big a change. The home team advantage for the first game evens things out for northern teams that now have to play bowl games often times in their oponents backyard.

Regular season games will mean more than ever in the battle to get selected and in-conference record should be the only ones counted for the rankings. Think of the media hype of the NCAA basketball tourney and you can see what the possibilities are for promoting conferences and making money and satisfying fans and teams who today are being screwed...
 

OK, my best version is to take the top 8 teams and seed them 1-8.

The four highest rated teams each get the playoff game at home. With the four teams that win, you send them to 2 New Year's Day Bowl games.....and you send the winner of those games to the BCS Championship bowl a week later. If you take the top 8 instead of the major conference winners, you would be replacing Cincinnatti and Georgia Tech with Utah and Texas Tech, which are more deserving teams and that would be more fair.

The way it would have played out this year:
#8 Texas Tech at #1 Florida
#7 Utah at #2 Oklahoma
#6 Penn St. at #3 Texas
#5 USC at #4 Alabama

I like this a LOT more than what we have right now......

Whatever the case is, I think everyone agrees the present system is antiquated and needs to be changed.
 

MnBoiler - What's the difference between that and what we do now? One more game played before the national championship game? What's the point?

Is determining a national champion the only goal of college football? If so, then a playoff system is the way to go. If that's not the only goal, then something else (BCS).
 


A playoff system makes each of those games much more meaningful than what we have now. Actually, the only Bowl game that means anything right now is the BCS Championship and the others are just for show when you get right down to it.

The Division 2 and Division 3 have their football playoffs and every other sport has an actual playoff system to determine their champion. D-1 Football at least has the BCS championship which is better than what they had before, but that only works when you have 2 clear cut #1 and #2 teams. There is a great potential that someone is getting screwed over and the team that is sitting at home i.e. Texas or USC this year would have won the whole thing if they would have had the chance.
 

Gold Rush said:
A playoff system makes each of those games much more meaningful than what we have now. Actually, the only Bowl game that means anything right now is the BCS Championship and the others are just for show when you get right down to it.

The Division 2 and Division 3 have their football playoffs and every other sport has an actual playoff system to determine their champion. D-1 Football at least has the BCS championship which is better than what they had before, but that only works when you have 2 clear cut #1 and #2 teams. There is a great potential that someone is getting screwed over and the team that is sitting at home i.e. Texas or USC this year would have won the whole thing if they would have had the chance.
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USC had their chance in their 'playoff' game against Oregon State. They blew it. Texas had a similar chance. Unfortunately, the BCS isn't perfect, but it sure makes the regular season interesting.
 

don't make so much of BCS

since the BB post season tourney was developed, big time NC games get fewer and fewer and so does relative attendance and iterest, coaches schedule for records to get in the post season. A big play off will do the same in football with fewer and fewer NC games and everyone waiting for the BCS to play a big tome game, just lokk at Boise State who plays in a weak conference and will only schedule a good team in the get two return home games for it
 

I think a BCS playoff system would be huge for both attendance as well as TV ratings. I look at how fun March Madness is for college basketball and I think there would be a lot of interest for it.

I get the feeling a decent playoff system will be here eventually, but it will take a few more years
with a few more teams getting hosed before it happens. I bet if Notre Dame got hosed, things would change pretty fast.....maybe that's what will finally do it.
 



idagopher said:
since the BB post season tourney was developed, big time NC games get fewer and fewer and so does relative attendance and iterest, coaches schedule for records to get in the post season. A big play off will do the same in football with fewer and fewer NC games and everyone waiting for the BCS to play a big tome game, just lokk at Boise State who plays in a weak conference and will only schedule a good team in the get two return home games for it
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Actually, I think Boise St. is a good example of what NOT to do under a BCS tournament format. They went undefeated and got shut out of the BCS. They need to improve their strength of schedule and it was that same easy schedule that kept their ranking too low to get in.
 

96 teams

Have 8, 12 team conferences and have the two division winners advance to playoffs. Then use BCS standings for seeding only. That would get you 16 teams in a playoff and on field performance got them there. Teams should play 10 conference games and then have two non-conference games that only count toward BSC rankings for seeding. Rest of teams still go to bowls.
 

16FeetUnder said:
USC had their chance in their 'playoff' game against Oregon State. They blew it. Texas had a similar chance. Unfortunately, the BCS isn't perfect, but it sure makes the regular season interesting.
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You mean USC's playoff was on September 25th. That's a little early, don't you think?

If polls are supposed to be a snapshot of the Football Bowl Subdivision, then USC should be the National Champs.
 

Gold Rush said:
I think a BCS playoff system would be huge for both attendance as well as TV ratings. I look at how fun March Madness is for college basketball and I think there would be a lot of interest for it.

I get the feeling a decent playoff system will be here eventually, but it will take a few more years
with a few more teams getting hosed before it happens. I bet if Notre Dame got hosed, things would change pretty fast.....maybe that's what will finally do it.
Click to expand...


I think the opposite might be true. College ball fans are, by and large, students and alumni in addition to some local diehards. The likelihood that most of them could make more than one bowl trip is very, very low, unless we start holding playoff games in colder climes. March Madness works because you can play several games each week. 8 or 16 team playoffs push the bowl season well into late January and result in 16 games for those teams playing in the MNC game. The bowls become less profitable on an individual basis, fans can't afford to follow their teams through to the end, and that system eventually collapses. The logistics are absolutely impossible to overcome.

In any event, I don't see any circumstance under which the university presidents would agree to a solution beyond the +1, and some (BigTen) would fight even that tooth and nail.

Jmo, but I'd rather see a reversion to the old bowl system based on conference tie-ins. In the end, it really doesn't matter if multiple teams are crowned with the MNC.
 



Contrarian view

I may be all alone in this, but I'd rather scrap the idea of a national championship in football altogether. I don't' think it's practical/feasible. I think it's taken the fun out of bowl season. I really liked the traditional bowl rivalries of the past. The Rose Bowl was the ultimate goal for B10 teams.

The only idea that I've heard that would produce an reasonably undisputed national champion would be some sort of tournament. That idea isn't feasible in my mind for a number of reasons:

- If you use the bowl games as the tournament games, I don't think the money/fans will show up for the early rounds. Fans of a team can't afford to travel to four games in four weeks. I don't think the corporate sponsors will stick with the bowls if people aren't showing up...so the money dries up for the neutral-site "bowl games".

- If one of the playing teams hosts the games, you've got to construct some sort of revenue-sharing plan. Teams that have to travel to their playoff games see a significant increase in their expenses for the year, and the home teams get a big revenue bonus. If not balanced out, this would lead to the rich getting richer as the top teams get more money to plow into their program while the lower teams get have to spend more. This would be complicated, to say the least.

- At the risk of being labeled naive, I also think that this sort of system just makes college sports less college and more professional. I think it's gone too far already. (It's probably too late to reverse this trend...) The players would have even more on their plate, especially the ones on the lower-ranked teams that have to travel more. The additional time commitments and missing class is a distinct disadvantage to maintaining any semblance of student-ness.

- Playing games in northern states throughout December and January could start to impact recruiting for those schools. Now, we can say that we are done playing the weekend before Thanksgiving and that the temperatures are reasonable. Southern recruits very well might take northern schools off their list if they might have to play games into January. If this were to happen, colder-weather schools would be at a competitive disadvantage.
 

I stickin with my original post to have an 8 team playoff system...but if we must keep with tradition and within the bowl system, then the best way is a plus 3 system.

Play the 4 BCS bowls on new years day and jan two. Then the 4 victors enter a playoff. Home games for highest ranked in first round and national champ game at a neutral site that rotates between the 4 BCS bowl sites.

With Nat Champ game played the week before the Superbowl and playoff games played same weekend Thur/Fri night prev week so as to not compete with AFC/NFC Champ games on that weekend.

Big money, home games so travel isn't the biggest issue, tradition and BCS bowls get plus one every fourth year....I would love to see if USC has the legs to win two more and claim the championship...wouldn't you all?
 

I personally find the BCS a perfectly boring and meaningless end to an exciting year. I have no fondness for it what-so-ever. I find it quite rediculous that an argument still exists that doesn't support a playoff system. It's the good ole boy football network trying to protect their money stack and we're the dupes that buy in to the BS. I'm not buying.

A 16 game playoff system involves less teams and spans the same time frame and crowns a true champion. Anything less than that is...well, less than that. If you get more creative and utilize play-in games you can include more teams and/or reduce the overall impact to any team.

The real question isn't whether we should have a playoff system, but how.
 

This is what I would do:

-Scrap the 12th game. If a playoff scenerio is intended, we can't have 12 regular season games or else team could potentially play 16 games.

-Have 8 teams in the playoffs, the 6 BCS conference champions and the top 2 non-BCS conference champions, as decided by the polls or a selection committee. These teams are ranked 1-8 and the quarterfinals are played at the higher ranked team's stadium. These games will be played the week after the conference championship games, and with the 12th game eliminated, this will be about the first week of December. I'm a firm believer that you have to win your conference to win the national championship, but for those who don't the other two teams can be at-large picks.

-Hold the semi-finals around Christmas, right at the start of bowl season. This gives teams a breather after a long season, and avoids their finals.

-Now there are two teams remaining. These teams play in your national championship, and everyone else fills in the bowl schedule. Nothing about bowl season changes at all, except that the teams playing in the NC are chosen by a pre-bowl tournament and not by the BCS. So, schools who didn't win their conference championship will still have their bowl games, and teams who did, but may have lost in the tourney, can still go to the Rose Bowl, or Sugar Bowl, ect. This will keep all the corporate sponsors happy and increase interest in the NC game, as well as having a few profitable tournament games in early December.
 


Easy, have all major conferences declare a champ per their rules (playoff or season title), and place them in a bracket per regional match-ups:

West
USC (Pac10) vs Penn St (Big Ten) - Rose Bowl
Utah (Non-BCS West) vs Oklahoma (Big 12) - Fiesta Bowl

East
Virginia Tech (ACC) vs Cincinnati (Big East) - Orange Bowl
Ball St/Boise St (Non-BCS East) vs Florida (SEC) - Sugar Bowl

Then just have a final four at a predetermined facility, same as hockey, basketball, etc. This year would've been USC, Oklahoma, Virginia Tech, and Florida -- most likely. That's a good final four, and that gives teams like Utah a chance to prove themselves.
 

Here is a hybrid idea I have come up with:
-The NCAA college football season would be played in its entirety, the same way it works now.
-The conference champions of the Big East, Big 10, ACC, SEC, Big 12, and Pac 10 would receive automatic bids into an eight-team tournament. This would leave two open spots for non-BCS teams and another at-large bid.
-Seeding for the tournament would be done by a computer system that is similar to the current BCS system.
-The quarterfinal and semi-final rounds of the national tournament would be completed in the month of December.
-In order to satisfy each of the BCS bowl associations, there would be a four year rotation. The national championship would be played as the Sugar Bowl the first year, Orange Bowl the next, and so on.
-After the final two teams are determined, the six eliminated teams would be assigned to a current BCS bowl game (Sugar, Orange, Rose, and Fiesta) along with another national tournament competitor.
-All of the other non BCS bowl games, such as the Insight bowl, would be played during the month of December.
-The only games that would be played on January first would be the non-national championship BCS bowl games.
-The national championship game would then be played as the last game of the season. Currently, there are some bowl games that are played after the national championship game. That is just wrong.

I feel that my plan would satisfy both sides of the national championship argument. The programs would be able to participate in bowl games and receive the high payouts they have been enjoying throughout the existence of the bowl system.
 

16FeetUnder said:
USC had their chance in their 'playoff' game against Oregon State. They blew it. Texas had a similar chance. Unfortunately, the BCS isn't perfect, but it sure makes the regular season interesting.
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This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. USC and Texas both lost thier 'playoff' games and they blew it? So, why is it that Florida and Oklahoma get to play in a double elimination bracket and Texas and USC play in a single elimination bracket. Oklahoma had their playoff game vs. Texas, how did that work out? Florida had their playoff game vs. Ole Miss.

I dont understand how you justify some teams play in double elimination and some teams play in single elimination tournaments.
 

I agree..with no playoff....every game is ACTUALLY critically important.

16FeetUnder said:
USC had their chance in their 'playoff' game against Oregon State. They blew it. Texas had a similar chance. Unfortunately, the BCS isn't perfect, but it sure makes the regular season interesting.
Click to expand...

I like that USC, Okl, Texas...teams that lose during the regular season have a reduced (not eliminated) chance of the national title. Perfection is highly highly valued. I like that. With a 8 or 16 team playoff....messing up during the regular season doesn't matter.

I would vote Utah the champ. They won all of their games and beat Alabama by a much easier margin than FL did. I know there are reasonable arguements against that logic..there are reasonable ones in favor of it too. Unless they play how would we know. (I know that is an arguement for a playoff).

I'd also be OK with the proposed method that MNBoiler is talking about. That is more realistic than an actual playoff. Forces everyone to play 13 games and then the 14th for 2 teams is the title game.

GM
 

The BCS is an absolute joke. The only way to determine a true champion is on the field of play using a play off format. D1 CFB must be the only sport not to have a playoff.

I would prefer an 8 team system with semifinal games being New Years bowl games over the current BCS format.
 

The BCS is bogus.

An 8 team playoff is definitely the way to go. Eliminate the conference championship games for those conferences that have them if they are concerned about too many games.

Continue the other 25+ bowl games as exhibitions as they are now for the non-playoff teams.
 

gophermartin said:
With a 8 or 16 team playoff....messing up during the regular season doesn't matter.
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Will someone please explain this to me? I keep hearing this all the time, how a playoff will make the regular season "not as important." How so? That is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard. Most years, you would still need to have 0 or 1 losses (at most ever, 2) to get into a proposed playoff. How is the importance of the regular season diminished? It's not like Oklahoma could go 8-4 and still get into a playoff.

Bob Stoops, preseason speech:

"Well guys, we've already been granted our automatic bye into the national playoffs, so we don't have to try the entire regular season. 3-9? 5-7? Doesn't matter. After all, as every one says, the regular season doesn't count any more."

Ridiculous.
 

I favor a 8 team playoff. 4 is too few to cover all the contenders with a serious claim that they are good enough to be considered. I would scrap the status of "BCS Conference". My tournament would have the top-8 conference champions. Using the current Sagarin Rankings, we would have

#1 Florida vs #8 WV
#2 USC vs. #7 Florida State
#3 OK vs. #4 Boise State
#4 Utah vs. #5 Penn State

Ideally, I would have the opening round at the home field site. This would have to involve the regular season coming to an end without dragging on well into December. Then I would play the opening round the weekend after the regular season starts, so the cold isn't too much of a factor.

This would, of course, leave Notre Dame left out. I'd be fine with that, they can join a conference. But if they are able to force the issue, we could have one or perhaps two at-large spots.

A 10 or 12 team tournament is also possible without getting too many teams. But it would extend the playoffs a week longer, which would make it difficult to have games at home field sites.

I do think it is possible to have a tournament while still preserving the importance of the regular season and conference championships.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Will someone please explain this to me? I keep hearing this all the time, how a playoff will make the regular season "not as important." How so? That is one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard. Most years, you would still need to have 0 or 1 losses (at most ever, 2) to get into a proposed playoff. How is the importance of the regular season diminished? It's not like Oklahoma could go 8-4 and still get into a playoff.

Bob Stoops, preseason speech:

"Well guys, we've already been granted our automatic bye into the national playoffs, so we don't have to try the entire regular season. 3-9? 5-7? Doesn't matter. After all, as every one says, the regular season doesn't count any more."

Ridiculous.
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I agree. To me it makes it even more important. More teams will have a shot at a chance to win the national championship Even if they lose one or two games, they still have a shot. More teams are involved in being "a bubble team" than there is now. The way it is now, there are only a few teams who have a realistic chance in the last few weeks of the season of making it to the NC.
 

GophersInIowa said:
I agree. To me it makes it even more important. More teams will have a shot at a chance to win the national championship Even if they lose one or two games, they still have a shot. More teams are involved in being "a bubble team" than there is now. The way it is now, there are only a few teams who have a realistic chance in the last few weeks of the season of making it to the NC.
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The only thing that I would possibly worry about as you see in the NFL ocassionally is a college team resting their stars the last game of the season if they feel they are already a lock for the playoff.
 

Fix it? it worked just fine this year. I don't care about a national champ playoff, but I do wish the big ten changed the preseason and just scheduled every big ten team to play each team every year. We never have a true big ten champ in FB.
 

GoBigGold said:
Fix it? it worked just fine this year. I don't care about a national champ playoff, but I do wish the big ten changed the preseason and just scheduled every big ten team to play each team every year. We never have a true big ten champ in FB.
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How do you figure? I think Utah, Texas and USC would all disagree with your "worked just fine" assessment. And how do you surmise that the Big Ten champ must play all other Big Ten teams to be considered the "true" champ, and yet you're okay with arbitrarily choosing the national champ from a field of teams that have vastly different schedules, and almost never get to actually settle the issue on the field? Please explain.
 

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