In the last post, I looked at the schedule for how I would fix college football. Now on to crown a National Champion and the post season.
After week 14 8 Region Champions will be crowned, setting up what will be the 8 team National Championship Tournament. An Elite 8 if you want to call it that and copy from March Madness. Using an RPI type system to rank the schools will be placed into an 8 team bracket with the top 4 seeds hosting the lower 4 on home campuses. These would take place 2 weeks after week 14. Winners then move on to the Semifinals. Where I would make changes from what is currently set up, is that the semifinals are ALWAYS the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl.
I know the other bowls would throw a tizzy, and maybe a few have a right too, but there is no greater setting in college football than the Rose Bowl at sunset on New Year’s Day. I love the Big Ten/Pac 12 tradition there, but we are moving the sport on to the next century. The Sugar Bowl then follows the Rose with the other semifinal on New Year’s Day. Similar to what is in the CFP, as teams move on, the higher seed would get the selection of which semifinal they would prefer to play in.
Below is an example of what a playoff from this year could've looked like.
A champion then is crowned. But what about the other schools and some of the bowl traditions? Not forgetting you in the setup. With 13 regular season games, there will be no .500 teams, 7-6 is bowl eligible, 6-7 is not. But with 80 schools and 8 already gone to the playoffs, there is not a need for all those bowls. 19 Bowl games for the top 36 schools.
Bowls now are already struggling to pack people in, and the playoff is taking a lot of the luster off. Look at the Sugar Bowl this past season with Baylor and Georgia. The top half of the Super Dome was empty. This is a New Years 6 game! And with the creation of so many games and the attempt to sell them to major conferences, the match-ups are becoming nothing to write home about. So we are eliminating bowls and only 36 teams available.
The selection changes too. No more politicking back stage and all the wooing and reps with this many fans. The process will be something akin to a fantasy football draft. Bowls will be ticketed off into half tiers, with the more prestigious ones get the first pick. From the same similar RPI ranking, the bowls will be given a pool of schools to select from. As schools are picked, another will take its place.
The Bowls, in their respective tiers, I would keep are the following.
Tier 1 : Cotton, Peach, Fiesta, Orange, Citrus, Outback
Tier 2 : Las Vegas, Alamo, Holiday, Gator, Insight/Cheez-It, Music City, Belk/Charlotte
Tier 3 : Sun, Camping World, Houston, Wash DC/Military, San Fran/RedBox, Pinstripe
An example of the Bowl Draft would be :
Pick 1-Cotton, Pick 2-Peach, Pick 3- Fiesta, Pick 4-Cotton, Pick 5-Peach, Pick 6-Fiesta
Pick 7- Orange, Pick 8- Citrus, Pick 9- Outback, Pick 10- Orange, Pick 11- Citrus, Pick 12- Outback
I would also televise this live. Again, no back room deals. The bowls wouldn’t see the final rankings till the start of the selection process, and they would get 2 minutes to make their choice.
After each half tier would be done selecting, a ten minute “trade” time frame would be allowed, with a bowl looking to trade, would be moved back in selection process the following year. This would be TV GOLD.
Bowls then would be played from Dec 26 – Jan 1. On Jan 1, the semifinals would be joined by 2 of the tier 1 games and a tier 2 game.
Post season is enhanced, adds some new flavor to it than just the bowl tie-ins and match-ups are better for the fans.
The remaining group of 50 then could fill out the other bowl games, and or create their own FCS type playoff.
2021 would look something like this likely
ReplyDelete1 - Bama vs 8 - Army
4 - Clemson vs 5 - Oklahoma
3 - Ohio State vs 6 - USC
2 - Notre Dame vs 7 - Boise State