Ohio State vs USC, LSU vs Oklahoma, Virginia Tech vs Georgia, West Virginia vs Hawaii or Kansas. Who wouldn't want to watch THESE bowl games and then decide a National Champion on the field?
If these were the match-ups, then try to convince me that television ratings for these bowls wouldn't go through the roof. I would get carpel-tunnel from clicking back and forth on my remote so often to try to catch them all.
If one of the college presidents are concerned that adding an additional two games to their team's schedule in order to claim a national title is too much, he can withdraw their name from the Tournament and someone else can be chosen to take their place in the Championship game (yeah, right?!?)
This plan is fair to everyone and makes perfect sense...which, of course, is why it will be totally ignored by those making decisions about such things. AFTER READING...LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK.
What this would accomplish: 1. The bowls still retain their history and as well as regain classic matchups (Big Ten vs Pac 10 in the Rose , etc) 2. The Bowls become even more pertinent because each of them has two teams with a legitimate National Title shot playing each other. 3. The smaller conferences have a chance to get in the mix if a bowl committee thinks that they deserve a shot. 4. Makes winning your conference really mean something. 5. Keeps teams like Hawaii this year or Auburn a couple of years ago from being robbed of a chance to claim the title. 6. Takes away the advantage from those not having to play a conference championship game. They still have to play their way in. 7. The eventual National Champion is decided ON THE FIELD!
An explanation of the team selection for the Bowls:
ROSE BOWL - The Rose Bowl will play either the Big Ten winner or the Independent 2nd pick vs the Pac 10 winner or Sunbelt winner. The classic match-up on Jan 1st as it should be. This year would be Ohio State (11-1) vs USC (10-2)
SUGAR BOWL - The Sugar Bowl will pit either the winner of the SEC or the ACC pick #2 vs the winner of the Big 12 or the winner of the Mid-America conference. Another classic match-up as it should be. This year would be LSU (11-2) vs Oklahoma (11-2)
ORANGE BOWL - It will get either the winner of the ACC or the Big Ten pick #2 vs the first pick from the Independent teams, the winner of the Mountain West, or the second pick from the SEC. This pays homage to the fact that Miami Univ has been both Independent and in the ACC. It allows for a possible classic Miami vs Notre Dame matchup if either of them can get their programs in gear again. This year would be Virginia Tech (11-1) vs Georgia (10-2)
FIESTA BOWL The Fiesta Bowl will get the either the Big East winner or Conf USA winner vs the winner of the WAC winner, pick # 2 from the Pac 10, pick #2 from the Big 12. This year would be West Virginia (10-2) vs Hawaii (12-0) or Kansas (11-1)
**A few additional rules (or few hundred, after administrators get ahold of it) will be needed. One would be that if ANY Bowl fails to choose the winner of a conference in lieu of another team, ANY of the other Bowls may invite them to replace any other selection. ------
THE CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT The winners of these four bowls will be seeded 1-4. How they are seeded doesn't matter, but if this were to happen then it would be debated. So, to throw the BCS guys a bone, we will use their computer model to seed the four remaining teams. Play 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3.
The winners of these games play for the NATIONALCHAMPIONSHIP!
See, I told you that it made sense.
Here is a summary of how it would look:
Rose Bowl: Big Ten - #1 / Ind #2 Pac 10 - #1 / Sunbelt #1 Ohio State (11-1) vs USC (10-2)
Sugar Bowl: SEC- #1 / ACC #2 Big 12 - #1 / Mid-America #1 LSU (11-2) vs Oklahoma (11-2)
Orange Bowl: ACC - #1 / Big Ten #2 Ind #1 / Mountain West #1 / SEC #2 Virginia Tech (11-1) vs Georgia (10-2)
Fiesta Bowl: Big East - #1 / Conf USA #1 WAC #1 / Pac 10 #2 / Big 12 #2 West Virginia (10-2) vs Hawaii (12-0) or Kansas (11-1)
National Championship Tournament: Seed the winners of the four bowls: Seed #1 vs. Seed #4 Seed #2 vs. Seed #3
This would also allow the Heisman voters to decide the winner after the Jan 1st Bowl games without the fear of tainting their vote towards someone whose team won the National Title.
Orange Bowl
Ohio State (10-2) vs Notre Dame (9-2) or Texas Christian (10-1) or Texas Tech (9-2)
*Anyone thinks that a Bowl selection comittee wouldn't chose Notre Dame over the other two needs therapy
Fiesta Bowl
West Virginia (10-1) vs Boise State (9-3) or UCLA (9-2)
I enjoyed the old bowl pairings pre-BCS and even with a little controversy I think that system worked better.
The only thing we're going to get is a "+1" as opposed to your suggestion of what amounts to a "+3". They will take the top 2 teams after all the bowls have played out to settle the national title.
I have yet to hear exactly how this will work. Will they go back to the old bowl system, then go with the top 2 ranked BCS teams following an additional poll? I'm not sure, but any additional games would be great.
I do agree with you that a playoff is needed but why not simplify instead of putting this conference in this bowl and this one in the other why don't we just break it down like the sweet 16. you know 1 vs 16 and 2 vs.15 and so on. I think that all the teams around the country should drop all their non-conference games, play eight conference games plus a conference championship game and then go into a 16 team playoff. That way you still get all your BCS games plus you create a new BCS championship game. They still would play the same amount of games with the exception of the final two.Personally for me I don't care if you win your conference I don't think it should determine whether or not you can win a national title but I do think you should at least have to play one OHIO STATE not just skate in every year if you beat Michigan. A playoff is the only way to put it to rest.
THECOVER2
If you go with your solution, then you will kill the bowls, many of which have been played for over 100 years...this won't happen. Also, it would kill the money that the sponsors pay for the bowls...also something they won't let happen.
If you kill the non-conf games, there go some of the most compelling rivalries in the country as well as any chance for a team from a smaller conference ever making it in.
I don't want to make 1A like 1AA...just want to take the power of deciding who is and who isn't a national champion out of the hands of the sportswriters and put it in the hands of the teams on the field.
Last edited by dashman68 on December 6th at 11:41 AM.
I AGREE WITH YOU TO A CERTAIN EXTENT BUT UNTIL YOU PUT A WIDE SPREAD AMOUNT OF TEAMS IN IT YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE CONTROVERSY OF WHO BELONGS AND WHO DOESN'T. IF YOU ASK ME ONE OF THE BIGGEST THINGS WRONG WITH COLLEGE FOOTBALL ARE THE PRE-SEASON RANKINGS I WISH NO WAS RANKED UNTIL THE BCS RANKING COME OUT WEEK 6. THAT WOULD AVOID THE HYPE OF WHO THE BEST TEAMS ARE AND THEN YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT A TEAM ARGUING WHO THEY BEAT IN THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR AND WHAT POSITION THEY WERE RANKED. THEY SHOULD DO STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE AFTER THE BCS RANKINGS COME OUT AND EVERYTHING HAS PLANED ITSELF OUT. NOW I WASN'T SAYING GET RID OF ALL THE NON-BCS BOWL GAMES BUT WITH A LARGE PLAYOFF SYSTEM YOU CAN START TO MIX UP THE BCS BOWL GAMES. I KNOW THERE'S A LOT OF HISTORY WITH CERTAIN BOWLS BUT I WOULDN'T MIND SEEING THE BIG TEN COME TO THE SUGAR BOWL AND THE SEC GOING TO THE ROSE BOWL ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE'S SO MUCH TALK ABOUT WHICH CONFERENCE IS THE TOUGHEST. TRADITION IS WHAT MAKES COLLEGE FOOTBALL GREAT BUT IT'S ALSO WHAT'S KEEPING IT FROM MOVING FORWARD AND WE AS THE FANS SPEND EVERY YEAR TALKING ABOUT CHANGE.
Last edited by THECOVER2 on December 6th at 12:52 PM.
TheCover2
First...turn off your caps lock. It's annoying and makes it hard to read. Now...
With my solution you would see a mixing of the conferences. They would have to play each other in either a Semi-final or Final game in order to claim a National title.
I want the BCS gone entirely...it's useless. How often are the BCS rankings much different from the polls? Not very often, huh? So why screw with it at all.
Pre-season rankings will not matter at all. The teams have to earn their spot after a full year of play.
The BCS changing the perinnial bowl match-ups is exactly what has been ruining them for the last decade. Tradition is not always a bad thing.
No big playoff is needed. Top 8 teams...that's all. That will cover every undefeated team and all of the 1-loss teams. In years like this one, even includes five 2-loss teams. That's enough. No controversy...undefeated and one-loss teams deserve a shot and anyone else has been handed a gift.
If it's 16 teams - 3 and 4-loss teams will be vying for the title. I don't want to see that. This year that would include Florida, Illinois, Boston College, Clemson and Tennessee. I am a UT fan, but none of these deserve a shot.
Everyone wins here. Traditionalists get to keep their system and those favoring a playoff get what they want too.
Last edited by dashman68 on December 7th at 1:37 AM.
BCS, who are they, ESPN wanted LSU and OHIO STATE and that what happen. All division one shcools divide into eight conferences, all have a conference championship, the eight champions are then paired in the top six bowl games, leaving the last two bowls for the play off to work. It's simple, everyone makes money. Limit the teams to 10 regular season games, most teams will end up playing 11 games leaving the rest of the bowls in place. And I don't have a college degree.
dashman68 - Great idea! Great post! I too like the tradition of the bowls (the old ones anyway, not these krispykreme.com bowls) but can't stand the BCS as it currently is (if all it is for is to pit #1 vs #2, then why have the other 4 games?).
rjm2179
Thank you for your kind comments. They did originally say that it was to pit #1 vs #2. So I agree...why screw with any of the bowls since they have the NC game on Jan 7th.
mattp908
I like your thinking...only I think 119 teams are too many for 8 conferences. Each would have 15 teams and one 14 teams.
ACC - 15 Pick-up Western Kentucky, Florida Atlantic and Florida International
Big 15 - 15 (Formerly Big 12) Pick-up North Texas, Utah and Idaho
Conf USA - 15 Pick up San Jose State, Utah State and New Mexico State
MidAmerica - 15 Pick up Troy, Louisiana-Monroe and LA Tech
SEC - 15 Pick up Louisiana-Lafayette, MTSU and Arkansas State
Big 10 - 15 (why change tradition - they have 11 now) pick up Notre Dame, and the three Service Academies.
PAC 15 - 14 Pick up Hawaii, Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada
Big America - 15 Formerly Big East Now there would be an East division with the current 8 teams and a West with the current Mountain West minus Air Force.
Gone would be the Mountain West, WAC and Sunbelt and the Independents.
After looking at it, I think it would water-down the conferences and kill several football programs at smaller school keeping them from EVER having a winning season.
Also greed comes into play. More teams in conference = smaller piece of the pie for the big schools.
I agree with parts of your system and disagree with other parts. My biggest question is how would the Mid-Majors #1 get invited over a traditional powerhouse #1 or #2? I agree with your stance on non-conference games and a lot of rivalries being eliminated if you cut out non-conference games, but something has to be done about padding your schedule with cupcake teams. And yes the BCS needs to be done away with, especially pre-season rankings. I disagree with allowing only a few teams in, because I for one would like to see more teams battle it out. Do I think you need 65 like March Madness, no. That is overkill.
RollinOnDubs
If you let more teams in, you risk making the regular season irrelevant and then winning your conference means nothing. Cupcake games won't matter anymore...if you didn't beat those in your own conference, you chances are slim of getting in regardless of your record. Rankings in the polls wouldn't matter AT ALL in this system.
Think of March Madness in college basketball. No matter how many you let in the Tourney, the ones on the bubble are gonna cry that they deserve a shot too. Same here. Right now we only have two teams playing for the Championship...this plan multiplies that by 4.
This isn't like basketball...you can't go adding 4 or 5 extra games to the season. I also don't think that 3 and 4 loss teams deserve a shot at the title. If you took the top 16 teams right now - that means Tennessee (who I am a fan of) would be in the NC mix. They don't deserve that shot this year.
Mid-majors are never gonna have the same chance of everyone else because of the lower level of competition they play. This system gives them at least a better chance than they have now. If a truly deserving team like an undefeated Hawaii this year come up, the bowl selection committee can choose them.
It's never gonna be perfect. This is just the best idea I have for it.
Last edited by dashman68 on December 7th at 8:12 AM.
Here is my problem, we all know that 98% of the time the bowls are going to opt for the BCS conference team over a non-BCS conference team. If we are trying to determine a national champion why are we giving teams a second shot. I feel that a #2 of a conference can never be the #1 in the country. Re-allign conferences and kick out perennial losers out of Div. 1 then have a pure Conference Champions only tournament. Be it 8 or 16 teams, I don't care but let all teams have a shot from the start.
I hear ya. ...but kick who out exactly? ...and who gets to decide that? ...and who is gonna set aside millions of dollars for the legal fund to handle all of the lawsuits?
There are a set of criteria that a school has to meet and amount of money they have to be willing to part with each year in order to be a Div 1A school. Many of these small schools have worked long and hard for the right to be there. I don't like the idea of taking that away from anyone.
I still think that 8 teams is enough to capture everyone that has a legitimate beef to play for the NC (as well as a few that don't...but we need them to play the games). Make it through the gauntlet of the 8 best teams in the country after the regular season and I believe that earns you the National Championship.
