It’s time to look at the end of the college football season as we move into November.  In case you didn’t notice yet, Saturday’s games are in November so the season is going to be over soon.

If you’ve listened to me for the last two years, you know how bad I hate the fact there’s no college football playoff.  What really gets to me are the excuses.  Every bowl suit is full of it when they try to explain how a playoff isn’t feasible.

There’s only one reason you can give me that I can’t blow out of the water.  If you say, “I like the bowl system because it’s unique to college football and since all those kids are basically paying for almost every other sport at their university, they should get some kind of benefit at the end of the year.”

If that’s your reason, I disagree with you but at least you’re bringing knowledge and opinion that’s not intertwined with flawed logic.  If you think you can come up with a logical reason that makes a CFB playoff impossible, feel free to give it a shot at doug@ktar.com.

Now, if you’re going to have a playoff, the question becomes how would it work.  I know the school presidents would never accept my proposal but I think mine is the best because it gives plenty of opportunity for the powers to stay on top but it can re-create the magic of March Madness.  It takes me about three days to put the playoff together because I use the BCS formula.  The formula isn’t designed to rank 120 teams however, so I have to tweak it.  I have no problem with the BCS formula itself, I just think it’s wrong in the application—using it to cut 120 teams down to two.

The first thing you have to do is rank all 120 teams using the BCS—from Texas to North Texas.  Every team is important because I take the average rank of your conference to determine if your conference gets one of the 8 automatic bids for your conference champion.  Then I take the top 8 teams who aren’t conference champions.  I love this system because if your conference wants to play a joke schedule or you don’t win some big games outside your conference, your whole conference struggles.

A great example of this is Ball St.  Right now Ball State is not in the play-off.  The MAC is the 9th best conference so their champion doesn’t get an invite and Ball State is not one of the top 8 teams who aren’t already in as conference champions (conference champions are undefeated teams in their conference with a higher BCS ranking for the purposes of an October look at the playoff).  More interesting is the dropped punt by Ohio that cost them their upset bid of Ohio State.  If the Bobcats don’t fumble that punt, they beat Ohio State and the MAC would pass the WAC as the 8th best conference.

After I come up with the 16 teams, I rank them according to their BCS rank.  Therefore, even though Oklahoma is not a “conference champion” they’re still ranked 4th.  The higher seed hosts the first two rounds of the playoff.  I say screw the Rose Bowl.  Since they don’t want to play ball, ignore them.  The Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta host the semi’s and finals.  I’ll be a homer and say the semi’s are at the Sugar and Orange and the Fiesta hosts the national championship.
Right now we have a couple regular season re-matches in the 4/13 game and the 5/12 game.  There’s lots of history in the 2/15 game with Bobby Bowden’s dream job against his current one.

Here’s the first round pairings:

(16) West Virginia @ (1) Texas
(15) Florida State @ (2) Alabama
(14) Mizzou @ (3) Penn State
(13) TCU @ (4) Oklahoma
(12) Ohio State @ (5) USC
(11) Boise State @ (6) Georgia
(10) Utah @ (7) Texas Tech
(9) Oklahoma State @ (8) Florida

If the seeds hold—which you know they won’t—check out how incredible week 2 would be for a college football playoff!

(8) Florida @ (1) Texas
(7) Texas Tech @ (2) Alabama
(6) Georgia @ (3) Penn State
(5) USC @ (4) Oklahoma

Now compare the Sugar and Orange Bowl last year to what I’m bringing to the table.  Texas and Oklahoma meet in the Sugar Bowl and Alabama and Penn State go to the Orange Bowl.

This is so much better than what we have now.  Give me two weeks and we’ll see how things have changed.