How about a major rivalry in the toughest division in college football to open the Doug Franz College Football Playoff?

At the end of every week, I’m going to do two things regarding a college football playoff: explain the fallacy of those who are against it and give you how the top 16 breaks out.

Let’s go with reason number three from the BCS honks:  The fans won’t trek all over the country following a playoff team.

A)  You’re wrong.  As popular as college football is, you’re crazy to think fans won’t travel.  Let me give you an example:  Georgia @ ASU.  Have you seen the attendance figures for ASU this year?  Then go to the games and tell me where all the people are.  I’ll tell you where they are, in Georgia.  ASU season tickets are so inexpensive that it was cheaper for UGa fan to fly to PHX, get a hotel and go to the game than it is for them to buy tickets to a regular Georgia game.  If travel was such a nightmare, why did they do it?

B)  In my playoff, the first two rounds are at the home to the higher seed so 50% of the teams aren’t traveling.  The road team will be guaranteed 8% of all tickets to sell to their fans.  Any tickets not sold by Thursday morning will be returned to the home school to sell.  You will sellout every game, unless, of course, Georgia fans are willing to travel to ASU for a regular season game but aren’t willing to go to Los Angeles to see USC vUGa in a playoff game.

In previous blogs, I would explain the playoff and then give it to you.  I’ll give you my explanation at the end this time so if you don’t know how it works and you’re interested you can keep reading.  If you want to discuss anything with me, my e-mail’s always open doug@ktar.com.  If you want to just post your feelings for all to see, feel free to write a post on the blog.

Here’s the week 5 DFCFP:

16) Miami              @           1) Alabama  
15) Cincinnati     @           2) Texas Tech
14) BYU                  @           3) Texas     
13) Missouri         @           4) Florida      
12) OKla. St          @           5) Oklahoma  
11) Georgia           @           6) USC          
10) Ohio State      @           7) Utah           
9) Boise St.            @           8 ) Penn St.    

There are so many story lines starting with the game in Norman.  Imagine the hype if the season ended and those two programs got lined up to play.  Look at Georgia traveling out west twice in the same season.  Could Utah fans really keep Ohio State fans out of their own stadium when they see the prices Buckeye fans will pay to get in?  Boise State is only 4 hundredths of a point from forcing big, bad Penn State from having to play on the blue turf—in December.

If we assume the higher seeds win, week 2 is just scary.

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

Florida and Alabama would then go to the Orange Bowl and Texas Tech/Texas would play in the Sugar with the winners meeting in the Fiesta Bowl.

The things to look for this week that will affect the DFCFP is obviously Oklahoma/Texas Tech as the winner gets home field in the second round.  If Michigan State wins against Penn State, the Lions would still make the playoff but BYU would get knocked out as a wild card.  Ball State also has its two toughest games of the schedule left.  If they win out and win the MAC Championship game, the conference average would go above the WAC.  Boise State is strong enough they’d still make the playoff but as a wild card they would knock out BYU—or Mizzou if Michigan State won.  Yes, I’m actually figuring out tie-breakers to a made-up playoff.

Here’s the DFCFP explanation:

My playoff uses the BCS formula.  I like the formula, I just think it’s wrong to use it to bring us down to 2 teams.  I use the formula to rank all 120 teams and then rank the conferences 1-11 based on the average BCS position of all the teams in the conference.  Once the conferences are ranked, only the top 8 conferences receive an automatic bid.

I don’t see a reason to justify the Sun Belt in division 1 (FBS if you want to be PC) so why should they get a spot at the table?  I think if you open the playoff to champions of each conference, you’ll have many more teams jump to I-A football just to start a conference in order to get into the dance.

I love my system because of the way it penalizes horrible teams in the conference.  Imagine how shocked the PAC-10 would be if it didn’t make the cut of one of the top 8 conferences.  Well, they’re 7th.  The reason why they’re so low is because of the dead weight at the bottom of the conference (Wazzu and UW).  The rivalries between conferences would develop because every single game would determine whether or not your champion makes the playoff.

This week the conference rankings didn’t change.  The number next to the logo is the average rank of every team in the conference.

36.67

41.75

41.92

47.73

48.88

56.33

60.2

71.89

79.15