BCS Bracket Final Draft

2007 - 2008 BCS Bracket Final Draft
If you read my earlier column you know where I stand on the BCS and how terribly this system works out. In today's NCAA college football everyone can make a valid point for a lot of teams, LSU undefeated in regulation play (0-2 in OT) Hawaii undefeated the entire season (against subpar opponents), Ohio State 11-1 (Beat Akron, Youngstown State, and Kent State to name a few), Oklahoma beat Nat'l Champ contender in the Big XII championship (lost to Colorado and Texas Tech) and the list goes on and on. Everyone from Ohio State to Illinois have an arguement for why they should be in the BCS game, even though Illinois' "we beat Ohio State" claim isn't all that much to stand on. So how about we let them all play for a chance to play the championship rather than just talk about it. You can even keep the tradition of the Bowl Games and the tourism revenue it brings in to these cities.

Take a key from the NCAA for how to conduct a playoff. They've been doing it right in all other sports but D-1 football forever. How about a 16 team playoff. Here's how it breaks down according to the guidelines I set up last week.

ROUND 1:
# 16 Clemson vs. #1 Ohio State in the Sun Bowl
# 15 BYU vs. #2 LSU in the Insight.com Bowl
# 14 Boston College vs. # 3 Oklahoma in the Music City Bowl
# 13 Illinois vs. # 4 Georgia in the Outback Bowl
# 12 Arizona State vs. # 5 Virginia Tech in the Las Vegas Bowl
# 11 West Virginia vs. #6 USC in the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl
# 10 Hawai'i vs. # 7 Missouri in the Motor City Bowl
# 9 Florida vs. # 8 Kansas Holiday Bowl

Round 2:
Winner of Sun vs. Winner of Holiday in the Cotton Bowl
Winner of Insight.com vs. Winner of Motor City in the Capital One Bowl
Winner of Music City vs. Winner of Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl in the Gator Bowl
Winner of Outback vs. Winner of Las Vegas in the Orange Bowl

Of course here is where is gets a little tricky with handing out the 4 major bowls. The only real option that I see is to pick 3 of the 4 BCS bowls, for the purpose of this bracket we're gonna go with the Fiesta, Rose, and Sugar, to be the 3 big games and have a rotation between them every 3 years for the Nat'l Championship game.

Round 3:
Winner of Cotton vs. Winner of Orange in the Fiesta Bowl
Winner of Capital One vs. Winner of Gator in the Rose Bowl

Nat'l Championship:
Winner of Fiesta vs. Winner of Rose in the Sugar

Now obviously there would still need to be some tinkering to do, like choosing which bowls remain in the playoff system and get which teams in the lower round of the playoffs (which would be decided before the season began, preferrably years before if possible). And if people would be afraid of possible home games in the early rounds then Safeguards can be put in place.Who wouldn't want to have a unified decision on a National Champion. Who wouldn't want to say we won and we proved we deserved it. Who wouldn't want their championship to be untarnished by debate. Who doesn't want to see Hawai'i vs. Mizzou, or WV vs. USC, or Kansas vs. Florida in the first round. Not to mention 15 more GREAT games in the post season. Now yes this would make the season last a little bit longer but teams could cut out a game and if all the teams finished say the last weekend in November (this year that would have been the 24th), Sunday (25th) the brackets are set. They get two weeks to figure out where they're going and the playoffs start the 2nd weekend in December (the 7th/8th) continue through (14th/15th for round 2 and 21st/22nd for round 3) and then get over a week off and play the National Championship game on Mon,Tues,Wed, whatever the following week (which would put it somewhere in the neighborhood of the 2nd of January). Or you could give them an extra week off before round 3 also pushing the National Championship to the 8th/9th.

I don't know, Just a thought.