A Final Solution ... for the BCS

Why is it so difficult to concoct a playoff format that suits all the major conferences as well as the sponsors of the bowl games? Yuh wanna know why?

Money. Money, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, is both the solution and the cause of all life's problems. Still, I have a half-baked scheme that would solve the problem once and for all, if it weren't for the damned Fiesta Bowl.

Here are the fundamentals:

1. The NCAA decrees that BCS eligible teams play an eleven game regular season.

2. At the end of that season, the top sixteen BCS teams (a/t the evil computer) are seeded into a playoff bracket, the first round of which is played on the final weekend in November.

3. The second round is played on the first weekend in December, when the conference championship games usually take place.

4. The semifinals take place on New Year's Day, college football's traditional day of Tradition. The two semifinals, along with the finals, rotate between the three big bowl sites (Rose, Sugar, and Orange). The Fiesta Bowl is the forerunner of the modern BCS, a made-up garbage bowl trying to cash in on the New Year's festivities...so it's out. The sponsor (Tostitos?) will complain to holy hell but I think the complaints of a tortilla chip company pale in comparison to the money that could be made from advertising during the round of 8 or, even, 16.

5. The finals are staged 5-8 days after New Year's.

So here are some pros and cons, in list format...

The Good...

1. We get to keep most of the meaningful bowls. For example, if the Big 10 is really hung up on having their conference champion play the Pac-10 champion, then that matchup can either be arranged directly or the bracket can be seeded in such a way so that two teams would meet if both win their first games. Same goes for the Orange Bowl, or having the SEC champion play in the Sugar Bowl.

2. More money. A legitimate NCAA quarterfinal would take place on the first weekend in December, a 12 hour-long football marathon (east coast games follwed by midwestern and west coast games) that would enthrall pretty much anybody that likes football. On top of that, there's quarterfinal the previous week, which would mean two games taking place simultaneously on a holiday weekend...24 hours of winner-take-all football while we fans get to sit around and scarf down leftover turkey sandwiches. The advertising revenue from those two weekends alone would probably dwarf all the current bowls combined, minus the title game...

... 3. and then money, again. 6 good hours of football on New Year's day, followed by the title game. No cheeseball matchups, just straight-up competition for a national championship.

4. If the rinky-dink bowls would be upset about losing their lot ("but nobody would visit Detroit to see the GMAC Motor City Bowl?!?!?!?!?), they can still play themselves out. In other words, nothing about the proposed format prevents the 8th-place team in the Big 10 from putting their glorious 6-6 record on the line against the MAC champion, for the greater benefit of the drunkards, unemployables, and morosely obsessed fans that are watching ESPN3 on Christmas Eve. Well, the only thing that would prevent it is the MAC champion going undefeated and forcing their way into a truly legitimate shot at the true national title. And it's not like the second-best team in the MAC would turn down a bid to a bowl game of any sort. So all the meaningless bowl games can still take place.

The Bad...

1. The conferences may lose some money, at least on face. Under the proposed tournament structure, the conference title games are eliminated so the guaranteed revenue from those games is lost. While a distribution of revenue based on "traditional" match-ups could hedge or even outweigh potential losses (i.e., the SEC gets a bigger share of the pot if two of their teams meet in a semifinal or a quarter), such a safeguard doesn't assure the conference, and its' member schools, of the same payday that a set title game does.

2. What happens when a major conference, what we would currently call a "BCS conference", doesn't produce a team that finishes with the top 16? It's happened before and it'll happen again (I'm looking at you, Big East). If an agreement for a tournament, as proposed above, guarantees each major conference a representative...are we eventually stuck with the same old argument ... a latter-day version of "why the hell is Illinois playing in the Rose Bowl?" Or, even worse, "why the hell is Ohio State playing in the title game...again?" In other words, if the big conferences are guaranteed bids, the 23rd best team in the nation gets to dance while a far superior team from a little conference would be excluded as a result.

3. But what about too many teams from one conference? Say that the SEC is particularly strong, as it has been in recent seasons. If four SEC teams are ranked in the top 16 and those teams prevail in the round of 16, is a "national" title really the result? Would we be stuck watching a de facto SEC title game for two weeks? Would the end result be a combination of decreased national revenue, because all the teams involved are from the same region, and increased revenue for those southeastern schools, making it more likely that the pattern will repeat itself?

4. School. Remember college? I do. The kids playing college football are supposed to be going to class. My alma mater broke for Christmas/winter on about the 20th of December, depending on the calendar, with finals leading up to that date. But some schools broke after Thanksgiving and forced their students back into the classroom in early January. The vagaries of playoff system, as opposed to single bowls, might conflict with the academic calendars of some participant universities. This is a real concern, because most of us would rather proclaim ourselves "college graduates" than "some guy who played in NCAA playoff game" ... that trade-off occurs far too often under the current system.

5. Somebody loses money. And it's the Fiesta Bowl, the ugly duckling among the four established BCS games. If, as proposed, the NCAA adopted a playoff system and used a rotation the Rose, Orange, and Sugar bowls for the semis and final, both the corporate sponsor of the Fiesta Bowl (Tostitos) and the city Phoenix would be mighty ticked off at losing such a major event. An alternate solution would be rotating the four big bowls as semifinal contests - every other year, each serves as the national semifinal on New Year's Day while the other two serve as quarterfinals nearly a month earlier. But that idea presents an even bigger problem in that, now, two as opposed to just one city is locked out a big event. So someplace has to lose and, accordingly, so does a big corporate sponsor.

6. Somebody loses money, part two. Limiting the season has two consequences. First, some rivalry games would have to pushed forward a week, from a holiday weekend to the weekend before Thanksgiving. TV ratings and, in the case of mutually bad teams, attendance may decline slightly. Second, every Division I school would lose some revenue as a consequence of playing one fewer regular season game. Reducing the schedule probably hurts the little schools more drastically...for example, Florida won't be able to pay off Lousiana-Monroe in exchange for an assured home game/rout.

So those are the big drawbacks. But, as a means of positive reinforcement, let's see how last year's college football season would've shaped up under such a proposal...

And thus, A Test

One very important note: Under the above proposal, teams would lose one regular season game, so the records and schedules would've been a bit different. For example, in such a scenario, Florida probably wouldn't have played their 11th and final game against the mighty Citadel but, rather, faced Florida State, which was actually the Gators' 12th and final opponent of the 2008 season. I could do an ungodly amount of math and try to determine each team's computer ranking absent a 12th opponent but I'm far, far too lazy for such an undertaking ... so ... During the 2008 college football season, a 16 team championship tournament, with no conference championship games, would have been seeded and scheduled as follows after, for many of the relevant schools, the 11th game of the season:

Round of 16 - November 30, 2008

Alabama (1) v. Georgia (16)
Oklahoma (2) v. Georgia Tech (15)
Texas (3) v. Oklahoma St. (14)
Florida (4) v. Cincinnati (13)
USC (5) v. Ball St. (12)
Utah (6) v. Texas Christian (11)
Texas Tech (7) v. Ohio St. (10)
Penn St. (8) v. Boise St. (9)

So we see one of the potential problems arise immediately...four Big 12 teams receive bids if those bids are doled out solely on ranking. On the other hand, all the major conferences are represented while four schools from outside the "BCS conferences" are present.

Another issue arises...should these games be played at the home stadiums of the higher seeds or should they take place at neutral sites? Normally, I'd say that you give the higher seed a reward but, with it being a holiday weekend and thus easier for many students and fans to travel, let's put them at neutral sites. The quarters have to be at neutral locations, just for the sake of advance planning and accomodation of sponsors.

Let's have some fun picking winners from the quarterfinal matchups...after all, 'Bama got whipped in the SEC title game so they should lose their playoff game and Ohio State gets a win for (a) having played fairly well against Texas in their bowl game while (b) Texas Tech was a big load of suck down the stretch.

Quarterfinals - December 6, 2008

Penn State (8) v. Georgia (16) - (The Coporate Sponsor Bowl, played in a big city that everyone wants to visit...)
Oklahoma (2) v. Ohio St. (10) - (Cotton Bowl)
Texas (3) v. Utah (6) - (Fiesta Bowl)
Florida (4) v. USC (5) - (The Corporate Sponsor Bowl II, played in a big city that everyone wants to visit...)

I'll just pick the winners by seeding at this point. Penn St. v. Georgia looks as though it would've been very boring, although that USC/Florida matchup would've been fantastic fun. Anyway...

Semifinals - January 1, 2009

Penn State v. Oklahoma (Rose Bowl)
Texas v. Florida (Sugar Bowl)

The first game is not so good, as Oklahoma likely would've crushed the Nittany Lions and we be forced to sit around, bored and hungover, waiting for the start of a really enticing Florida/Texas matchup. As if that's worse than watching the Citrus Bowl...

So you wind up with...

National Championship Game - January 8, 2009

Florida defeats Oklahoma (Orange Bowl)

There's no methodology or anything behind the tournament example. Quite simply, I think the dates and the matchups illustrate that the proposed bracket would be a far better than the current system.

Ultimately, there's more money for the schools in a model similar to my proposal. Theoretically, that should be the deciding factor but, unfortunately, it requires a few tough choices, as the list of negatives illustrates. I have no faith, at all, that the NCAA will adopt such a simplistic solution because they're trying to make the schools happy, even if that means ignoring reason. It's like watching a politician pander to an obstinate and selfish union.