As an interesting exercise, a look at the BCS poll prior to LSU-Arkansas would give us these games in a 16 team playoff: LSU - Virginia Kansas - Hawaii West Virginia - Boston College Missouri - Texas Ohio St. - Florida (how about that rematch?) Arizona St. - USC Georgia - Oklahoma Virginia Tech - Oregon I would submit that those 8 games would be better than any bowl games we're likely to see this year, and the networks would pay over 100 million dollars for them. Likely winners and quarterfinal matchups: LSU - Oregon Kansas - Georgia West Virginia - USC Missouri - Florida That's 4 great games right there. The semis: LSU - Georgia USC - Florida And yep, that would be an all SEC Championship Game. That's 15 fabulous games, (well, maybe Kansas - Hawaii would be a stinker) that the current system is costing us.
I think that 8 teams is enough. Take the 6 BCS conf champs (eliminates crying about toughest conf), and the top 2 independents / mid-majors. Seed them based on some ranking structure, BCS / AP / Computer average and play the first 2-3 rounds at the higher seeded teams house with the last 1-2 round at neutral sites. Ensures that if you win a major conference you get a shot while including the best mid-majors. Keeps the importance of the regular season intact (have to be a conf champ and ranking for home field advantage) while opening the door to some major league non-conf games as a loss doesn't hurt too bad in the long run.
I was thinking that there is so much wasted time between the end of the season and the BCS bowls, that there's plenty of time to get a 16 team playoff in. That way, a team like Hawaii gets it's shot.
Either one is better than what we have now, I prefer that it stay at 8 because you can limit it to the 6 major conf champs and either ND and one mid-major (hawaii) or the two best mid-major conf champs when ND has a year like this one. I personally just don't want to include a team that didn't win its conf (to NFL for me). But again, anything is better than trying to rank teams from different conferences based on a few common opponents. We have no idea what the strongest conference is so who knows who the best one loss team is. Unfortunately there problably won't be enough of a controversy this year to move the discussion along any.
i am all for a playoff. take the top 8 teams and let them have it out. higher seed gets home field advantage. everyone else gets to go to bowl games. this would help teams like LSU and OSU who had late season losses get back into the picture for a NC.
