I am with TitanTiger (AU) on this one... A two loss team should NOT have the opportunity to win it all just because they are playing well at the end of the season. That is not college football. Those games in September should mean as much as the ones in November. An 8 team play-off should do fine. Let USC, OU, and AU burst the bubble of schools that have pansy schedules like Boise St and Utah. But at the same time, give those guys a chance at a NC because heck they are undefeated and those players did not choose the schedule.
I don't get the money concerns. You have 1 EXTRA game involved. Why does that all of a sudden mean less money? Makes no sense to me. The 5 BCS bowls would rotate out which 2 would get the semi-finals and a third bowl would get the title game, rotated out as well. The top 10 teams in the BCS standings get berths in the 5 bowl games. The top 4 shoot it out for all the marbles. The semi-final bowls play on Jan. 2th. The title game plays on Jan 9th. No interference with school. This year is a perfect example of how this system would work perfectly in determining the national champion.
I think 4 team playoff, with the same argument as made by TitanTiger would be best. It preserves the importance of the regular season, and means that you have to have 5 teams or more with a legitimate claim at No. 1 before you would run into problems. The counter argument to having a small playoff is then there will be controversy over who should be No. 4. The thing to remember in this case is this: The purpose of the playoff is to find THE National Champion. Only teams with a legitimate claim to No. 1 should have a chance. Take Texas and Cal this year for instance. Texas had there chance when they played Oklahoma, Cal had their chance against USC. Neither team got it done. One team now would get a second chance and one wouldn't. Would it be fair? No. But Texas wouldn't be able to claim they didn't have their chance. Auburn, on the other hand, didn't get their chance. They've won every game they've played, against strong competition, and won't even get a chance to play for the National Title. Bottom line, the only way a 4 team playoff wouldn't be fair was if there was 5 undefeated teams from BCS conferences at the end of the year.
How they must be looking at it is that there is a pie that has to be divided. Sure, you increase the size of the pie by creating a better/more profitable product. But, it must not be enough to make the numbers work for the 4 major bowls. If you have a 4 team play-off, you divide the majority of the pie to 3 bowls instead of 4. The left out bowl gets a severely reduced income. If you have an 8 team play-off, you are involving even more bowls and bringing them a ton of money at the expense of one of the current 4 big bowls (one of them would be a round one bowl every year). Not cool. You have to figure that they could not increase the pie enough to keep that 4th bowl happy. I can't think of any other explaination. I am SURE that they have VERY highly paid people figuring out the numbers for them. Face it, the ratings for the current BCS bowls are extremely high. Rivaling only the Super Bowl. It is not going to go much higher. There just aren't that many more people out there that aren't already watching. So why should they take a big hit once every four years when they can have a steady stream of income? At least this is my theory. Shoot away at it... Maybe this move to Fox with only 3 bowls involved will give us a 4 team play-off someday...
I still think my proposal, which brings the bowls and conferences into the playoff fold and keeps them in business to make money, while also winning the official sanction of the NCAA to make it a REAL national championship, while also including EVERYONE, is the best deal. 16 teams. Seeded 1-16 based on a universally accepted, independent power rating system (the BCS System?) The champions of the 11 conferences, plus the best independent (usually, but not always, Notre Dame), plus four at large bids, again, awarded on the basis of the power rating system (Top Four teams in the land that did not get auto bids get at-large bids). So, unlike basketball and baseball, I would not leave it up to a human selection committee; there would be an independent, impartial, formula-based way of deciding who gets in and where they are seeded. Use the existing bowls as neutral playoff sites. Eight minor bowls for the Regional Playoff round (such as the MPC Computers Bowl, Independence Bowl, Motor City Bowl); Four 2nd tier bowls for the quarterfinals (My picks would be Capital One, Peach, Cotton, and Fiesta). The national semifinals and finals rotate among three bowls; Rose, Sugar, and Orange. Keep the payout system, which would allow universities and the bowls to make money. In a couple of weeks, when all the games are done, I'll do what I did last year; preview what a playoff would look like under my system.
This debate, along with the many others going on on many other boards and amongst the sportswriters and barstool sitters... is why there will never be a playoff system. The controversy that is the BCS has been great for college football.. controversy brings ratings.. it encourages people to root for the teams like utah and boise state.. a playoff system also takes away the sense of urgency that you get with every game in college football.. when LSU lost that first game.. every LSU fan felt a profound sense of lose.. with a playoff system its like seeing an NFL team lose.. you say, "oh well, we can still make the playoffs".. a playoff system would be for the fans, for the AD's and TV networks, but not for the players... all this does is force the players to play extra games and take the chance of an injury.. you want a playoff system? fine, trade off by allowing the sophmores to leave to the NFL. I say, why not have a split national title. Sometimes the best team gets left out. Thats life. Sometimes the best team loses 5 games because of the breaks and the schedules.. thats life. I think we need to preserve the bowl system. get rid of the bcs. go back to just playing the bowls. When it comes down to it, college football isnt about the national championship... its about tradition and the players, and the best interests of both.
You're right, locoguano. We shouldn't even keep score. It's so silly to want to win games and be the best. College football remains the only major sport in the world that does not have an organized tournament format for deciding it's champion. Sooner or later, the vast majority of people are going to realize how stupid that is. Most already have, it's just a question of hammering on the old codgers clinging to power and the old ways. And I am sick and tired of the argument that a playoff would render the regular season meaningless. It would not! It would only mean that one loss doesn't doom your season, which is the way it is now. But even in my 16 team playoff system, you have to be your conference champion or you have to be one of the four best at large teams. So, if you are a mid-major, or even a pretty solid 2nd tier program, you had better win your conference, or you are screwed. And even the perennial powers had better not lose more than two games, or they are in big trouble. You still have to win a whole lot more games than you lose to get there.
