matt weighs in

How are we supposed to view all the bowl games played every year to end the college football season? I know many people would say, and do it quite loudly, that they are meaningless and not even the “national championship” game is worth the 30-40 day wait after conference play has ended. Others would argue that the bowls are an annual tradition and that they all need to be played to give college kids one last game to play as seniors and go out as winners. I completely fall into the former category, with much added venom towards those who say a playoff in Division-1 cannot happen.

The only traditional bowl anyone really cares about, as far as I can tell, is the Rose Bowl played on New Year’s Day in Pasadena, CA. There is a parade in the morning, and it has long been called the “Granddaddy of Them All.” Even when it isn’t a great match-up, the Rose Bowl prefers to have a Big Ten team face a Pac-10 team (this year’s game featured Illinois versus USC, which everyone correctly predicted would be a blowout), and it still is the most talked about bowl game there is, besides the “national championship” game.

Now, people have thrown out their versions of what the college football playoff would look like, the most recent of which I read in the Star Tribune on Sunday. In it, the columnist, Jim Souhan, argues that the big four bowl games all take place on New Year’s Day. These games would be the playoff quarterfinals, with the semifinals and National Championship to follow in the weeks after that. Not a bad option, but I don’t like it, because it would put the college playoff games up against the NFL playoffs in January, and as much as we like football, we don’t need the whole sports page covering football.

I would rather see the playoffs take place in December after the regular college season has ended. I am not sure exactly the best way to choose the teams, yet, but this is what I have come up with for a playoff, using this past 2007 season as an example, and it still allows for bowl games, as we know them, to continue.

There were 14 weeks between Saturday, September 1, 2007, and Saturday, December 1, 2007. This would have allowed teams to play 12 games, have one bye week during the season, and then have conference championship games on December 1st, if the conference chooses to do so.

The playoffs would be 16 teams – I see three ways the teams could be chosen. First, use the computer system currently in place for the BCS rankings and take the top 16 teams. Second, form a committee to choose the top 16 teams, such as they do in college basketball for March Madness. Third, and my least favorite option, include the conference champions and then somehow fill the rest of the spots with other teams (based on the computer ranking system or by a committee?).

I guess I prefer they use the computer ranking system to determine the top 16 teams and let the fun begin. Who could argue that the final BCS poll showing the top 16 teams to end the 2007 season do not deserve to be in the playoff? Going back to the dates on which the 2007 college football season fell, the 1st round (16 teams) would have taken place on Saturday, December 8th, the quarterfinal round (8 teams) on Saturday, December 15th, the semifinals (4 teams) on Saturday, December 22nd, and then to top it all off, you would have the National Championship played on New Year’s Day between the top 2 teams in one of the 5 major bowls (Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Orange or Fiesta). The championship game would rotate year-to-year from each site and would take place in the evening on January 1st.

The other 4 bowls, played during the day on New Year’s Day, would then choose their teams from those who lost in the previous rounds of the playoffs. The semifinal losers would play in one bowl, the four quarterfinal losers would take two other bowls, which leaves only one major bowl to choose it’s teams, which could be from the losers of the 1st round. The other 6 losing teams form the 1st round would then be chosen for the lesser bowl games that take place from December 20th-31st.

This seems confusing in writing, but put it down in brackets on paper what I have proposed here, and you’ll see that it can work. There would be great match-ups, there could not be any debate about who deserves to be where, because it’s all determined on the field, and those greedy fools who are blocking this playoff from happening would still get paid, because all the bowls, as we know them, would take place (I would even allow the championship game to be played the day after New Year’s for maximum exposure). But the best part? You would have a true National Champion in college football.