Sporting Fools
Sporting Fools
Sporting Fools
Sporting Fools
The frequent and occasional humorous musings behind two of the World's greatest underappreciated sports minds.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
2007 Division 1-A Playoff Manifesto......After trying to pull this off on several occasions, I think I got it right with the proper scheduling to give the teams rest on the holidays and make travel easier on fans.
Here we go:
-- 12 teams with four teams getting first-round byes. We're doing this NFL style because their playoff system is pretty solid and hasn't been adjusted in around 25 years.
-- Only conference champions are eligible for the top four spots (sorry Georgia)
-- With 11 matches in the playoffs, we'll work with 10 bowls and keep the final game separate much like they do with the BCS now. It also allows the other crappy 22 bowls to stick around and make deals with the 44 schools that are bowl eligible and not in the playoffs. This cuts the total number of bowl teams from 64 to 56, but I'm sure new bowls will be created and since we have a playoff system, who cares about new bowls being created so that 8th place SEC and 7th place Big 10 team will have a place to land?
-- The 10 Bowls we are dealing with are as follows: Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Outback, Citrus (Capital One), Peach (Chick Fil-A), Holiday and Music City bowls. We chose Music City over the Gator Bowl because the stadium in Nashville is newer and it's a better destination than Jacksonville. Actually I considered the Emerald Bowl before the Gator Bowl because San Francisco is a nicer destination, but Nashville is stuck in a better location for college fans.
So the cities represented are: L.A. (Pasadena), Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix (Tempe), Dallas, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, San Diego and Nashville. And the good things about these 10 Bowls is that they all have major tie-ins so the C-USA champion isn't cheated out of their trip to Memphis and the Sun Belt champion can still play in front of 30K in New Orleans. And the 11th, championship game rotates between those 10 cities equally. Yes Nashville gets a title game once every ten years.
And the site for the championship game is a site for a wild-card game earlier in the playoffs. So doing New Orleans' turn on the rotation, they get one of the wild-card games, this avoids teams from making back-to-back trips to the same place.
-- Selecting teams is the key. We're going to keep the BCS formula and change the name to the PSS formula (Playoff Selection Series). It's three letters, thus keeping the with the spirit of the short-attention span fans of college football.
And we have some rules
* Conference-affliated teams have to win at least 75% of their games in a season, which is 9 games under the current 12-game schedule. If they go back down to 11 games than we'll say a maximum of three losses. Three losses because I don't want to dissuade a team from playing at least one tough non-conference game a year.
* Independent teams (a.k.a. Notre Dame) have to do one better, 10 wins or a maximum of two losses because there's nothing stopping a team like ND from loading their schedule with gimmes (when they get good enough to where they can have gimmes again)
* 8 of the 11 conferences HAVE to be represented. So we take the six power conference champions and the top two "mid-majors" in the PSS Top 25 (or beyond if necessary). If three mid-majors are in the PSS Top 25 than three mid-majors go to the playoffs. You play the games, you get the breaks, it's that simple.
* Only two teams from a conference can be represented. And they have to be on the same side of the bracket.
* The wild cards are the remaining Top 25 based on those parameters. So yes, if the WAC has a power year where Hawaii and Boise State are in or around the Top 12, they could have two representatives. Heck the Missouri Valley Conference had like four reps in the NCAA basketball tournament not too long ago, so it's rare but it's fair.
* We will re-seed after each round to an extent, but again same-conference teams cannot meet in the championship game.
So what does that give us if we're using the current PSS (BCS) Top 25?
Top Four Seeds: 1) Ohio State, 2) LSU, 3) Virginia Tech, 4) Oklahoma
Other Conference Champions: 5) USC, 6) West Virginia, 7) Hawaii, 8) Brigham Young (!!)
Wild Cards: 9) Georgia, 10) Missouri, 11) Arizona State, 12) Illinois
So we've got our 12 teams, here's the schedule:
Wild Card Weekend (Dec. 14-15)
Holiday Bowl: Illinois vs. Southern Cal
Music City Bowl: Arizona State vs. West Virginia
Cotton Bowl: Hawaii vs. Missouri
Citrus Bowl: Georgia vs. BYU
For arguments sake, let's say that USC, Arizona State, Hawaii and Georgia won.
Elite Eight Weekend (Jan. 1-2)
Fiesta Bowl: USC vs. Oklahoma
Peach Bowl: Hawaii vs. LSU
Outback Bowl: Georgia vs. Virginia Tech
Orange Bowl: Arizona State vs. Ohio State
For arguments sake lets give the nod to USC, LSU, Georgia and Ohio State
Championship Weekend (Jan 11-12)
Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. Georgia
Rose Bowl: USC vs. Ohio State
The PSS Bowl in Dallas (Jan 26)
Sugar Bowl winner vs. Rose Bowl winner.
See it works!
Here we go:
-- 12 teams with four teams getting first-round byes. We're doing this NFL style because their playoff system is pretty solid and hasn't been adjusted in around 25 years.
-- Only conference champions are eligible for the top four spots (sorry Georgia)
-- With 11 matches in the playoffs, we'll work with 10 bowls and keep the final game separate much like they do with the BCS now. It also allows the other crappy 22 bowls to stick around and make deals with the 44 schools that are bowl eligible and not in the playoffs. This cuts the total number of bowl teams from 64 to 56, but I'm sure new bowls will be created and since we have a playoff system, who cares about new bowls being created so that 8th place SEC and 7th place Big 10 team will have a place to land?
-- The 10 Bowls we are dealing with are as follows: Rose, Orange, Sugar, Fiesta, Cotton, Outback, Citrus (Capital One), Peach (Chick Fil-A), Holiday and Music City bowls. We chose Music City over the Gator Bowl because the stadium in Nashville is newer and it's a better destination than Jacksonville. Actually I considered the Emerald Bowl before the Gator Bowl because San Francisco is a nicer destination, but Nashville is stuck in a better location for college fans.
So the cities represented are: L.A. (Pasadena), Miami, New Orleans, Phoenix (Tempe), Dallas, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, San Diego and Nashville. And the good things about these 10 Bowls is that they all have major tie-ins so the C-USA champion isn't cheated out of their trip to Memphis and the Sun Belt champion can still play in front of 30K in New Orleans. And the 11th, championship game rotates between those 10 cities equally. Yes Nashville gets a title game once every ten years.
And the site for the championship game is a site for a wild-card game earlier in the playoffs. So doing New Orleans' turn on the rotation, they get one of the wild-card games, this avoids teams from making back-to-back trips to the same place.
-- Selecting teams is the key. We're going to keep the BCS formula and change the name to the PSS formula (Playoff Selection Series). It's three letters, thus keeping the with the spirit of the short-attention span fans of college football.
And we have some rules
* Conference-affliated teams have to win at least 75% of their games in a season, which is 9 games under the current 12-game schedule. If they go back down to 11 games than we'll say a maximum of three losses. Three losses because I don't want to dissuade a team from playing at least one tough non-conference game a year.
* Independent teams (a.k.a. Notre Dame) have to do one better, 10 wins or a maximum of two losses because there's nothing stopping a team like ND from loading their schedule with gimmes (when they get good enough to where they can have gimmes again)
* 8 of the 11 conferences HAVE to be represented. So we take the six power conference champions and the top two "mid-majors" in the PSS Top 25 (or beyond if necessary). If three mid-majors are in the PSS Top 25 than three mid-majors go to the playoffs. You play the games, you get the breaks, it's that simple.
* Only two teams from a conference can be represented. And they have to be on the same side of the bracket.
* The wild cards are the remaining Top 25 based on those parameters. So yes, if the WAC has a power year where Hawaii and Boise State are in or around the Top 12, they could have two representatives. Heck the Missouri Valley Conference had like four reps in the NCAA basketball tournament not too long ago, so it's rare but it's fair.
* We will re-seed after each round to an extent, but again same-conference teams cannot meet in the championship game.
So what does that give us if we're using the current PSS (BCS) Top 25?
Top Four Seeds: 1) Ohio State, 2) LSU, 3) Virginia Tech, 4) Oklahoma
Other Conference Champions: 5) USC, 6) West Virginia, 7) Hawaii, 8) Brigham Young (!!)
Wild Cards: 9) Georgia, 10) Missouri, 11) Arizona State, 12) Illinois
So we've got our 12 teams, here's the schedule:
Wild Card Weekend (Dec. 14-15)
Holiday Bowl: Illinois vs. Southern Cal
Music City Bowl: Arizona State vs. West Virginia
Cotton Bowl: Hawaii vs. Missouri
Citrus Bowl: Georgia vs. BYU
For arguments sake, let's say that USC, Arizona State, Hawaii and Georgia won.
Elite Eight Weekend (Jan. 1-2)
Fiesta Bowl: USC vs. Oklahoma
Peach Bowl: Hawaii vs. LSU
Outback Bowl: Georgia vs. Virginia Tech
Orange Bowl: Arizona State vs. Ohio State
For arguments sake lets give the nod to USC, LSU, Georgia and Ohio State
Championship Weekend (Jan 11-12)
Sugar Bowl: LSU vs. Georgia
Rose Bowl: USC vs. Ohio State
The PSS Bowl in Dallas (Jan 26)
Sugar Bowl winner vs. Rose Bowl winner.
See it works!
Labels: College football
