Division I Football Playoff, Realized

Can it work?

Logistics are no problem, as you're about to see. The real reason why a full-fledged Division I football playoff system will never come to pass lies in the root of all evil: Bread. Bank. Scratch. Shekles. Moolah. Benjamins. Net-net. Cash mo-nay. In other words, dollars, the very thing that created the BCS in the first place.

Simply put, the current bowl system is far too lucrative for local organizers, teams, stadiums, radio/TV rights-holders, hot dog vendors, etc. to blow it up in favor of a true playoff ladder. Now, if current bowls could somehow be incorporated into a playoff system - well, that's one inch closer to possible. But still unlikely.

Which brings me, again, to Tom Rados.

I've written about Tom before. He's in the Air Force, lives in Fort Walton Beach, and is currently stationed in Iraq. He's also a serious college football fan, and last year, he sent me his proposal for a D-I playoff system, which I outlined in that previous blog entry (probably worth a read, if you're still curious by this point). His model was based on 2005 results; on Monday's "Tailgate Overtime" show on Sun Sports, we applied the Rados Plan to 2006.

In case you're too lazy to jump back to the previous entry, here's the outline:

-16 team bracket, filled by 11 Division I conference champions and 5 at-large bids. The at-large teams are selected based on their BCS ranking after conference championship games are played.
-Those 16 teams are seeded based on three criteria, in this order: BCS ranking, overall record, and conference record.
-Opening-round games are played at the home field of the higher-seeded team one week after conference championship games (this year, that would be December 9th).

Notes: this system requires an 11-game regular season as opposed to 12, which is immediately a stumbling block. Bowl games that are not a part of the playoff system - the "lower-tier" bowls - go off as scheduled, but bids are not extended until the end of the opening round. Teams that lose in the first round may still go to a lower-tier, non-playoff bowl game.

Also, for this 2006 model, we're assuming that the higher-ranked teams will win out. That means, for example, that Florida beats Florida State this week, then beats (lower-ranked) Arkansas in the SEC Championship game. It's just a model, and a simple method of filling out the 16-team bracket.

Got it? Here we go:

Saturday, December 9th, 2006

1 Ohio State (Big 10 Champ)
16 Middle Tenn. State (Projected Sun Belt Champ)

8 Notre Dame (at-large)
9 Texas (Proj. Big 12 Champ)

5 West Virginia (at-large)
12 Georgia Tech (Proj. ACC Champ)

4 Florida (Proj. SEC Champ)
13 BYU (Proj. MWC Champ)

That's the top half of the bracket. Again, every game is a home game for the higher-seeded team (which gives the 8 higher seeds one more home game, which will make them happy...however, it will do nothing for the 111 remaining D-I schools that use the 12th game as a moneymaker. Mmm.)

Bottom half of the bracket, played on the same day, December 9th:

6 Wisconsin (at-large)
11 Boise State (Projected WAC Champ)

3 USC (Proj. Pac-10 Champ)
14 Ohio (Proj. MAC Champ)

7 Louisville (Proj. Big East Champ)
10 Arkansas (at-large)

2 Michigan (at-large)
15 Houston (Proj. C-USA Champ)

A note on Arkansas as the 10 seed: it could be LSU or Auburn in that spot. We're assuming chalk, so Arkansas, the (currently) lower-ranked team, loses to Florida in the SEC title game and tumbles in the BCS standings. LSU and/or Auburn might jump Arkansas if that happens, but to keep it simple for the model, Arkansas gets in as an at-large team.

Also note that under our criteria, Rutgers gets snubbed. Plus, of the Arkansas-LSU-Auburn troika, two of those teams will miss the bracket. Playoffs are cold, huh?

Okay, so let's assume, for simplicity's sake, that the higher-ranked team wins in the first round. Bowl bids are not extended until after the first-round games are complete, and those teams that lost in Round One can still accept a bid to a non-playoff bowl game. The bowl games that are used for Round Two may elect to bid on a game that features a regional draw. The BCS bowls are not yet in play - those come later.

Round Two: Saturday, December 16th, 2006

1 Ohio State
8 Notre Dame
Music City Bowl, Nashville, TN

5 West Virginia
4 Florida
Gator Bowl, Jacksonville, FL

6 Wisconsin
3 USC
Holiday Bowl, San Diego, CA

7 Louisville
2 Michigan
Motor City Bowl, Detroit, MI

See how this works? Think "pods," as in the NCAA basketball tournament. Middle-tier bowls get playoff games that double as decent regional draws - Jacksonville gets the Gators, Detroit gets Michigan, San Diego gets Southern Cal, and Nashville gets, well, a bowl game about 4 million times more attractive than Minnesota-Virginia. While these "playoff" bowls serve as Round Two, the non-playoff bowls are doing their thing with any of the other bowl-eligible teams, including the eight that lost in Round One, if they desire.

Now, the BCS bowls come into play in the national semifinals and national championship game. Just like the old BCS, the title game rotates among the four top-level bowls each year, so every four years, each BCS bowl game will host one national championship, two national semifinal games, and one "BCS game" that differs little from the current system - that fourth game will pit the two best teams that didn't make the playoff ladder, or (in this model) perhaps the two highest-seeded teams that LOST in the opening round.

Round Three: Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
National Semifinals

Florida vs. Ohio State
Orange Bowl, Miami, FL

USC vs. Michigan
Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA

...and the "second chance" BCS bowl, which we're filling with the top-ranked losers from round one:

Texas vs. Arkansas/LSU/Auburn
Sugar Bowl, New Orleans, LA

Personally, I prefer the idea of a fourth BCS bowl each year that takes the top two teams who failed to qualify for the playoff bracket under our criteria. Using 2006 as the model, that could end up being Rutgers vs. Wake Forest, for example. The "second chance" theory of taking the top two first-round losers sorta flies in the face of a "playoff," doesn't it?

And finally:

Round Four: Monday, January 1st, 2007
National Championship

Semifinal Winner #1 vs. Semifinal Winner #2
Fiesta Bowl, Tempe, AZ

I didn't have the heart to write "Ohio State vs. Michigan" in there. Again, we went chalk through every game, with higher-seeded teams winning. We all know that won't happen, which is the beauty of a playoff.

Note that this model allows the National Championship game to be played on New Year's Day - as God intended - and actually ends the season one week earlier than the current BCS Championship Game format. Among other things, this avoids the one-month-plus layoff between a team's final game and a BCS bowl game - better for fans, with constant, meaningful game action, not so hot for coaches, who would probably prefer an extra month of practice to four straight weeks of game-planning and potential injury.

Random notes, from Tom's original model, which is now hermetically sealed in the Sun Sports vault: the middle-tier bowl games that currently serve as Round Two playoff sites can rotate from year to year. The "what about the regular season" argument is countered, at least partially, by the fact that the only SURE way to reach the lucrative playoff ladder is to win your conference - which makes Florida-Tennessee or Florida State-Miami just as compelling as they are right now. With 119 Division I programs competing for 11 guaranteed spots (and only 5 at-large bids), my view is that regular-season games wouldn't take a hit in terms of relevance.

I wrote earlier that incorporating existing bowls into a playoff structure might seem to be the best of all worlds, but I received an excellent e-mail on this point from our friend Charles Davis, who will call the BCS Championship Game in Glendale on Fox. As a former athletic administrator, Charles knows all too well the complexity of a local bowl committee, and the demands that a bowl game places on the two teams involved. As he pointed out:

"No program that's going into a playoff game is going to spend a week to 10 days in the bowl city, going to the bowl commitment events (lunches, dinners, sightseeing trips, etc.) before playing a game. And, IF you win, and you advance on to the next "bowl" game, how are you going to do that again, and possibly again? Then what about your fan base? Most people can make one bowl trip, not multiple...and which game will they choose to follow their team? It becomes a calculated gamble on the fans' part...from my point of view, if you make a playoff system, the existing bowls are dead, and they know it. Thus, their insistence on no playoff. The bowls have gone as far as they will with the BCS system. If you put a playoff in and ask them to still try to exist, they would fold up and go home before even attempting it. Then you would have a true playoff and you can call the games whatever you want to call them, but true bowl games they would not be any longer."

True dat. Which is why this model, while noble, faces serious hurdles.

Here's the big question: how desperately do you want a true national champion? Desperately enough to perhaps minimize the relevance of regular season games? Desperately enough to accept it when your team suffers the inevitable stunning upset in Round Two? Desperately enough to support your team through four weeks in December by spending three of those weeks (and your money) on the road? Desperately enough to create a playoff ladder that is completely independent of the existing bowl system, thereby removing 11 conference champions and the 5 best remaining teams in the country from consideration for existing bowls? How much does it matter to you?

On the other hand, under the current system, every regular season game is a happening, a cataclysmic event. Fans can target one bowl game - and only one bowl game - on which to spend their time and hard-earned travel dollars. Go back to the top of this lengthy entry: money talks. Financially, a D-I playoff would be an enormous challenge to support, as Charles so eloquently expresses.

But it's not impossible, which was the whole point. Just ask yourself: how bad do you want it?