CFB Playoff Solution

[BSpringsteen]

First - you have six BCS leagues. If you want to be eligible for the national championship you have to be in one of those conferences. The two schools who would be affected by this rule would be Notre Dame and Boise St.

At the end of the year, the league champions are seeded based on their overall BCS point total.

The league champions are put into the playoffs. The league runner ups get placed into traditional BCS games.

Week 1 (two weeks following championship week)

Seeds 1 &2 get a bye to week 2.
Seeds 3-6 play a one week play in round with the higher seeds hosting the game at their home stadium.

Week 2 the week after Round 1

In an alternating site each year around the BCSlocations (as it is now) there will be two games played, the first on Friday night and the second on Saturday night.

Week 3 the week after Round 2

Plus one game for the national championship.

This accomplishes several things...

One, it keeps all the Bowl games. Yes the Rose is now a consolation prize but it makes winning your division that much more significant. Win the championship game and you go to the playoffs, lose and you're still in the Rose Bowl.

Second, it makes sure that you have to win win your conference to play for the national title. There is no reason why this shouldn't be an automatic barrier to entry.

Third, it keeps it short. The travel to warm climates is no different than the oft-discussed plus one game. The play in games are on campuses.

Jon's concern about the weather... look, you are talking about two host cities and a crap shoot with the weather either way. This was a monstrous storm that is pretty unusual - a little snow isn't delaying flights or making interstates impassable.

 

[shonblatt]

There is a LOT of support for the current bowl system. Any proposal that keeps all BCS conference champions out of the 4 BCS bowls will be shot down before it gets 30 seconds of discussion.

The best solution to make everyone happy is to incorporate a playoff into the current bowl system.

Take the 4 classic BCS bowl games and turn them into what effectively becomes a playoff quarterfinals grouping.

Remove the 1 vs 2 matchup and slot the games by the conference affiliations as much as is possible. Teams must be ranked in the top 15 and have 3 or fewer losses to qualify (bye bye UConn).

Rose
#2 Oregon (Pac 10 champ) vs. #5 Wisconsin (Big 10 champ)

Orange
#14 Virginia Tech (ACC champ) vs. #3 TCU (at-large)

Sugar
#1 Auburn (SEC champ) vs. #6 Ohio State (at-large)

Fiesta
#7 Oklahoma (Big 12 champ) vs. #4 Stanford (at-large)

This isn't quite a straight top-8 bracket playoff system, but as a compromise for keeping the bowl system with its current conference affiliations alive mostly as is, I think it would work pretty well. The highest ranked team left out would be #8 Arkansas, and they don't really have much of an argument for being included.

Then take the 4 winners, reseed them, and play a Final Four at one or more predetermined warm weather sites.

I think this could easily be marketed as an enhancement to the bowl system, not a replacement for it. Imagine a BCS Final Four with the Rose Bowl champ playing the Sugar Bowl champ in a semi-final game?

Call it an 8 team playoff, or call it a "plus 3" after the bowl games. Either way there would be HUGE interest in a system like this.

Very little changes for the bowl games, and the 4 winners have a chance to move on towards winning a national title. A champ is decided on the field.

Everybody wins.