Answer to the BCS Mess

You lost me at "at large positions determined by BCS rankings."

If it's not a good enough system to pick two teams, it's not good enough to pick any number of playoff teams either. Period.

(Scratched out oops paragraph that was the result of me misreading the OP's last paragraph.)

But what's the point of having national semifinals and calling it the "Sugar Bowl"? That's not "maintaining the bowl structure", it's just a weak, watered-down way to claim to keep the traditionalists happy. Nobody would proudly display a Sugar Bowl trophy if they lost the next game.

And, I would add, fans aren't going to travel to more than one neutral-site game. Witness BC fans last year, who helped make the CS Bowl the best-attended one in over a decade, but didn't go to Jacksonville at all for the ACCCG.

You could just use the composite polls and remove the computer rankings if you wanted to.

Your first round doesn't really make sense. Going by this year's standings, you'd have Florida play Bama in the first round, with the looser out of the playoffs. In your "at large" bracket, you could end up with MSU playing Ball St. with the winner advancing. So you put a 10-15th ranked team (or two) into the second round, while a team that won its division who would ordinarily fall to 5th or so after loosing its conference championship, totally out.

If you seeded after the conference championship, the SEC looser would have a prime shot at an at large birth. You also in a hypothetical of hypotheticals, left out Michigan in 06, assuming that the UM-OSU game was a conference championship.

I'm sure Brian's mgoplayoff proposal is floating around this site somewhere. It's 12 teams, played after the conference championships with the first round played on campus. It's probably the best one that's out there.

5 at-large bids. as of right now, under that system you'd have these teams in the playoffs (assuming conference champs based on ranking or standing):

North Carolina (ACC...i just picked the highest rank. too jumbled here), Pitt (Big East), Penn State (Big Ten), Texas Tech (Big 12), Tulsa (CUSA), Ball State (MAC), Utah (Mountain West), USC (Pac-10), Alabama (SEC), ULL (Sun Belt), Boise State (WAC), Texas (At-large #1), Oklahoma (At-large #2), Georgia (At-large #3), Ohio State (At-large #4), Missouri (At-large #5) Top team left out: Oklahoma State. Would they really have that big of a gripe? Here would be round 1 of the playoff:

16. Tulsa @ 1. Alabama

15. Pitt @ 2. Texas Tech

14. North Carolina @ 3. Texas

13. Ball State @ 4. Florida

12. Missouri @ 5. Oklahoma

11. Ohio State @ 6. USC

10. Georgia @ 7. Utah

9. Boise State @ 8. Penn State

16 possible games for the eventual Championship game opponents? Never happen. And by "never", I mean there's a better chance of Brian munging the post-op corpse of Woody Hayes than this happening.

Gross indeed, but gives you a pretty definite idea of the chances.

8 Teams:
1. 6 BCS conference champions are automatically in.
2. 2 at large bids go to: Two highest ranked (By BCS system) non-conference champs. Insert Notre Dame and mid-major exception here.
3. Higher ranked team (BCS) gets home games in playoff.
4. Keep all the bowl games
5. Current BCS bowls are for championship game and serve as consolation games for teams eliminated from the playoffs.

I agree with the points about limiting number of regular season games.

I would have the at-large exception read something like:

A. After the 6 BCS conference champions are determined the remaining two atlarge bids go to the highest ranked (BCS) teams that are not BCS conference champions.

Unless:

B. Mid-major exception: Whatever the current ruling is. I think BCS top 12? (Applies to one team only)

C. ND exception: Not sure what it is now but I would probably have something like:
1. They are automatically in if they are BCS top ten
2. An alternative (that would probably be more ND friendly) they would get in if they had a higher BCS ranking than the lowest 2 or 3 BCS conference champions.

I am going by current BCS rankings and the assumption that the higher ranked teams win their conference.

1) Bama
2) Texas Tech
3) USC
4) PSU
5) North Car.
6) Pitt
7) Utah
8) Texas*

First round matchups:

Pitt @ Bama
North Car. @ Texas Tech
Utah @ USC
Texas @ PSU**

* Based on current BCS
** Although the at-large winner will probably be ranked higher than PSU going by BCS. I would have a rule where BCS conference champ wins the home game over a BCS conference team who is an at-large. However, this is nickle and dime stuff at this point I would be ok if you just went by BCS rankings outright for home team.

What if you give the BCS conference champs a bye (most will have already played in a conference championship game) and then take 8 at-large bids. Thats a total of 14 teams. you could designate 4 of the at-large bids to non-bcs connference slots (i.e. take the four best mid-majors regardless of conference as determined by bcs ranking and as long as they have beaten a bcs conference team) Other slots go to bcs conference teams.

eh....I don't really like it, but just throwing it out there.

Can we say that teams may not play more that 3 non-BCS teams instead of non-Conference? That would allow the Big Ten to keep 8 games in conference and force one non-conference BCS team to try to demonstrate strength/weakness of the conference.