Updated Playoff for 2008/09

Here are the final BCS standings of 2008.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/polls?poll=4&week=15

Based on my formula of 6 teams, the playoff would be seeded as follows:

#1 Oklahoma
#2 Florida
#3 USC (ranked #5 but won their conference)
#4 Penn State (ranked #8, but again, BCS conference winner)


Sorry ACC and Big East, even though the Big 10 is proving they don't belong (and we'll see what happens to OSU against Texas tomorrow), your teams didn't rank high enough. The Big East Champion lost 40-16 to UCONN, never competed with Oklahoma, and barely beat many mediocre to bad Big East teams. The ACC Champ had every right to not be in the ACC Champ game by blowing it to Miami a few weeks before. The cards played right and BC lost a QB, and then all of a sudden, a team who gets beat by 4-loss, CUSA, ECU is in the BCS. As an aside, anyone who watched that game has to know it was one of the worst BCS games in history.

So who gets #5 and #6. #5 would of course go to Texas. They had a great season, they slipped up on the road in the biggest game of TT history, and they handled OU on a neutral site. I would have said it before their impressive performance vs Bama, and based on the rules, they get it anyway, so Utah gets #6.

How does that shake up? (Again, with BCS bowl locations random)

#1 OU and #2 UF (Bye)

#3 USC vs #6 Utah -- There's your chance, Utah. Campaign all you want, but beating a highly ranked conference champion in a playoff game is the only way we'll ever know you and the rest of your mid-major buddies are for real. I still think USC wins, but I'd be cheering for Cindarella.
--USC 35, Utah 17

#4 Penn State vs #5 Texas -- This could be a drubbing. Without getting into my thoughts on the Big 10 (cough, MWC was a better league this year, cough cough), Texas would be angry at their snubbing and with the possibiliy that a win could mean another shot at Oklahoma or just a shot in the title game, then they would play their hearts out and Penn State would be horribly outclassed just like they were in Pasadena, I'm afraid.
--Texas 31, Penn State 14

Ok, so say the likely happens and USC and Texas advance.

#1 OU vs #5 Texas -- There could be a clause avoiding conference teams to play each other again until the finals, but being as its a playoff, its inevitable anyway, and I think OU would be pretty ticked off to have to play the higher seed (cough, terrified to play USC, cough) just because they had already played the #5 seed. I'll give a prediction for sporting sake, but I really have no idea. I think Texas has a little better defense though and they would prevail again in this one. A little closer though.
--Texas 42, OU 38

#2 UF vs #3 USC -- This could be the most interesting and entertaining matchup in BCS history, and its something we won't see this year thanks to the lack of a playoff. USC's offense has shown potential to be limited by good, fast defenses like 'Zona and Cal. That said, their defense has also shown that low offensive production won't wear them out. I think UF may be a little better, although drawing the Rose Bowl for this location would be a really tough draw if thats how it worked out. I think UF's defense would slow down USC enough and the USC defense wouldn't quite have all the answers for the UF speed. Then again, I may be a homer....
--UF 31, USC 24

Now we bring outselves to the championship game. In all honestly, it could well be any one of UF-OU, UF-Texas, USC-OU and USC-Texas. Who in their right mind would complain about that, especially after seeing those semifinals?

Since I'm going on a prediction streak, say you have the dream title match of #2 UF vs #5 Texas. UF would be going against a stout defense, but not as stout as Bama or USC. I think UF would take it, in a much closer game than I think UF-OU would/will be.
--UF 34, Texas 28

So again, will someone please tell me why I have no choice of seeing these games?

Please, Please Give us a Playoff in College Football

I'm not gonna comment on my political views here, but Obama was spot on about one thing: College Football needs a playoff. Its just not fair to fans and teams to not have one. Name any one subdivision of any other team sport played at any level that does not have a playoff. All other college football divisions, all high school, all pro football. A couple arguments made in favor of the current system:

1) It would make college football a 2-semester event and take too many students out of class.

We certainly don't need a 16-team, 4-week playoff. Since when did any legit arguments include 16 teams deserving a spot for the national championship? When have more than 4 teams legitimately deserve a spot? A 6-team playoff, as will be discussed later, is all that we need, and that would take only 3 extra weeks, and could easily be done by January 6th-9th. Do teams really need 4-5 weeks off before their bowl game anyway? Its like spring practice all over again, only you only get one game once its done.

2) It would take money and recognition away from minor teams playing in the minor bowl games.

Who said there couldn't still be the riveting matchups provided by the Memphis Bowl and the MPC Computers Bowl? The winner of the Sun Belt does deserve some recognition and a little extra money, so keep those games. When it comes down to it, money is what its about, and would college football fans refuse to watch the only college football game on TV on December 14th just because they have a couple extra games in a playoff?

So how do we choose which 6 teams go?

-We keep the current BCS ranking system and the winners of the 6 BCS Conferences go to the tournament, but only if they are ranked in the top 10 in the rankings, and seed them 1-6. The tournament would be set up exactly like an NFL Conference Playoff. If a team like WV were to win the Big East this year, which was likely until they lost to Cincy, then they would have done so w/ a 24-3 loss to ECU and a loss to Colorado. I'm not even going to discuss in detail the ACC's issues, but of course none of them will finish in the top 10 either this year.
-So next, you take the top ranked non-conference champion winners, but not from the same conference (ie, 3 Big 12 teams this year would not all get in), and they get in, automatically as the bottom seeds.
-If whoever the guy in that has enough clout to make this playoff still doesn't have the clout to make ND join a conference, there of course has to be a Notre Dame clause. I haven't put much thought into this because its ridiculous that ND has gotten away with this for so long, but maybe it would be something like "If ND finishes in the top 6, they're guaranteed a spot, and if they finish in the top 10, they get the first at-large spot in the playoff."
-Same with mid-majors; I think schedule strength should be a very strong consideration, but if the Utah's and Boise State's of the world have great seasons, then I say that the same clause that applies to ND should apply to them.

-One problem that may arise would be scheduling. First off, all scheduling of FCS/I-AA teams should be eliminated. No more Citadel-UF games, no more OSU-Youngstown State games, etc. Second, each BCS conference team is required to have another non-conference BCS team on their schedule. It wouldn't require UF-FSU, GT-UGA, etc., to add another BCS team to their schedule, but it wouldn't allow teams to just schedule 3 Sun Belt and a C-USA team for their 4 non-conference games. And again, SOS should be a much bigger factor, especially non-conference SOS. A good team can't help if their conference happens to be down, but scheduling Baylor and Syracuse as non-conference games should be worth significantly less than scheduling USC and Oklahoma, for example.

Where would these games be played?

Easy. Here's an example:

#3 vs #6 - Fiesta Bowl
#4 vs #5 - Sugar Bowl
#1 vs #4/5 winner - Rose Bowl
#2 vs #3/6 winner - Orange Bowl
Championship Game - Back to one of the other sites, rotates each year.

To give an example, I'll use last year b/c this year is far from over...

It turns out, last year, all the conference champions were in the top 10.

Seeds (not rankings)

1 - Ohio State
2 - LSU
3 - Va Tech
4 - Oklahoma
5 - USC
6 - West Virginia

VT-West Virginia may not be thrilling, but Oklahoma-USC? Would that really be a game people wouldn't want to watch?

I think WV would probably win, and USC probably wins 50.1% of the time, so then you have Ohio State vs USC and LSU vs West Virginia. The winners play in the title game. LSU-USC? Maybe it'd even be LSU-OSU again, but at least it would have arrived their in the right way. Now please, please find me a college football fan who wouldn't want to see that.

Introduction

As an intro, I am writing this blog to gather my own thoughts about the goings on of the sports world, primarily the sports that are in season. If anything big happens in recruiting/off season trades, etc., I'll probably write something about it, but its simply easier and more fun to follow sports when they're actually happening in my opinion. I apologize if there is any glaring SEC bias, but I'm a UF student and fan who bleeds orange and blue. I'm never going to lie in favor of the SEC (ie, come college basketball season, I'll probably seem a lot less biased), but I enjoy SEC sports b/c I'm from the area, and regardless of talent levels, there is never an SEC team in any sport that doesn't play hard. I always welcome discussion, comments, you telling me I'm an idiot, etc. Its something I enjoy doing and thinking about so I figured I'd write it down. Assuming I get the amount of comments I expect, which is none, this shouldn't be an issue. But in case someone does read this and make a comment, I can promise I'll read it and I will promise to consider responding to it.