Wahoo Wire

Every year, college football fans across the country complain and beg for a playoff system and this has led to the sports reporting community coming up with a better system every year in response.  Whether it’s modeling the English Premier League system of promotion and relegation, a Plus-One format, or an eight-team playoff, most college football fans agree that any of those are better than the current dumb system.

How can an organization that has possibly the greatest playoff event mankind has seen for one sport (March Madness) have an absurdly unsatisfying finale for another?  I’ll tell you: stubborn men who have lots of money.  The bowl system has been around forever and most of those involved would like to keep it that way because it makes them even more money.

They say that having a playoff system would lessen or eliminate the wonderful tradition of the bowls.  I, however, think this is the worst argument against a playoff system.  No one cares about the Emerald Nut Bowl now; why would playing a playoff game that week have any effect on people watching/caring about that bowl?  Honestly, do you watch that bowl?  I bet you don’t even know where it is.  Would you think it was any less important if there was a playoff game?  No, you wouldn’t (the game is in San Francisco, by the way).

And the NCAA’s actions over the last few years have not done much to quell the playoff noise.  One of their main arguments was that the season would stretch too long, and then they went and added another week in 2006 for the new BCS Championship Bowl.  This really opened the door for the eight team playoff movement because from the end of most universities’ classes to January 8 (one week past New Year’s Day) is three weeks…the length of time the bowl season now runs and the amount of weeks it would take to run an eight team playoff.   Please explain yourselves, gentlemen.

Another one of their favorite reasons is that going longer would take away the student in student athlete.  Um, guys?  It’s called winter break.  No one has class until mid-January…I don’t think people would miss any classes during this playoff run.  Dumb argument number three, goodbye.

Really, I see no reason to not have a playoff, so I have decided to actually do a playoff this year…I have that kind of power (on this website at least).  I have a playoff system and a rented copy of EA Sports’ NCAA Football 10 for simulations, but this is not a Plus-One format or an eight team playoff method: we’re going all out with a 16 team playoff.  Oh yes.  Here’s how it’s going to work:

1. The eleven conferences in Division I-A each receive an automatic bid for their conference champion.  This is how the basketball tournament works, so why not here?
2. The remaining five spots are filled by a selection committee comprised of a representative from each of the conferences (for this fake one, the committee consists of some writers here at Wahoo Wire).  NO conference will be allowed more than three teams into the tournament.
3. The 16 teams are seeded into two eight-team brackets by this committee.
4. The eight first round games are played at the higher seed’s stadium on December 19^th.
5. The next six games are split between the Rose, Sugar, Orange, Cotton, Fiesta, and Citrus (Capital One) Bowls.  For instance, this year, the Orange, Cotton, Fiesta, and Citrus would host the regional finals (Elite Eight) on Christmas Day.  The Rose and Sugar Bowls would host the national semifinals (Final Four) on New Year’s Day.  These would rotate amongst these six bowls every year.
6. The National Championship game would be at one of the two semifinal sites.  This would also rotate.  The higher seed would get the semifinal site where the championship game was for that year.  For instance, this year, the Rose Bowl has the championship so the highest overall seed of the final four teams would play their semifinal at the Rose Bowl.
7. All other bowls take place normally over the bowl season.

That’s how my system would work.  I personally think it satisfies both camps because the main bowls are sort of kept around and they are very significant games, but the smaller bowls are not eliminated and are not negatively affected by the playoffs.  If anything, by cutting down the number of teams that will be playing in the big bowls, the quality of the teams in the smaller bowls will increase substantially.

And this would be great for fans!  What could be better than New Year’s Day with the College Football Final Four?  Not only would attendance be sky high for that game since it’s on a holiday, but those two games would also be the most watched games of the year for the same reason.  College football is incredibly entertaining and I know people relaxing on a lazy holiday like New Year’s would eat up an all day event like this.  Plus, the system rewards the top eight teams in the country with one more home game to boost the monetary gains for those schools, giving them incentive to go for the top eight.

This probably will never see the light of day in real life (and this time of year kills me because of it)…but for the next few weeks we here at Wahoo Wire will be bringing this to you as if it is.  We’ll run the simulations, post the average results with the average stats, and provide college football fans the feeling of Winter Madness we’ve been craving for years.

Check back Sunday December 6^th for the playoff selections and seedings and December 19^th for the opening round of games.