Playoff Possibilities Continued...

by brubby on Dec 3, 2008 5:38 PM EST

After lots of good discussion from my last post about a possible realignment and playoff system, I've come up with another one that gets 'football factory' schools a 7th home game and allows more connectivity between conferences with additional ooc games.

The downfall is an extra week of the season and the eventual champ and runner up will have to play 16 games.

First - divide the teams into 7 MAJOR (12 teams each) conferences and 4 Minor (9 teams each) conferences.

Each major conference is split into divisions and plays 5 division games, 3 opposite division games and 4 ooc games.

7 conference championships and a play in championship between the "best" non-conference championship contender and the "best" minor conference team - choose any method you like to pick the "bests" - if you can't win your own division you shouldn't get to argue.

Week after the Conf Champ games - first round of the playoffs at the top four seeds home field (seeding by some sort of super fancy committee) - losers eligible for bowl games.

Bowls proceed as normal with orange & rose as semi finals and sugar the week after as a championship game.

Here are the conference alignments

ACC	Big 10	Big 12	Big East
Boston College	Illinois	Baylor	Cincinnati
Clemson	Indiana	Colorado	Connecticut
Duke	Iowa	Iowa State	Louisville
Florida State	Michigan	Kansas	Pittsburgh
Georgia Tech	Michigan State	Kansas State	Rutgers
Maryland	Minnesota	Missouri	South Florida
Miami-Florida	Northwestern	Nebraska	Syracuse
North Carolina	Ohio State	Oklahoma	West Virginia
North Carolina State	Penn State	Oklahoma State	Central Florida
Virginia	Purdue	Texas	Navy
Virginia Tech	Wisconsin	Texas A&M	Army
Wake Forest	Notre Dame	Texas Tech	Temple

SEC	Pac 10	MWC
Alabama	Arizona	Air Force
Arkansas	Arizona State	Colorado State
Auburn	California	UNLV
Florida	Oregon	New Mexico
Georgia	Oregon State	San Diego State
Kentucky	Southern California	Texas Christian
Louisiana State	Stanford	Utah
Mississippi	UCLA	Wyoming
Mississippi State	Washington	Boise State
South Carolina	Washington State	Brigham Young
Tennessee	Fresno State	Idaho
Vanderbilt	Hawaii	Southern Methodist

WAC	Conf USA	MAC	Sunbelt
New Mexico State	Memphis	Akron	Troy State
Nevada	Western Kentucky	Ball State	Louisiana-Lafayette
Utah State	Southern Mississippi	Bowling Green State	Louisiana-Monroe
San Jose State	Marshall	Central Michigan	Florida Atlantic
Tulsa	East Carolina	Eastern Michigan	Florida International
Houston	Northern Illinois	Kent State	Arkansas State
Texas-El Paso	Alabama-Birmingham	Miami-Ohio	Middle Tennessee State
North Texas	Toledo	Ohio	Louisiana Tech
Rice University	SUNY-Buffalo	Western Michigan	Tulane

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Comments

Divisional love

I’m just not a fan of “if you can’t win your conference, you don’t deserve to be considered.” Especially when you consider this year: Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas are all completely worthy candidates for a conference championship (I believe that’s why they call it a ’tie’), and any of those three are a clearly better candidate than Cincinnati.

The alignments you have still are going to have the same disparity in conference strength that we have now. The PAC-10 still has only one, maybe two football factory schools, whereas the SEC has four or five.

In fact, with only one play-in spot available, that’s kindof a recipe for disaster. The best claim that a non-champion has is if there’s a circle-of-death, and in that case there are almost always two other valid teams. From one conference!

I just don’t see the advantage of a bracketed playoff system unless Division IA is cut down in size a ton. At least in three. With 40 teams you could get decent connectivity most years (with scheduling concerns) with only 8 games, and you could probably end up with 6.5-7 home games if 3 of the remaining games were preseason (only counted for tiebreakers).

I also don’t really see why you want winning a conference to play-in to the championship bracket. Who cares? If you’re forced to let in a team from, say, the Big East (Cincinnati), it just lowers the bar for everyone.

Let winning a conference just play-in to a major bowl. That should be good enough. The players would probably prefer to play a winnable game, rather than being a sacrificial lamb in a playoff.

by Bleed Blue 'n White on Dec 3, 2008 7:48 PM EST reply actions

I also don’t really see why you want winning a conference to play-in to the championship bracket. Who cares?

That is basically a response to the bowl purists who claim that the integrity of the regular season would be lost in a playoff scenario

by brubby on Dec 3, 2008 9:14 PM EST up reply actions

By playoff "possibilities", you mean, like as possible as world peace, right?

The playoff is the most doable part of your scenario. You’re forcing ND to join a conference? Good luck with that.

by pjk on Dec 4, 2008 9:49 AM EST reply actions

Forcing isn't quite the word...

if a playoff was to proceed – the powers that be would just have to give ND a choice… take the harvard/yale route and forego any playoff or get with the program.

ND stopped being special decades ago

by brubby on Dec 4, 2008 11:10 AM EST up reply actions

ND stopped being special decades ago

Except for the bajillions of dollars they make because of their ridiculously huge fan base.

by Bleed Blue 'n White on Dec 4, 2008 11:53 AM EST up reply actions

Their team is nothing special, but somehow they still get treated like they are

I dislike ND about as much as I dislike Michigan, which is alot, but…
Their AD makes decisions for the BCS along with the conference commissioners, so they are one of the “powers that be”, and have a disproportionate say in what goes on. They won’t be faced with a choice between joining a conference or not being involved.
They already have their own BCS bowl qualifying rule (top 8 finish), so if a playoff happens, they will be allowed to remian independent and get in with a certain record/ranking.

by pjk on Dec 4, 2008 11:32 AM EST reply actions