BCS Playoffs With Conference Champions
NCAA Division I Football Should Have Post-Season Tournament
Sep 6, 2009
The start of the NCAA football season has started and so has the race for the most important prize, the BCS Championship Bowl Trophy.
There are 120 schools in Division I football, yet only two teams, the No. 1 and No. 2 rated squads in the poll and computer generate BCS rankings.
The Associated Press poll of sports writers uses to decide who the national championship was, as well as the UPI/ESPN/USA Today coaches poll.
This unfair system of voting the national championship in has been in existence since the beginning of big time college football.
NCAA Division I Football Needs Playoff
Critics of the bowl system have longed hammered the NCAA to start a playoff system, like it has in other sports, including the lower levels of college football.
NCAA university presidents have long resisted the idea. They like the money the bowl games generate, but don’t admit that in public.
The excuse they usually give is it would interfere with players final exams in December which is a weak argument.
Even President of the United States Barrack Obama would like to use his bully pulpit to start some kind of playoff system.
But if one were to be implemented by some miracle of rational thought, how would it work?
Would the NCAA use the current bowls as a playoff bracket?
Or would they go with something else.
Conference Champions in NCAA Football Playoff
There is a school of thought that polls and computer rankings would have no bearing on picking playoff teams.
Of course, the media would still have polls, people want to see them.
But all 120 Division I teams, minus Notre Dame, Army and Navy, belong to a conference.
There should be a 12 team playoff to decide the national champion which would include the 11 winners of each football conference, plus one at large bid to even out the field.
The top four ranked teams would earn a first-round bye in the playoffs.
If a team cannot win its conference championship, then how could they have a claim to a national championship?
This new system would probably force Notre Dame, Army and Navy to join a conference, but that shouldn’t be a hard move.
Notre Dame is a natural fit for the Big Ten. Army and Navy could play in the Middle Atlantic Conference or the Big East.
Critics of this plan would argue that not all the best teams would in the playoffs since some conferences are stronger than others.
So add maybe five at-large teams for a 16-team, four week playoff through the month of December.
This plan might seem far out to some, but it’s better than what the BCS has in place now.
