Indecent Proposal...

This was a headache and I regret saying that I would do this in a previous post. It's a scheduling nightmare for one person to attempt to make a CFB Playoff work, I still have faith in it, but one person can't do it. Just like 400 people and a computer can't make the BCS work.

Here it is. The CFB/BCS National Football Championship Playoff.

First off the structure of said event. I decided to come to a compromise here. Eliminated some games from a playoff scenario and even CREATED A NEW bowl games. So yes, the Bowls are still in-tact. It was the best way to do it. You keep the Bowls that everybody holds so dear, since the majority of which don't mean anything, it's not going to matter if they are included in a playoff or not. The BCS standings still decide those who will participate for the title game, only now, it's a playoff with not 16 or 12, but only 8. Once again, going with less is more here. Minimized the number of final games played from the original vision of a 16 team playoff.

So what we had to do, because of the fact that somehow UConn is in a BCS bowl due to a retarded system and BCS guideline because they are a conference champion and get first dibs, was create another Bowl game for them and Virginia Tech to play in, or to have one of the lower rung bowl games be pushed to a new Bowl.

Then, the current 4 BCS games are the playoffs. Meaning to win the National Championship, you would have to win 3 games, 2 after your bowl game. At most in the scenario, a team would at max end up playing 16 games, same size of the NFL regular season, so it is not overkill. And in doing it this way, you avoid the Coleman Factor, where he stated that a larger playoff would cause teams to lay down and coast into the playoffs.

So now, we re-order the Bowl games. The 4 BC$ games:

Now, we could go with the tried and true seeding of teams based on final ranking in the BCS. However, if we do that, we create a match-up in the Bowls that mimics an SEC regular season match-up in Auburn and Arkansas. Would anybody want to see that game again? It would not bother me, but there would be some that would object.

Or, you can go to a more traditional, pre-BCS, way of selecting teams for the Bowls, via conference affiliations and geography. Keep initial travel down, and still allow the players to 'experience' that Bowl atmosphere for their first round game.

So, once more I compromised. I did a lil' of both of those ideas.

BCS Bowls:

Rose Bowl- A traditional Pac10/Big 10 match-up of Oregon(#2) against Wisconsin(#5).

Sugar Bowl- Gave Ohio State a break from getting their ass handed to them by the SEC and sent them South to take on TCU. They get their chance to defend their lil' sisters of the poor stance now. TCU is fairly close to New Orleans, but Oklahoma would have made more sense logistics wise, but couldn't pass up this match-up with the beef between the two. Throwing #3 in there with #6.

Orange Bowl- Miami is getting an SEC Conference game. Decided that Auburn being #1 was enough to reward them and giving them the lowest ranked team in the playoff, regardless of conference affiliation and regular season repeat. Being #1 at least should earn you something in the playoffs. So, they Arkansas gets another crack at the Tigers, and Auburn gets to vacation close to home in Miami.

Fiesta- The desert is going to get Stanford and Oklahoma. Not a real close game for Oklahoma to play, but they have made that trek before, losing in '07 to Boise State, and getting crushed by a team of destiny WVU in '08. The color,not the bird, gets to stay fairly close to home and get a battle in the first round with the #7. Stanford is at #4.

There you have it the first round is set. On January 1st, you have the Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. You play the two West games on day one and the two East Games on day two, January 3rd, to avoid of conflicting air-times. ABC gets the Rose and Fiesta, and ESPN gets the Orange and Sugar.

Then, 8 days later on January the 10th, you have the quarter final match ups, so how do you schedule those? do you give the Higher ranked teams home-field advantage? For this year, yes. It is the easiest answer to the question right now.

The NFL Regular Season ends on January 2nd. The wildcard weekend is January 8th and 9th. So, The playoff is safe enough here. Football fans are not going to object to all this Football on the tube during this time span. The Divisional Playoffs are on the 15th and 16th. and January 23rd is the conference title games. January the 18th, the Final Four kicks off in Glendale with a double down on that day with both semi-final games . We give them 7 full days off, to practice, prepare, and enjoy the scenery...for a second week. So, there you have it, over the span of one week, in one city, you have the CFB Final Four. The NFL won't have another significant game until January the 30th's Pro Bowl, and I wouldn't even consider that significant. So, January the 26th will be more than safe to have the Title game.

It's set... now we will run the fantasy scenario and see who would be the National Champion.

Who gets screwed here? well, nobody really, but as always, cases could be made for the 'bubble teams' of Virginia Tech, Nevada, Michigan State, LSU, and, yes, Boise State.

So here it comes, the FINAL FOURTH AND GOAL.