College Football Fallacy

As you probably know I am a a big proponent of a College Football Playoff System. You can Go Here to read more about that, but what I would like to touch on here is what I believe to be a common fallacy among proponents of the status quo, which is a single National Title BCS playoff game. What I believe to be the fallacy, which gets thrown around in the mainstream media (MSM) all the time, is that under the current BCS format the regular season games mean more than it would under an 8 team playoff (picking 8 for arguments sake).

Listening to this argument coming from the MSM got me to ponder if this was really the case. Yes, under the current system the regular season games mean more... but not for many teams. The problem is that too many teams are eliminated from serious championship contention early in the season. If a solid Division-1 team loses a game during the season, it takes a hope and a prayer and devine intervention from a computer program to get a shot at the National Title game. I remember one year, a one loss USC team had its National Title hopes resting on a meaningless WAC game at the end of the year, because their strength of schedule would look better or worse to the computer program depending on who won the game.

Under the current BCS system, as the season progresses more and more teams (often very good ones) drop out of title contention, only to have the rest of their season become meaningless as far as title hopes go. By the last two or three weeks, you only have a half a dozen teams playing meaningful games with the top two or three teams only controlling their own destiny. On the surface, there appear to be quite a few meaningless regular season games. In fact, nearly all the games are meaningless towards the last couple of weeks of the season.

Under an eight team playoff system, you would have college teams fighting for 8 spots, not 2 during the regular season. Many of these 8 spots would be up for grabs deep into a season, thus making more of the regular season games meaningful. No longer would you have a TCU or Boise State team winning every single game during the regular season and have nothing to show for it. I mean, how meaningful can the regular season be, when a good team like TCU or Boise State goes undefeated during the regular season and doesn't get a shot to play for the National Title.

The current system is unfair and it does not render the regular season more meaningful, in fact it renders it less meaningful. Below are my estimates as to how many teams left in contention for the National Title (realistically not mathematically) there are each week under both a 2 and 8 team playoff system.

Week #	BCS 2-Team	8 Team
1	200	200
2	115	140
3	70	110
4	45	90
5	30	75
6	20	62
7	15	50
8	12	40
9	10	35
10	8	30
11	7	25
12	6	20
13	5	17
14	4	15

College Football Playoff System

last updated: 10/18/2010
College football is currently the only major US sport that does not have a playoff system. Currently hundreds of college football teams battle each week to impress a computerized ranking system. Is it fair that a team can go undefeated and not get a chance to play for the National Championship? Is it fair that a computer program can rank the #2 team ahead of the #3 team by .001 and the #3 rank team does not get the chance to battle for the title? Of course the answers are no.

The main argument(s) in favor of the BCS is that all the possible scenarios that different teams have of making the championship game add fun and flavor. The current system knocks some very good teams out of contention of the National Title too early in the season. Often you only have a half a dozen or so teams playing meaningful games the last 3 or 4 weeks of the season. My playoff system is an eight team single elimination playoff that takes place during December and makes use of the prominent bowl sites. The system also takes into consideration whether or not a team won it's conference and it's BCS ranking.

No team not ranked in the Top 12 (arbitrary number that could change) could participate. Any conference champion ranked in the Top 12 would get an automatic bid. All remaining bids would go to the highest ranked non-conference winning teams.
All teams would be seeded based on their BCS ranking. First round games would be played at the home field of the highest ranked team. The semi-final and championship matchups would be played at a rotating BCS bowl site. Bowl sites that weren't involved could be used for other non playoff bowl games. Teams not in the 8 team playoff could still participate in bowl games like they currently do now. I am no longer advocating my 12 and 16 team playoff scenarios as they are not too realistic at this point. The pros are that no undefeated major conference team should be left out, it only takes three weeks to play and there will be more meaningful regular season games towards the tail end of the season. The cons are that it's possible a high ranking non-conference winner could get left out, or that an undefeated team that played a powder-puff schedule would get left out, but I'm not sure that last one is a con.


This is how the current 2010 playoff would look like...


Invited Teams
- Aurburn (SEC Leader)
- Oklahoma (Big 12 Leader)
- Michigan St. (Big 10 Leader)
- Oregon (Pac 10 Leader)
- TCU (Mountain West Leader)
- Boise St. (Western Athletic Leader)
- LSU (wild-card)
- Alabama (wild-card)



Playoff Matchups
#5 TCU vs #4 Auburn
#8 Alabama vs #1 Oklahoma
#6 LSU vs #3 Boise St.
#7 Michigan St. vs #2 Oregon


Remarks: This is what an eight team playoff would look like under my system. Keep in mind it is way too early to crown conference champs so in the case of a tie or where two teams have yet to lose a conference game, I just temporarily selected the team with the higher BCS ranking as the placeholder for the conference champion.