Wolverine247 Board

Spammer.

Should it stay or go?

I love the Clash.

I'd be fine with a playoff as long as they fixed this stupid polling system they have. It doesn't do much to change the icing on the cake if the cake is still crap cake. Know what I mean?

What kind of icing are we talking here?

@ TAMU Thank you for the welcome! Did you mean you wouldn't be opposed to a plus one?

I don't think it's fair to simply complain about something if you aren't willing to offer up solutions to help fix the problem. So here's my take on what should happen every year to complete a fantastic year of college football.

First, I hear all these folks wanting a playoff. They'd have an 8 team or 16 team or plus one type of playoff. That's great, but MOST of them would base those teams and their qualifications on the BCS criteria. These folks are starting out on the wrong path to begin with. Garbage in , garbage out. We first have to address the polls. We either get rid of the coaches' poll all together or we include every coach in America in the poll. Strength of schedule AND margin of victory need to be taken into account and, if we use any sort of computer poll it would have to be 100% transparent. The criteria for what the pollsters should be / would be looking for would be published so all the schools could schedule accordingly. If I had my way, the polls would not be released until 5ish weeks into the season. I understand that some won't go for that, so if the preseason polls thru week 4 are a must, we can assign a confidence factor that increases each week. This means that being #1 in week 2 isn't the same as being #1 in week 8.

Second, with all the poll stuff taken care of we can look at the playoff scenarios. The numbers I am going to use would be adjusted according to how many teams are in the playoff. For the example, I will assume an 8 team playoff. Of the 8 slots, 5 would go to conference champions of the SEC, ACC, B1G, B12 and P12 IF they are also in the top 12 of the final rankings. This means if a team wins the conference but finishes outside the final rankings, they have to hope for an at large berth. This actually adds a dash of "every game matters" to the mix (something the current system claims it has, but clearly doesn't). You'll notice I didn't include the Big East as a group who can automatically qualify. Sorry, in my opinion, you've lost any credibility you had and no longer warrant preferential treatment. That leaves 3 at large berths to be filled by the highest ranked teams at the end of the year. If the conferences can't produce champions that are also in the top 12, those slots for automatic berths simply go to the wildcard slot. If four conferences have qualifiers, then there would be four wild cards.

That's the process I would use if I were running things all by myself. I haven't made mention of how I'd incorporate the bowls because I really don't care. That should be easy enough to figure out to make all happy. So, how would this process translate to this year?

Auto bids would be: #1 LSU, #3 OSU, #5 Oregon and #8 Wisconsin
At large bids would be: #4 Stanford, #6 Arkansas, #7 BSU and #2 Alabama

#1 vs #8
#2 vs #7
#3 vs #6
#4 vs #5

After each round the highest ranked team to make it through always played the lowest ranked team to make it through. Obviously, if you wanted fewer or more teams you could adjust. You'd also have to adjust the cut off for the automatic qualifier line as well. For example, if you wanted to just do 6 teams, you'd probably want to make the cut off finishing in the top 10.

If one still didn't trust the polling method to rank the teams, and I completely understand why one wouldn't, the other option is to have a committee very similar to that of the NCAA basketball tournament. Have a group of folks sit down and hand pick a group of teams based on specific criteria clearly outlined so everyone knows what the criteria are for being considered.

@ Brady: Excellent Ideas in there, I agree. The BCS formula (or whatever formula they would decide to use) ABSOLUTELY has to be transparent. If that is the metric by which teams are being measured; the teams need to know the metric. I think that is (or should be) fairly obvious. I've read more and more about the idea to reward conference champions with automatic playoff births within a given threshold (you used the Top 12); I am completely onboard with that as long as there are a couple wildcards out there to be given to teams like Alabama this year who didn't win their conference but are easily in the Top 8. I've read a lot of proposals and I think yours stands right up there with the best. Too bad the powers that be in college football don't listen to the fans more than they do. Just out of curiousity, you use 8 teams in your playoff; is that optimum number you would use if you had complete control?