Despite what Josh Elliot or Jay Mariotti or even Barack Obama want to tell you, the NCAA season did not prove that we need a tournament for Division 1 college football. You see, that argument has already been proven. The people want a champion crowned by on the field performance rather than see two teams placed a game based on the whims of a few people and polls.
No, what this football season taught us is that we aren’t ready for a playoff yet. Not until we figure out a fair way to do it. The most common belief is that we should be angling for an 8 team tournament, using the top 8 teams in the BCS. This would mean Texas Tech, for example, would be in the tournament.The same Texas Tech who lost in the cotton Bowl to Mississippi, ranked #25. It would mean that Ohio State who (admit it) played Texas tough, would be out.
The second most popular idea would be to allow the 6 conference champions of the BCS conferences in, while also including two “wild card teams”. If we did this, our tournament would include; Oklahoma, Florida, USC, Penn State, Cincinnati, Virginia Tech, Texas and Alabama. No Utah. No Boise State.
Here’s what we learned about college football this year. The problem isn’t that we don’t have a playoff in place, it’s that we don’t have a fair way to crown a national champion. By throwing in a playoff, we’re really just putting a band aid on the wound. It’s still a problem, but it looks OK and makes us feel better about ourselves, but we’re still covering up the problem instead of fixing it.
If we’re going to institute a playoff system, let’s go the extra mile and make sure that teams play their way into the tournament, rather than get themselves voted into the tournament. If we’re going to have a tournament, it’s paramount that we need to get rid of the polls.
The fairest way to institute a tournament is to allow conference champions, all 11, into the tournament, as is done in the college basketball tournament. Make sure we have the best teams from each of these individual subsets, and don’t discriminate against conferences like the WAC or Mountain West before the season even starts. And don’t tell me an 11 team tournament won’t work. The Big Ten does it every year in basketball. Don’t tell my byes won’t work. They do it every year in the NFL. If either of these are seriously issues, we can expand it to a 16 team tournament and have 5 wild cards. At least then we’ll know we have the best team in the tournament somewhere.
For those who are so vocal about creating a playoff, I hope you get your wish, but please, if you do get your wish, make sure you do it right.
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