By Clay Horning
My solution?An eight-team playoff.Sixteen might give it a March Madness feel in December and January and I’m sure I’d love it, because, eventually, a George Masonesque team like Boise State or Fresno State or Rutgers would reach the final four and, be honest, it would be cool.
I just don’t ever see it happening.
That many teams, playing that many games, really would put the bowl system at risk — I might be all for that, too, but the cash cow will not be slaughtered — and now we’re talking about a 16-game season for the finalists unless you can go back to 11-game regular seasons, which seems unlikely, because how much money is one more home game worth to a program like, say, Oklahoma, Michigan or Notre Dame.
So, in the spirit of presenting the doable rather than mountain moving, go with the eight.
If it were me, I’d give the champs of the Big 12, Big 10, SEC and Pac 10 automatic bids. The rest of the nation can fight it out for the remaining four, which would go to the top four teams, as determined by the computers and the polls (kind of like it is now) not already in the playoff and whose conference isn’t already represented.
If No. 1 loses its conference championship, tough.
Why no automatic bids for the Big East or the ACC? Well, frankly, because I’m not so sure those conferences are any better than Conference USA, the WAC, the MAC or the Mountain West year in and year out.
The biggest problem?
Notre Dame might make it every season.
To miss out, the Irish would have to be No. 5 (or lower) once the Big 12, Big 10, SEC and Pac 10 were taken off the board. And that’s quite a fall for Touchdown Jesus.
The best thing about it?
Winning your conference really counts and, with no more than one team from each conference, at least one team from somewhere off the beaten path will be among the eight every season.
Install it this year and you’d have Oklahoma, Ohio State, Florida and Southern Cal (you would not have Michigan, LSU or Wisconsin). You would also have Louisville, Boise State, Notre Dame and Wake Forest.
And who would be furious, I mean, other than Michigan, LSU and Wisconsin? Maybe nobody.
Because here are the conference champions not in the playoff: Houston, BYU, Troy and Central Michigan. And frankly, I just don’t see the Cougars, the Cougars, the Trojans or the Chippewas doing much complaining.
You can even do this about Notre Dame.
Allow one conference two teams, and simply let it come down to the numbers. Do that this season and it’s Michigan in the dance and Wake Forest out. So the Irish are still in, but barely, and not necessarily every season.
Or just keep the bar a little lower for Notre Dame.
Because everybody loves to see the Irish get beat.
n n n
I’ve got to be honest.
This isn’t what I set out to write.
I actually wrote the headline before I wrote the column. It’s already on the page and it says “A playoff would be great but we can live without it.”
See, I was going to, real fast, offer my playoff solution and then say something like, “but it’s never going to happen and is that really so bad?”
Because even while I find the BCS pretty silly and remotely adequate only in a sport that once had absolutely no mechanism for crowning a worthy national champion, I really like this time of year.
I like the bowls. The matchups that only take place in the bowls, like Oklahoma State and Alabama, draw me in, even when you’re talking about two mediocre teams.
I suppose it still stands, the headline. I mean, we can live without it. And yet, after spitballing my playoff, I don’t think I want to live without it.
I’m going to have to change that headline.
n n n
Yes sir, I think I’m on to something.
The Pac 10 and Big 10 need a championship game and this might get them to do it. Because it’s easier to win a division than a conference and the divisional format gives more teams a chance to reach the playoff.
Plus, making it almost impossible to reach the playoff without winning your conference means that even while the actual playoff includes but eight teams, the playoff really begins the first week of conference play.
It also means great non-conference games because, having to win the conference, becoming battle-tested is everything and going undefeated is meaningless.
Think of the matchups.
Here’s how it would be this season.
Ohio State and Wake Forest (No. 1 vs. No. 14 as rated by the BCS), Florida and Notre Dame (No. 2 and No. 11), Southern Cal and Oklahoma (No. 5 and No. 10) and Louisville and Boise State (No. 6 and No. 8).
Say the seeds hold. The semifinals would be Ohio State vs. Louisville and Florida vs. Notre Dame. The final would be Ohio State and Florida.
But you know there’d be at least one upset. And no matter what, Cinderella — Louisville or Boise State — is playing for a spot in the championship.
By George, this could work.
I’d be glued to my set.
Wouldn’t you?
Clay Horning366-3526cfhorning@normantranscript.com
