Wayne's Wild World of College Football

I'm planning on sending a proposal to President Obama that includes adding me to his cabinet as Secretary of Sports and Recreation. Then I will just meet with the Commander-in-Chief briefly each week to make sure we have the same agenda, and he can focus on foreign relations and fixing the economy blah blah blah.

My idea is to have a 16 teams qualify for the playoffs. The champion of each of the 11 conferences gets an automatic bid, as well as the 5 highest seeded teams in the BCS that did not win their respective conference.

Seeding would be determined by end of season BCS rankings. The conference winners not ranked in the top 16 of the BCS would take the lowest seeds. Teams would be divided into 2 eight-team brackets.

Assuming the higher ranked teams win their championship games this week, and the losers of those games don't drop in the rankings, the brackets would look like this, with the higher seeded team playing on their home field:
Left side of Bracket:

#1 Alabama (SEC) vs. #16 Troy (Sun Belt)

#8 Penn State (Big 10) vs. #9 Boise State (WAC)

#4 Florida (At Large) vs. #13 Cincinnati (Big East)

#5 USC (Pac-10) vs. #12 Ball State (MAC)

Right side of bracket:

#2 Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. #15 Tulsa (Conf. USA)

#7 Texas Tech (At Large) vs. #10Ohio State (At Large)

#3 Texas (At Large) vs. #14 Boston College (ACC)

#6 Utah (Mountain West)vs. #11 TCU (At Large)

The only team with 2 losses or less that would be left out of the playoffs would be BYU, and they along with some 3 loss teams like Oklahoma State, Georgia, Oregon and Georgia Tech, may feel screwed when teams like Troy and Tulsa get in.

However, this is what makes every single regular season game important. If you lose more than 1 game in your conference, you know you're running the risk of not making the playoffs. If you can't finish in the top 2 or 3 of your conference, maybe you should consider moving to the SunBelt or Conference USA.

It's much better than the situation now where Texas feels they are getting screwed out of the national championship and Texas Tech and Boise are likely to be screwed out of BCS games altogether as they watch Cincinati, Ohio State, and BC or VTech play in the big money bowls.

This format also rewards the conferences with the better teams for the year instead of "honoring tradition" as the Big 12 gets 3 teams in. The Mountain West also gets 2 teams in while the Big East, Pac-10, and ACC only get 1 each this year. This way the little guy can't complain as much about getting screwed, and the big boys only have to worry about winning. Assuming the higher seeds win, the next round of my playoff format would look like this:
#1 Alabama vs. #8 Penn State (Holiday Bowl)

#4 Florida vs. #5 USC(Sugar Bowl)

#2 Oklahoma vs. #7 Texas Tech(Cotton Bowl)

#3 Texas vs. #6 Utah(Rose Bowl)

I'm sure there would be some upsets along the way, but for simplicity's sake, we're going to assume the higher seeds win every game again to help visualize the next round.
#1 Alabama vs. #4 Florida (Fiesta Bowl)

#2 Oklahoma vs. #3 Texas(Orange Bowl)

The National Championship game would rotate every year like it does now between the sites of the 4 major bowls. The Sugar Bowl and Rose Bowl would alternate every other year with the Fiesta and Orange Bowls between being semi-final and quarter-final games.The other bowl games I just randomly plugged in, but a system could be organized to rotate those games as well.

The 24 other bowls not included in the playoffs could still be held. There will still be 11 of the BCS top 25 available for these games and there should easily be another 37 unranked teams throughout the nation that have winning records. The quality of the matchups and the viewership of these bowls won't change much as they will all be aired between December 23 and January 1 while the 1st 2 rounds of the playoffs are taking place and people are off from school and work and watching 3 or 4 games a day.

In order to prevent the student athletes from being overloaded, the teams in conferences without championship games will only be allowed to play 11 games. (Instead of the 12 most of them are currently playing) Pac-10, Big East, Moutain West, WAC, etc, would be able to play every team in their conference but would just have 1 less non-conference game.

The teams that have conference championship games would be limited to 10 season games plus the conference championship for the 2 teams that qualify. The Big 12, SEC, ACC, etc, would still be able to play all 5 teams in their division. They could also play half (3) the teams in the other division of their conference(alternating each year) and still get 2 non-conference games each year.This way there are only 2 schools in the entire country whose teams play the maximum 15 games over the course of the year. It's not a flawless system yet, but it's close.