Weekly Blabber 1/20/2009

I have started a new weekly post called Weekly Blabber. Weekly Blabber will be updated every week with news, information, ramblings and insights pertaining to what's going on in college football.

Today is President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. I think this is a great day for our country! So what does this have to do with college football?

The reason I brought this up is because of Obama's public statements saying there should be a playoff system in college football. I think there are many college football fans that agree with this sentiment. I know I do. There should be a playoff system in Division 1 football. But why hasn't one been implemented?

One word. Money! The current bowl committees are scared to death that rearranging the bowls to suite a playoff could kill the huge payouts by corporate sponsors. Bowls that are big on tradition, do not want to break tradition, such as the Rose Bowl Committee. The Rose Bowl wants a Big 10/PAC 10 matchup. At all costs. Money is probably the biggest reason that a playoff system has just been and will always be just talk.

Establishing a playoff system would be easy. Drop the regular season back to 10 games. Make all the BCS conferences either play a conference championship game or eliminate all conference championship games all together. I think it's really unfair that the ACC, SEC, and Big 12 teams must play a conference championship game, while the Big East, Big 10, and PAC 10 do not. It gives the latter teams/conferences a big advantage in the final rankings, in my opinion.

Next, take the top 8 teams in the final regular season BCS poll and play them in a playoff using the existing BCS bowls. For instance:

#1 vs. #8 = Sugar Bowl
#2 vs. #7 = Fiesta Bowl
#3 vs. #6 = Rose Bowl
#4 vs #5 = Orange Bowl

Then the winner of the Sugar Bowl plays the winner of the Fiesta Bowl, the winner of the Rose Bowl plays the winner of the Orange bowl. The winner of those two games then plays in the National Championship Game.

With this scenario, you end up with a true, undisputable champion. Also there are still only a total of 14 games for the national champion (the same amount that is currently scheduled, if the team plays a conference championship game). Plus, all this could be done with the current bowl schedule with the New Years Day bowls and the January 8th championship game. In other words, you will still have the same amount of games within the same time frame.

All other bowl games for those teams outside the top 8 would stay the same.


I'm sure there are probably a million different scenarios and system that would work in order to have a true playoff. The one I am suggesting is perhaps the simplest. Will it ever become reality?

Probably not.