Playoff Proposal
In 1992, the Bowl Coalition was founded in a vain attempt to try and match the top two teams in the country in some kind of national championship. The agreement was between college bowl games and conferences: the Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta, Gator and Sun bowls with the SEC, Big 8, SWC, ACC, Big East and independent Notre Dame. This system was replaced by the Bowl Alliance starting in the 1995 season. The Bowl Alliance involved the champions of the SEC, Big 12, Big East, ACC and two at-large teams. It included the Fiesta, Sugar and Orange bowls. It didn’t do much better than the Bowl Coalition.
And then, in 1998, a day of infamy in the eyes of college football fans, the Bowl Championship Series was born. In the wake of the Bowl Alliance and Bowl Coalition’s efforts, the BCS took elements from both and made it more comprehensive to include of D-IA football. Division-IA was replaced with the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) with six major conferences and five minor conferences as we know it today.
The premise of the BCS is the same as the Bowl Coalition and the Bowl Alliance. Until 1992, all bowl games were run completely independent of each other. Each bowl had their certain tie-ins. The Rose Bowl, for example, always hosted the Pac 10 champion and the Big Ten champion. Because of this system, the best teams in college football didn’t necessarily always play each other in bowl games. Since college football’s champion was decided by who won the AP/UPI polls after the bowl games, it was difficult to agree on who the best team was because the bowl games never consistently matched the top teams in the nation.
The BCS came in as the solution. Former SEC commissioner Roy Kramer is believed to have put it all together. Lo and behold, after ten seasons, the BCS has failed miserably and proved to be just as inadequate as its predecessors. Not only is it impossible to determine the two best teams in the country consistently each year, it is downright unfair. The BCS essentially created two leagues in Division-IA: the SEC, ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac 10 are the top-tier league, with the MWC, WAC, Sun Belt, C-USA and MAC as the lower-tier league. For example, in 2008, 9 of the 10 BCS bowl game participants came from the top-tier conferences, while two teams from lower-tier conferences were ranked in the top ten.
The problem with the BCS is that there is no ranking, poll, committee or anything else that can pick the two best teams in the nation after a 12 game regular season every single year. In a year when there are only two undefeated teams then sure, easy to pick the two best. But in years when there aren’t two clear-cut favorites, the BCS is inadequate. Is the BCS a step up from the Bowl Alliance and the Bowl Coalition? Yes, of course. But as a means of determining a national champion, the BCS is an absurdity. It gives us some great bowl game match-ups, but before the season starts, it has already determined that only 65 of the 120 teams can play for the national championship.
And that is why the College Football Cafeteria presents our official sixteen-team college football playoff proposal. Unlike Dan Wetzel in his proposal, I will give credit where credit is due. While I came up with my own version of a sixteen team playoff long ago, I used elements from Joe Rozsa’s proposal. Specifically, the idea of releasing eliminated teams into traditional bowl games and not having conference match-ups in the first round. I do have a different timeline, but other than that, our ideas are essentially identical. So are Dan Wetzel’s if you believe they were his ideas and not Joe’s first. Either way, great minds think alike, and Joe and I came up with similar plans independent of each other. I just liked two of his points, so they are included in my proposal.
Continue through the links below to see the details of our college football playoff proposal.
- Why is a playoff necessary?
- How it works
- Bowl games and timeline
- Share your thoughts on a college football playoff
