Playoffs?

A wise man once said- "Anyone can smell a rotten egg; it takes someone special to lay a golden one".

Folks a lot smarter than me have offered their solutions, but even those have flaws- The Old School Plus One would either leave two teams who won their bowl games arguing that they deserved a shot; Brian's plan takes away from conference championships and current bowl tie ins (unrealistic, given the money involved).

Consider this my golden egg. First, a review of the rules:

1. Colleges cannot play more than 11 regular season games (one less than current numbers)
2. First poll is not released until the end of September (after teams have played); Coaches and AP polls abolished for conflict of interest (or if continued, cannot be used in televised commentary)
   
3. 6 wins needed to be bowl eligible, games against non division 1 schools do not count towards total
4. The major 6 conferences will need to adjust their membership to include 12 teams
   
5. Each conference decides their champion by a championship game; how they determine who plays there is up to them
6. This CCG should be considered the first round of the playoffs; a team who loses is eliminated from the postseason tourney, but may still play in one of the many other bowls
   
7. The six conference champions will be matched up into a playoff; number one seeds determined by a ranking formula similar to current BCS (including schedule strength, margin of victory,etc.)
8. The last two spots will be filled by the highest ranked two teams remaining, as long as neither team played for their conference championship . This allows for teams who are in a stronger division within their conference (Big 12 South, SEC East) or are not within a power conference (Boise State, Tulane) to be involved, preventing any ridiculous legal action.
9. No more than two teams from any one conference in the final eight, and teams from the same conference must play in the first round; the final four will consist only of one team per conference
   

So today, we'll start with rules 4 and 5 (since the first three are not really relevant here): Conferences and Champions.

The Big 12, SEC, and ACC are already good, so we need to tweak the PAC 10, the Big T1e1n, and the Big lEast.

To me, the PAC 12 is easy: Add BYU and Utah, and you've got two really good divisions- North (UW/WSU/UofO/toOSU/BYU/Utah) and South (U$C/UCLA/Cal/Stanford/UofA/ASU).

This year, U$C and Utah would square off in Tempe for the championship, with U$C emerging as the PAC 12 champ.

The Big T1e2n gets a bit more complicated: Ntre Ame is the logical addition, but the divisions are more challenging. For the sake of rivalries and splitting up the traditional powers, let's go with this: Corn (tOSU/UM/MSU/Indiana/Purdue/Iowa) and Cheese (Penn State/Notre Dame/Minnesota/Wisconsin/Northwestern/Illinois).

This year, Soldier Field would see Penn State defeat Ohio State for the championship (and yes, it hurt to type that.)

The Big lEast is even more confusing, mostly because I don't care. They need to add four teams to get to 12, so let's raid the mid majors and independants: Army, Navy, East Carolina, and Buffalo, come on down. Here's the divisions- Rivers (WVa/Pitt/Syracuse/Buffalo/UC/UofL) Oceans (South Florida/Army/Navy/UConn/Rutgers/ECU).

At Giants Stadium, West Virginia beats East Carolina for the automatic bid.

Our 6 champions, then: Virginia Tech, Florida, Oklahoma, U$C, Penn State, and West Virginia. So, who else gets in? Last year, it would have been Georgia and Hawaii; 2008 sees Texas and Boise State as at large candidates.

And this is where the controversy begins- Are Texas Tech (one loss, ranked higher), Alabama (ditto), Ohio State (personal favorite), etc. better than Boise State or one of the teams from the ACC/Big lEast? Sure, but they didn't win their conference championship game (rule 6), or had another conference at large team ranked higher (rule 9).

Look, anytime there's any sort of ranking there's going to be some controversy. Think of March Madness- even with 65 teams there are others who feel shunned unfairly. And there are often others who end up in a really easy bracket or a really difficult one. It's a part of the nature of the game- The Patriots only lost one game last year, but it was in the Super Bowl to an allegedly inferior opponent. In football and college basketball, it's not "best of..." series- it's one and done.

And you have to draw a line somewhere- my line is that national champions should also be conference champions. It keeps the regular season meaningful, and will reward (or at least not penalize) teams for playing difficult out of conference games- you can lose one, win your conference, and still be dancing at the end. Also, if you're in a difficult conference and "beat up on each other every week", your record won't matter if you win your CCG.

Now that we've got the teams, tomorrow we'll look at how this would all come together.