Early on during this season of college football, there was rampant speculation once again unfolding with Texas A&M's very public desire to leave the Big 12 Conference for the SEC. This started a chain reaction of sorts that led to another round of rumors surrounding the move towards a 16 team megaconference set up. I conceived the idea at the time about a possible move towards a solution to realistically determine the 'real' college football champion without the need for subjective assessment of one's strength of schedule, quality of victory and others that are often taken into account in the human poll.
When I conceived this idea, there was a pretty good odd that the Big 12 and Big East would disband, with the bulk of Big 12 moving to Pac-12 to form Pac-16 and the remaining joining Big 10 or SEC, and the Big East joining ACC to form 4 major 16 team megaconferences. I thought then, that the divisional champions of each school should get an automatic spot in a 8-12 team playoff, which is seeded according to the human polls or other ways in which conferences could win seeding by overall record against other conferences and such. The hosting and sponsors could be replacing some of the bowl games as the quarter and semi final games. Of course, the power conferences will no doubt have an issue with this set up as the only way to play in such a playoff would mean no at-large spots, which was why I added 4 extra play-in spots just like the opening round of the basketball tournament in which these at-large (and really the non AQ conference teams) would play an extra game to play the bigger seeds in the conference.
To be honest, I was drawing up what I was thinking could be the 4 megaconferences that will rule college football. If the whole expansion and moving had gone on, I imagine it would have looked something like this in 10 years time or so.
... or some other arrangement. Specifics are not my point here, but you get the big picture.
Unfortunately, I didn't have space for everyone, so TCU, Baylor and South Florida got shut off from these expansion talks and joins the newly formed conference resulting from the merger of MWC & WAC.)
This allocation for 4, 16 team megaconference sounded great until TCU broke their commitment to Big East and joined Big 12. So this plan goes out the door. But in any case, I wanted to highlight that a 8-12 team playoff structure could have been viable with this plan, where the 8 conference division champions will go on, while there could be 2-4 at-large teams could be included (so that Boise St and TCU could play) to a wild card round of sorts and make the 1 & 2 seeds have a first round bye or some other combination of tournament style play.
I'm personally against moving towards the 16 to sometimes talked about 24 megaconference style (like the newly announced 'alliance' of MWC and Conf. USA). I much preferred the older system in 10 team conferences where you play all 9 of the other conference members to determine a true champion. I understand the motives behind holding an extra game for a conference championship, but really, that is both a benefit (in increasing strength of schedule) and a disadvantage (the 2 best teams in all of college football could lie in the same conference, but only one will make it to National Championship because someone has to lose in the conference championship game, or in case of a 3 team tie, conference could lose any shot at NC because Team A beat Team B and Team B beat Team C and Team C beat Team A. Let's ask the Big 12 about it if it happens this season.)
If we're truly moving towards such a system, then all of the conferences should just merge into one big league like how the major leagues are set up, which will allow for better negotiating rights for TV and sponsorship. The league structure for NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL is what led me to conceive the system I described above.
But of course, talks have changed a bit recently. It looks like Big 12 won't disband. I still think Big East is in serious threat, but if they manage to poach some independent and Conference USA teams, they might survive after all.
Now it looks like MWC had a pretty nice suggestion for creating a 16 team playoff. I actually like that idea, because it gives the so-called power conferences a shot at sending 3 of their teams, which should minimize complaints and also a shot for teams not in AQ conferences to have a legitimate shot. I personally want to expand on this a little and possibly include 18-20 teams with the same format explained above in including conference champions of the non-AQ conferences into a play-in game. Hey, at least everyone has a shot this way. I was personally thinking that MWC and WAC should merge instead of MWC and Conference USA merging to create a 22 team league, but whatever it is, there will be 2 automatic qualifiers of the winners of the AQ conferences (currently I assume ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12, I still think Big East won't exist, but system can accomodate their expansion) with the winners of MWC/Conf. USA, WAC, MAC and Sun Belt playing each other for 2 'wild card' spots playing the remaining 2-4 at-large teams that are determined by polls.
The semi finals and the championship game will be at neutral sites, whereas like the MWC plan, the 4 quarter final games could be sponsored by Rose, Sugar, Fiesta and Orange Bowls, while the other Round of 16 and play-in games could be sponsored by the other bowl games. Conference title games can continue as per usual, but the only impact that will have (since conference division winners guaranteed themselves a spot in the playoffs) is which team will have the higher seeding.
So... theoretically speaking, the playoff system could end up as follows (given this season's record and my personal assumptions):
ACC: Georgia Tech vs Clemson (disclaimer - author is a Georgia Tech alum)
Big 10: Michigan St vs Penn St
Big 12: Oklahoma St vs TCU (in a theoretical expanded Big 12)
SEC: LSU vs South Carolina
Pac 12: Stanford vs Arizona State
Big East: West Virginia vs Louisville (in a theoretical expanded Big East with 2 divisions)
MWC/WAC: Boise St (In my world they merge)
MAC: Toledo
Conf. USA: Houston
Sun Belt: Arkansas St
At-large: Oklahoma
At-large: Arkansas
At-large: Virginia Tech
At-large: Oregon
So in this case, there are 4 play-in games, which are played between the non-AQ conference champions and the at-large teams for a berth in the Round of 16. The 8 teams will be seeded according to human polls, so presumably, this will go:
(13) Boise St vs (20) Arkansas St
(14) Oklahoma vs (19) Toledo
(15) Arkansas vs (18) Houston
(16) Oregon vs (17) Virginia Tech
Winners of the play-in games will continue on to play the other 12 divisional champions in the Round of 16 round where the higher seed acts as the host. For example, this could go:
(1) LSU vs Winner of Oregon vs Virginia Tech
(2) Oklahoma St vs Winner of Arkansas vs Houston
(3) Stanford vs Winner of OU vs Toledo
(4) Michigan St vs Winner of BSU vs Ark. St
(5) Clemson vs (12) Louisville
(6) West Virginia vs (11) GT
(7) Penn St vs (10) TCU
(8) Arizona St vs (9) South Carolina
This system will probably cause a lot of commotion seeing how some of the play-in winners seem to be 'better' teams, so perhaps after the conference championship games are played, the 20 teams all needs to be ranked appropriately before the 20 team playoff can kick off (likely some of the at-large spots will get seeded higher if the Big East or ACC doesn't put quality teams out there). In the revised situation, the playoffs could look like this (assuming BSU, OU, Arkansas and Oregon makes it through for this case):
(1) LSU vs (16) Louisville
(2) Oklahoma St vs (15) GT
(3) Stanford vs (14) TCU
(4) Michigan St vs (13) Arkansas
(5) Clemson vs (12) Arizona St
(6) Boise St vs (11) West Virginia
(7) Penn St vs (10) South Carolina
(8) Oregon vs (9) OU
Then the winner of 1 vs 16 plays winner of 8 vs 9, winner of 2 vs 15 plays winner of 7 vs 10, etc, etc just like the March Madness Tourney.
So, it could potentially shake up like this....
In any case, you see what I mean. My proposal isn't perfect either and needs to be tweaked. I added a bit in there that ensures that teams from the same conference won't meet until the semi finals at the earliest to promote inter conference play. The current system makes winning your conference a secondary priority of sorts and this system will bring back the emphasis placed on conference play since it will determine your path to the playoff and winning it means you can get a higher seed in the playoffs while in the current system winning the conference just means a path to a bowl, not necessarily a shot as the national championship play.
There was a lot of talk about the potential for a plus one game to the national game to make it between 4 teams, but that will continue to have some sort of an anti-trust feel to the system if teams like Boise St continue to get pushed to the side (though in all honestly, the fact that this system only allows one team from non-AQ conference still hints at anti-trust, but hey, it's better than now). I honestly think this system allows everyone at least a shot at possibly making an improbable run - wouldn't that make college football more exciting (if it isn't already) - and besides, if the question is about money, imagine how much more attention a playoff system will get in college football.
As I said, don't get bugged down by the specifics of what I outlined (like how I arbitrarily placed some teams in conference divisions that doesn't make a lot of sense or the seeding of some teams in the playoffs), I'm just trying to highlight the basic structure and convey the big picture idea of what I think should be done.
... So, readers, what do you think? Could this system be improved on and be made viable? I'm curious to see what people think of this format.
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