As someone who is not a fan of OU, LSU, or USC .... it's time for a playoff system. Decide it on the field!
They have playoffs in Division II and Division III. Why can't they do int in Division I? BCS stands for Big Crappy Shite. The old system was better than BCS.
And, Mike, of course, Division I-AA has a playoff. Hopefully, I'll be able to make it to the Delaware-Wofford semifinal this upcoming Saturday.
1) Oklahoma was the best team thru the entire season 2) LSU and USC deserve to be in the sugar bowl using the current system 3) Michigan is/was playing the best football of anyone the past month or two. It all means there should be a playoff. Do away with the pre-conference schedule and only have conference title games for conferences with 2 or more divisions. Not sure what to do with Notre Dame but the bugs could get worked out later. 16 teams would be in the playoff.
I find it ironic that with the "old system" this would be the same matchups we see now. Well, at least the SEC is in the Sugar, the Pac/Big Ten are in the Rose.
It's not the same. In the old system, the AP _and_ coaches could vote for USC to be the national champion if they won against Michigan. In this setup, no matter what the #1 team in the nation does, they must split their championship with the winner of the #3 vs. #2 game. That's what is different. Sykotyk
To piggy-back on what Cikowski posted, I think you limit non-conference games to 2 (there are rivalries that should be retained outside of conferences such as USC-Notre Dame, Florida-FSU, FSU-Miami, Colorado-Colorado State.... the list goes on.) Then, you take the top 16 teams, determined through a combination of rankings in the two polls, conference champs and at-large bids and let the teams play it out. Lesser bowls still exist, and are still important, because everybody wants to see their teams play an extra game or two (especially for the teams that just don't quite make the playoff). Big daddies like the Rose, Fiesta, Orange, and Sugar spread out over two or three weeks, rotating if need be, as semifinal and final venues (the odd one out each year will get a quarterfinal matchup the week of Christmas.) The national champion is decided no later than the second week in January. Obviously, some bubble teams in the 13th-20th ranking nationally will be left out of the playoff. But it's a lot easier to do that and leave a 8-4 #17 Florida team or a 11-1 # 19 TCU team out of the playoff, than to split the national championship. Let them play it out on the field....
They take all of the conference champions, and a bunch of football people decide on some at-largesse to get the number of participants up to an even power of 2, just like in B-ball. If that means that Miami of Ohio plays in the tourney while Miami of Florida stays home one year, oh @#$%ing well, just like in B-ball... go play in the NIT bowl, and win your conference next year. It'll make all of the regular season games exciting. Regular season could play 'till thanksgiving (again), and they'd still be done with a six-round playoffs (32 teams) around the first of the year. Big Bowls could host some of the later-round games, and smaller bowls could be used as grudge-match consolation-type games for the decent teams shut out because they can only take 32. It's a thought.
Simple: Eliminate all conference championship games. 16 team playoff. All conference champions (I think 11) qualify. Prior to beginning of season, NCAA determines the 5 strongest conferences from the previous year. Runners-up from those conferences also qualify, although they must play all games on the road. Notre Dame excluded until they join a conference. If you want to keep bowls for non-playoff teams be my guest.
Why are college bowl games played right around New Year's? They are sponsored by chambers of commerce in tourist destinations to get people who, otherwise, would spend the holidays home with their families, to fly to a distant city, stay in the hotels, eat in the restaurants, visit the attractions, and spend a lot of money. NOT for the entertainment of fans. TV came later, and is secondary, except for the BCS championship itself. What would happen if we had a playoff? We'd have to find a time to play it. The run-up to Christmas, when everybody is too busy, when the little colleges play theirs, is a bad idea. The same weekends as the NFL playoffs is a much, much worse idea, for reasons too obvious to type. And no matter what we did, it wouldn't serve the real, original purpose of college bowl games: to fill up the restaurants and hotels, and rent the cars, in places like Pasadena and Phoenix the one weekend of the year when they won't be filled with ordinary tourists and business travellers because of the family holidays.
Unless the games were played in the bowls themselves. 6-6 teams shouldn't be playing anyway. Too many of the games currently incorporate an inexcusably weak team. Add a handful of non-BCS bowls to the playoff system and a championship game on the back end and we're all set.