Bowl Championship Survey

I was watching College Gameday (as is my normal Saturday wake-up routine) and I actually had to rewind the live TV because I could not believe what I was hearing: Nearly all of these guys that I love to listen and laugh to each week, had suddenly lost their minds. Corso, Herbstreit, Fowler, and even Desmond Howard all were coming out AGAINST a playoff system?!?

Here's the gist of their argument: They were saying that the system works-That despite early problems with the system, the last two years the BCS has pitted #1 against #2. They were also saying that the fans would never be up for flying to one bowl one week and then have to follow their team again the very next week in order to pack out areas that seat over 100,000 people.

Here's my take: Did they forget about Auburn so quickly?!? Herbstreit especially has been all aboard the Auburn bandwagon last year when they went undefeated and did not get the opportunity to play for the National Championship. He is so enamored with them that he was actually lobbying for them to get into a BCS bowl game instead of Oregon, who's only loss this year so far has been to #1 USC.

Now, back to why I bring up the Auburn scenario. The 'analysts' were saying that if College Football adopted a playoff, it would only move the controversy down to the debate over who would get into to the playoffs as the #8 seed. I say-"WHO CARES?!?" I say that if you win all of your games, you as a team, have done all that you can do to stake a claim at the National Championship. Auburn last year did everything that it could do: It won all of its games, coincidentally in the very conference (the SEC) that most analysts-including the guys on Gameday-like to say is the toughest conference in the country.

Wouldn't it be better to have the debate center on those teams that had not won all of their games instead of on those who do not have strength of schedule issues, who won all of their games, and did all of their talking on the field?!? As much as everyone likes to talk this year about the 'feel good' story of JoePa and the Penn State Nittany Lions-they still did lose to Michigan and noone can deny that fact. It doesn't matter that people didn't like the fact that the refs added time on to the game and that is why people feel that Michigan won. The result of the game was a W for Michigan.

I would much rather not have to worry about rewarding those teams, like Auburn, last year that had put in the effort to win all of their games than worrying over who I might offend because I kept them out of the playoffs when they didn't even win ALL OF THEIR GAMES!!!

So, now that my rant is over, and as Tony Kornheiser of the great PTI always says: I WIN!, here is what I propose for the "NEW AND IMPROVED COLLEGE PLAYOFF SYSTEM:

1) Let the BCS or whatever system 'they' want determine the rankings for the Division 1-A football teams.

2) The top 8 ranked teams in the country in the final BCS poll get invited to participate in the playoffs to compete for the National Championship.

3) The first round games will be hosted by the higher ranked team-so right now, this year- USC would host Notre Dame, Texas would host Oregon, Penn St would host Ohio St, and LSU would host(?) Virginia Tech.

4) The next round of games could be rotated each year between the BCS Bowls-the Fiesta, Orange, Sugar, and Rose Bowls-with the National Championship game rotating sites each year just as it does now.

5) Here's the last and most important point for those that like to look at the "revenue" aspect of the BCS-I propose that the semifinal games be played on their normal New Year's Day schedule with the National Championship game played the weekend in January between the NFL Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. I think that this would take advantage of a week off in the football calendar and allow the teams to prepare for the matchup and further tie college football ratings into the NFL's.

Well, that's my rant-What do you think?!?