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great idea, except it should just be a 16 game field in the playoff. all conference champs and then the at-larges after them. get rid of (or make every conference play one) the conference championship games, that will make the regular season REALLY mean something for those who are worried that the playoff takes away from the regular season. the biggest problem here is that a playoff takes away money from the power conferences and the NCAA football is about nothing more than money. they don't care about winning or losing or even their players for that matter. all they care about is exploiting their players (they'll use the "the players get a free education" excuse, but in the mean time, they are busy counting their 100s of millions while the players get nothing for doing it) to care about actually crowning a champ. why change something that continues to line their pockets with gold and keeps getting them more?

Actually Brad Edwards has it right that this is just the sort of scenario that BCS was created to sort out. It is easy when only 2 teams are undefeated or only 2 teams have 1 loss. It gets murkier when you have a situation like this year (or with 3 undefeated teams).

I am not sure it is greed that drives the process. There has been talk that a playoff would generate far more revenue than the current bowl system. So if greed were a factor, then the playoff would likely lead to more money.
I could see where if the number of teams was kept small in the playoff--say 4---where bowls could survive as a sort of NIT, but with very high quality.

I am not a big proponent of a 16 or even 8 team playoff. I also do not buy the argument about it taking away from academics as football players miss less class time than just about anyone else and even division III has a playoff and it is the most academically focused of the divisions.

The tradition is big. Remember 1-AA did not start that long ago so its playoff system does not go back as far as the Rose Bowl or other bowl games.

A concern is revenue and sharing that revenue (if "greed" is a factor). I think a formula could be developed that would spread the revenue as it does now with the bowls. Some teams lose money each year going to a bowl game (the overall pot of money from all teams in a conference makes up for that loss). In a way, it would be more financially lucrative to stay home although no one wants to do that for a variety of reasons.

If Josh thinks that winning does not matter then why are coaches fired when they do not win? Name the last coach fired because of academics at a 1-A school--not a scandal, but because the athletes were not graduating. Winning means more money since a team gets more fans, more donations and a bigger pay off for bowls and TV, etc. Winning matters.

Maybe the presidents do not want the added pressure of not having the football team get into the playoffs each year and the added pressure of having to fire a coach because the team has not made the playoffs in a few years. At least in the South, a college president would be under a lot of fire from an "underperforming" team.

If 1-A football starts to look like the NFL, then it will lose a lot of its luster to me.

What about an 8-team playoff? The six major conference champs plus two at-large teams (in this year's case, Hawaii and Georgia). That would be much more feasible, and could incorporate the current major bowls as a quarterfinal round. You could even tweak the matchups a bit to honor traditional bowl tie-ins.

This year's matchups:

Rose: Ohio State vs. USC
Sugar: LSU vs. Hawaii
Fiesta: Oklahoma vs. Georgia
Orange: Virginia Tech vs. West Virginia

The excitement of those games would be incredible, especially compared to this year's lineups. A championship team might end up playing a 15-game season, but you could trim that by limiting the regular season to 11 games. There are plenty of teams that play 14 game seasons already.

When people argue that a CFB playoff would generate a lot more money for the college athletic departments, they think this makes a CFB playoff MORE likely. In fact, more money makes a playoff LESS likely. Here is why.

A famous joke: The Presidents of Harvard University and Princeton University are having an argument. The President of Princeton claims that his job is more difficult than that of the President of Harvard. The President of Harvard says: ???I can prove to you in eight words that my job in more difficult than yours. Harvard has a medical school, Princeton does not???.

Medical schools have long been the bane of many a university president. Since medical schools treat patients, they generate their own revenue. And since they do not rely upon the rest of the university for so much of their money, they can-and do-defy the university hierarchy with some regularity.

If a medical college needs an infusion of cash, say for a new cancer research wing, the medical college can solicit contributions from their own alumni, and from the patients they treat. All the other colleges within a university must submit their requests through the university hierarchy. Medical colleges are famously problematic for university presidents since they have their own revenue streams, and their own constituencies, outside the control of the university president.

At many colleges, the football coach makes more money than the university president, and is better known among the public. The football coach is often the public face of a university, and he often has his own constituencies, ready to donate.

Most of the revenue from CFB flows directly to the athletic department, and the general operating fund of the university never sees it. Thus the university president is often powerless to control the coach and athletic director.

But paradoxically, the lack of power or authority over the athletic department does not mean that the university president does not have responsibility for their actions. If there is a major scandal in athletics, the public and the legislature often want the university president (as well as the AD and coaches) to be held accountable. I can think of a handful of instances where the university president were fired along with some coaches and athletic department administrators.

This is a big part of why college administrators prefer to hire new coaches from within-they have much more knowledge about the integrity and behavior of the ???inside??? candidate. A university president will rarely if ever be fired if a new coach fails to win on the field, but his or her job is in real jeopardy if the new coach engenders a major scandal. Thus many schools will hire less-qualified coaches from their own staffs, rather than bring in a proven winner from outside the program who just might not be a straight shooter.

Against this backdrop, the chances of ever having a Div I-A playoff are slim. The presidents of the more academically inclined conferences are actively blocking any progress toward a playoff-and who can blame them? At other schools, the athletic directors and football coaches have much more money and power-and they are effectively in control of their universities. If a university president opposes a winning football coach, the president is usually forced out-not the coach.

The real reasons we won't see a playoff anytime soon are power and money.

The best solution would be to have an 8 team playoff, that way there would still be plenty of other bowl games to go around as in the current BCS system for the teams that qualify for bowls but not for the BCS. The four current BCS bowls would alternate between the championship game, semi-finals and one of the 1/4 final games. Three other bowls could enter the "BCS" system and host the other 3 1/4 final games. I cant see why any of the BCS bowls would object to this since the games they would host would actually mean something and the regular bowl system would still work, since games such as the wake forest-UCONN game would still have the same meaning as it does now.

I think the 12-team playoff is exactly right. The six major conferences would get their spots, and you'd have six at-large spots. Guarantee a bid to other conference winners (and Notre Dame, since they're too wonderful to play by everyone else's rules) as long as they finish in the top 12 (14? 16?). Then fill in the remaining spots according to the BCS, or a selection committee like for March Madness.

It seems like the big constituency against the playoff are the "big four" bowls. So give them their cake, too. Four teams will have byes in a 12 team playoff, so let the bowls grab the top four conference winners and try to align them with the traditional venues. This year, you'd have Ohio State (Rose), LSU (Sugar), Virginia Tech (Orange) and Oklahoma (Fiesta).

Reseed the remaining teams, hold their qualifiers in December (pick four second-tier bowls to host them), and then match the winners against the bye teams in the four Jan. 1-3 bowls. You could match them according to straight seeds, or try to work out traditional matchups (e.g. if USC advanced, have them in the Rose Bowl; if a Big 12 team didn't get a bye, let the Fiesta Bowl snag a play-in winner).

The semifinals and finals would play out in the following two weeks, and they could be held at one of the four sites, rotated every four years, or you could mix them up, or start new bowls. The season's a week longer, but only if you keep a non-conference game at the start of the season, which no one would miss (especially Michigan!). And the New Years bowls are happy. Get it done, NCAA!

I'm so sick of windbags telling us that kids shouldn't have to play games into January. These people don't understand that we don't care about the bowl games. WE REALLY DON'T CARE!!!!!!! WE DON'T CARE! WE DON'T CARE! Playoffs should start in December and conclude with a championship on January 1st. Teams are already playing 14 games per year. Fine. Play 11 games and have an 8 team playoff. Take your bowl games and shove 'em!

So what happens when Hawaii and Kansas emerge from the playoff to play for the title? How many people are going to tune in and actually believe the winner is the best team? With a playoff you never get to see Texas-USC, or Ohio State-Miami. What a playoff does give you is George Mason in the final four, the Cardinals winning the world series, and the Steelers winning the Super Bowl. The BCS has flaws and certain years does not come out how most would like it, but it's not about what people want it's about which teams deserve to be there. A playoff has way too many flaws and will never happen so lets stop crying about a playoff and start talking about what changes could be made to the BCS formula (elimination of the Polls).

I prefer the idea that Keith Jackson came up with: play the bowls with all of the traditional affiliations, and for the bowls that don't have the set affiliations, they can pick from the best available teams. Play all of these bowls on or before New Years. Then, on Jan. 2, have a selection committee choose the best 4 teams, based on the both bowl results and on the total season. Play the semifinals in 2 weeks, then the Championship game the weekend before the Super Bowl. This way, the bowls are all kept happy. Probably even happier, since there may be 6 or 8 or 10 bowls that have an impact on the final 4 selection, versus one bowl currently that has any importance. Plus, the National Championship game has it's own weekend, which would elevate it (eventually) to near-Super Bowl status around the country.

Those who argue that the student athletes would suffer because of the length of the season are way off. There would only be 4 schools involved with 'very long' seasons, and just ask any of the athletes involved how they would feel about this. 100% of them would be for it. These guys come to the great football programs for a reason.

Anyone who says a playoff would diminish the regular season is devoid of logic. College football fans were just treated to one of the most delicious seasons ever, AND 80% still want a playoff.

More is more to the college football fan.

I'm a UF alum, and while UF wouldn't make an 8 team playoff field this year, I would watch every game (that's 7 total). With the BCS, I'll watch two. UF v. Michigan and LSU v. OSU. Everything elseI could care less about.

If the concern is about too many games played, then take the cupcakes off the schedule and make the big 6 conferences play a championship game. SEC, Big 10, Pac-10, ACC, Big East and Big 12 winners are in. Two at-larges: An undefeated mid-major (Hawaii, Boise St, Utah), independent (ND - who should be in the Big 10) or a power conference team that didn't win their conference (Georgia). You can still use the BCS system to rank the teams, use the BCS bowls as the first round of the playoffs, and create the Final Four.

Three drunk college kids and a lawyer who doesn't talk but only writes could get this done over a weekend bender to Tijuana.

Wow, i just don't understand how people can be against a playoff. If Hawaii played Kansas in the title game then they would have beaten two other teams ON THE FIELD!!! And everyone would watch and care, just as people watch the March Madness final game even if it's a 3 seed against a 6 seed. Also, George Mason getting to the final four was the most exciting thing from that tournament. start the playoff system in Dec and the students won't be playing deep into Jan.

Response to G$Buckeyes.

People don't care about tradition nearly as much as most "big school" fans think they do. I go to OSU, but I'm not from Columbus. As big as Buckeye football is in Ohio (and I'm an OSU fan), people from outside the state aren't convinced it's the Magna Sum Laude of the football world simply because the fans can spell O-H-I-O with their arms. People follow winners and no matter how much a team won 40 years ago or even 10 years ago, it's not a more entertaining matchup than watching good teams play. Just look at the attention So. Florida was getting before it tanked. Other than OSU-LSU (for personal reasons), the most exciting matchup this year is Hawaii-UGA - because we finally get to see how the supposedly invincible SEC handles a team that can actually throw the ball.

People can argue all day about the tradition of CFB, but the tradition argument is a load of bunk. The national champion until 1968 was determined BEFORE the bowl games and the bowl games were similar to the Pro Bowl - glorified scrimmages. Too many fans of the "big schools" are busy thinking that what happened in the 1940s still matters - it doesn't. Just ask Army.

stupid idea, a playoff system is needed but not like this,
check out my blog, the only post there is how I think the system should be fixed. it was written as a essay for school, so it's too long to post here

-- 8-team or 12-team playoff
-- Use the BCS bowl games in the playoff.
-- Participants and seedings should be determined strictly by complete BCS rankings, regardless of conference affiliation. No automatic bids for conference winners.

Let's pretend that Michigan, Ohio State and Wisconsin all finish the season 11-1. Ohio State beat Michigan, Michigan beat Wisconsin, Wisconsin beat Ohio State. Does the Big Ten get three automatic bids?

Let's pretend that Michigan had beaten Ohio State this year. Michigan would have had the best record in the Big Ten at 7-1, but their overall record would have been 9-3. Should a 9-3 team even be in the playoffs, much less be a top seed over a bunch of one and two loss teams.

Let's pretend Notre Dame is a ranked #1 in the BCS. Do they slide all the way to a 5 or 7 seed because they're not affiliated with a conference?

Last year, the two best teams in the Big 12 were Oklahoma and Texas, but Oklahoma played Nebraska in the conference championship game. Oklahoma lost to Texas in the regular season. Oklahoma and Nebraska lost their bowl games while Texas won theirs.

...Let the BCS rankings decide. They're fair and indisputable.

@RP-29:
Part of the problem with the current system is that the BCS rankings are more arbitrary than fair. Why did LSU jump so many spots for beating Tennessee? Virgina Tech won their game and their conference. And neither Ohio State nor Georgia played, but one went up to #1, and the other fell to #5.

Given that colleges are almost all aligned in conferences, and since the majority of a team's games are played within the conference, the conference winners should get recognition in a playoff. This would placate the main four bowls and their affiliations, and everyone loves arguing about the relative strengths of conferences anyway.

Your example about an 11-1 Ohio State, Michigan or Wisconsin doesn't have to mean the Big Ten gets three automatic bids. They have tiebreakers to choose a winner, which they already use for their BCS bid. And maybe a 9-3 Michigan team wouldn't deserve a high playoff seed or a bye, but Florida State won the ACC at 8-4 in 2005, earning their conference's BCS bid.

A playoff would be the best answer. What I heard for not having a playoff is that the unv presidents were affraid of missed time around the holidays and exams and that it would leave a lot of teams out if only 16 got to play for the title.

What was missed is that Div II does it, and they were not thinking outside the box. Do the first round early ,then the next three strating when the first bowl starts around the 21st. That would take the champ game the first week of Jan.

Also for the teams that were not part of the play off you can still have the bowls. OK I heard they become meaningless. Arn't they now??? If your not a fan of team X playing in the Walnut bowl is it going to get ratings or are you going to care who wins outside of an office tourny? Are you going to remember who played in taht bowl next year?

Or have another tourney (Hint the NIT) just like b-ball.

The fans want it, it adds excitment and pride. It lets the cinderella team develop. Gives exposure to teams that are in weaker conferences the chance to prove themselves that they will not have other wise.

Everybody knows this is the answer, lets just do it. plain and simple (maybe not that simple). March madness in December BABY!!!

A 16 team playoff seems the only answer.

Participation would be granted to the conference champs of each of the 11 major conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big 10, MAC, Mtn. West, Pac 10, USA, SEC, Sun Belt and WAC).

However, the conference champ would have to be at or above a minimum power ranking as established by a Sagarin-like ranking system in order to receive the automatic bid. If not, that spot would be filled by an at-large team.

If all conference champs were above the minimum then 11 of 16 seeds would be taken leaving the other 5 to be filled by at -large teams from any conference. These would be determined by the highest power rankings available.

Independents like Notre Dame would either have to become affiliated with a conference or be ranked high enough for an at-large bid.

Now here is the hard part.

Of the existing 31 bowls, only 15 would be part of the playoff system. Starting the first weekend in December 16 teams would play in 8 bowls. These would be the second tier bowls like the Insight, Cotton or Peach, etc.

The existing big-time bowls would get the later round games (4 games the second week, 2 the third and 1 the final week). The championship game and would rotate among the top bowls. Or another ide is that all 15 bowls get to bid on the game just like the NFL cities get to bid for the Superbowl.

A playoff is the only way to fix this situation and to send the debacle that is the BCS where it needs to go...into the history books.

Most problems people have with a playoff have to do with thinking about it with the way the current regular season works, and the way current rankings work. So there's not enough time, etc. For a playoff, why not change/shorten the regular season? Why must teams play, for the most part, 3 cupcake games to start the year? Get rid of these, and you can have a playoff.

It's very simple, but all the solutions most everybody comes up with involves keeping the current regular season and BCS rankings, but if you just slightly change those, while still keeping rivalries and traditions and even bowls, you can have a playoff.

If interested, see my fix at:
http://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/85176?new=true

I know I'm not an expert, but why not? Thoughts....

For RP-29

Do you even know the average college football fan??? I'm a Michigan fan, and even if they weren't in the playoff, I would have watched EVERY SINGLE GAME of a playoff!! The matchups are unbelievable and should make every college football fan drool. Also, the BCS is by no means indisputable. In my memory, the only time it worked well was 2005 Texas-USC, and nothing could have screwed that up. If the BCS is indisputable, why wasn't Auburn in the National Championship game in 2004???? How does a team go UNDEFEATED and not even sniff the title? Auburn got screwed out of a championship, plain and simple. Please, will ANYONE defend the BCS on 2004!!

It's ironic that you propose a 12 team playoff in a 16 team bracket, giving byes to the highest ranked teams and then shutting out conference champions from mid major conferences. If these teams are not that good then why should you be afraid to match them up with the best teams in the land?
What we need is a 16 team bracket that includes all 11 conference champions plus 5 at large teams based on BCS rankings. Seed those teams by their BCS ranking and let the players determine who is the champion on the field.