Finally: BCS to endorse playoff
by Griffin H.
To all of those fans out there begging for a BCS Playoff, your calls have been heard and answered. Conference commissioners, Notre Dame AD, and others met last week about possible scenarios for the end of the season in college football for the future. The BCS has decided to endorse a “Final Four” which will most-likely be a four-team neutral site playoff, but they have decided to look into 2-7 possibilities when they meet again this summer for what this Final Four will look like.
Hold your horses though, because regardless of what they choose it will be put in effect in the 2014-15 season, so two more years before we get there.
Some scenarios say there should be a selection committee, which does not suit well with me. I think they should continue to use the BCS ranking system to find the four teams (1-4 in the rankings). Also some scenarios say college campuses should be able to bid on hosting the semi-final games, which could be a lot of fun to keep track of, and would vary greatly from year to year. In order to do this right, however, I think there needs to either:
A. Have limitations on who can bid, like stadium size (ex. TCU holds 45,000 people but you want lots of fan turnout, so the limit is 75,000 for more seating and money), or location (ex.Georgia is in the Final Four playing Oregon and Georgia Tech wants to bid, which would be home-field for Georgia pretty much, so it has to be at least 300 miles from each college).
B. Have colleges bid seasons in advance so that they will already be in place when that season rolls around and there won’t be as much controversy.
I don’t think either of those options are very fair, so I don’t really like the bidding-war aspect of it either.
Some people think that AQ (Automatic Qualifying) teams (i.e. SEC Schools, Big 12 Schools, etc. ) should get priority over non-AQ teams (i.e. Boise State, Houston, etc.), which isn’t right. You need to get rid of AQ and just take the top-four teams and pit them against each other, conference shouldn’t matter. Conference Championships still need to stick around, and will still count for something, but won’t guarantee any spots (i.e. South Carolina wins the SEC with a 10-3 record, while Oklahoma State loses the Big 12 Title Game to Iowa State (9-4) when they are 12-1. Oklahoma State is probably higher in the BCS and would go ahead of South Carolina).
Another scenario is that you would pick four teams after the bowl season is over.
What? I don’t think so.
This would be my ideal scenario: After the end of all the conference championships the final BCS standings are announced and instead of the dramatic question of “Who is #2?” it would simply be “Who is #4?” and the top four teams would play semi-final games (1 vs 4, 2 vs 3) on a rotating schedule of the top-tier bowls such as the Rose Bowl and Fiesta Bowl. Then the winners would play in the finals (such as the Orange Bowl, which would rotate like the semi-finals). Then you have your champion, a better way to find a champion than we have right now.
When they meet again in June we will know for sure what awaits us in 2014.
Griffin can be reached at teens4tn@gmail.com, or leave a comment. Follow @teens4tn on twitter, like us on Facebook, or subscribe in the sidebar! ->
