Trust Me, It's Broken

An epiphany is an interesting thing. It strikes you when you least expect it. For instance, my family and I had decided that we would go to a local eating establishment one day, and we were waiting to order when a thought suddenly struck me. It was very much like in the first Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book where someone has an idea to fix all the problems in the world. It would work. Everyone would get behind it, and then the world blew up. I had a very similar idea on a smaller scale. It wouldn't fix all of the problems in the world. Just one of the more disputed issues in the world of sports. Maybe that's why the world didn't blow up after I came up with the idea. At least, as far as I know the world didn't explode. I have an idea that would fix college football.

One of the biggest discussions every year is about the Bowl Championship Series in college football. Everyone except for the NCAA and the people directly involved in the bowl games hate the BCS. I've written about it being one of the biggest problems I have with college football. We end the year in a major sport where the champion may or may not be the best team in the nation. We're not sure because the teams that are out on the field for the championship are there because a computer decided that they're the best two teams in the nation, not necessarily because they've proven it on the field. Some have proposed that there be a four or eight game playoff at the end of the season. That doesn't appease the good old boy network that claims this would cause the regular season to be meaningless. I would say that the the BCS has caused the regular season to be virtually meaningless already considering that at the outset of the season, only ten teams have a legitimate shot at going to the national championship game. Why not make most of the season a tournament?

I started thinking down those lines after we had gotten our food, but I needed to flesh out the details a little bit. For one thing, I didn't know how many teams there are in division one football. When I don't know the answer to a question like that, I know what I need to do: Call Gudy. One of the benefits of being friends with a guy like Gudy is the fact that if I don't know the answer to a sports questions, most likely he does. I quickly called him from the cell phone. Here's a transcript of our conversation.

Gudy: "Hello?"

Me: "Hey. How many teams are there in division 1A college football?"

Gudy (without hesitation): "119."

Me: "How many games are in the average team's season?"

Gudy: "11 or 12."

Me: "Thanks. I'll talk to you later." Click.

So now I had all the information I needed. Just the numbers. Here's the details.

• The season would start with each team playing five games. They can schedule these games however they'd like. The could play against conference teams. They could play traditional rivals. This would allow us to still see the match-ups we care about every year: USC v. Notre Dame, Florida State v. Clemson, University of Minnesota v. North Dakota State University, Michigan v. Appalachians State. You know, all the traditional, bad-blood rivalries.
• At the end of those five games, we make use of the BCS computers to rank the teams. Not just the top 25, however. We go from one to 119 with the top nine teams having a first week bye.
• For the remaining seven weeks, the teams play out the bracket.
• If a team loses, they drop down into the consolation round. That's essentially what happens today anyway when you consider that it only takes one loss to drop you out of contention.
• For the consolation group, the top 30 teams participate in the bowls. That'll keep the good old boys happy.
• The two left standing at the end play for the national championship. Last one standing gets the crown.

So, there you go. The one downside of this plan is that the conferences become, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Unless you do something where, based on the final standings, the conferences get some sort of bonus for how their teams finished. The large advantages are nearly self-evident. Everyone, top to bottom, has a chance to win the championship and not just the teams that are fortunate enough to be in the top 15 at the beginning of the season. The bowl games are all still in play. In fact, you can preserve the rotating national championship locations that we have today between the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl. The biggest thing for me is the fact that the champion is decided on the field and not by a computer. It's also all done without adding any games to the schedule, which is another thing people have against a playoff system. To me, this fixes things, whether or not you wish to believe that it's currently broken.

P.S. It is currently broken.