College Football playoff

To get the system through probably working with the BCS system and Bowl cities is the way to go. Here is my proposal:

1) take the top 8 BCS teams. (Similar system as now except allow the computer polls to modestly factor in margin of victory & fix the quality win bonus for those teams that beat other really good teams twice). Take 5 from the major conference winners, 3 at large. If there is an undefeated team not in the BCS top 8 have a "play in" with the lowest BCS seed (see below).

SCHEDULE
"play in's"--if neccesary around Dec 7th have the undefeated but not top 8 BCS teams take on the lowest BCS seeds at the
-BCS#8's home field. (e.g., BCS#8 versus unfeated below top #8
-BCS team). This way if you go undefeated, even with a cake schedule, you got your shot.

ROUND 1/quarter finals
Around Dec 15:
-BCS#8 or "play in" team at BCS #1
-BCS#7 at BCS#2
-BCS#6 at BCS#3
-BCS#5 at BCS#4

ROUND 2/semi
New Years Day games at sights of traditional bowls.
Every other year the Rose and Sugar get them OR the Orange and Fiesta. Loser BCS teams from week before get opposite bowls.
-Highest BCS versus lowest BCS left (nuetral field)
-2nd highest BCS versus 2nd lowest BCS left (nuetral field)
(you could tweek the above to avoid rematches or same conference teams before the finals if you wanted too)

ROUND 3/BCS championship game
7-10 days post New Year's day
Alternates among the 4 major bowls stadiums but will be one of the ones that did not have the BCS semi's that year.

With this system the travel demands on fans and teams would not be killer, pretty much guarantted sell outs and 7-14 days between all games. Plus if you are top 4 BCS at least you are guaranted on not having to play a road game, if you are below the top 4 BCS at least you still got your chance. This seems to me like a winner all the way around for Bowl cities, NCAA, ABC, etc.

 

Guys no opinions on the above, alternative schemes?

 

I think the key politically is building the semi-finals with the existing BCS sites. One other BCS site would get the BCS final. Thus every year 3 of the 4 BCS bowls have games with NC implications and one site/city gets consecutive weeks of high paying fans. How could they go wrong with this?

I agree, if you are #5 or #6 or #7 or #8 you should count yourself lucky to have any chance, even if you have to start on the road. Also, if you are undefeated but not top 8 BCS because of a cake schedule or cake conference--you still have your chance as well. Also, at least if you are top 4 you won't have a road game with my system. Having 16 versus 8 teams results in a much more compressed travel schedule and more changes needed would need to be made on the conferences--seem logistically far too complicated just to include a lot of marginal teams with 3 loses from power conference or a couple of loses from weaker conferences.

Even just starting with 4 teams would be much better than what we have know--e.g., current system except have the semis in pairs of BCS sites on Jan 1 and a NC game at a BCS site 8-12 days later. But to me the 8 team format with play in's seems as reasonable and politically feasible as your can get.