"Fixing" college football -- let's see your solution

[Jeff W]

I guess I'm in the minority, but I like the current system. Controversy is good and I like that there is so much pressure on teams in the regular season. Anyway, it's not like there have been a string of unworthy national champions under the BCS.

[lippy]

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Have the entire season be 1 big playoff bracket. Maybe have 1 or 2 warmup games tops.

OMG would this be rediculously exciting. I would watch and I have no college football team that I root for.

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That'd be so good, but so impractical.

[NajdorfDefense]

[ QUOTE ]
I guess I'm in the majority, but I like the current system. Controversy is good and I like that there is so much pressure on teams in the regular season. Anyway, it's not like there have been a string of unworthy national champions under the BCS.

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Best regular season of any sport. Every game counts, whether it's v Notre Dame, App St, or Oklahoma.

Or, go with 128 teams and wrestlebacks.

If you like college football, what's wrong with debating the merits of 1991 Miami v 1991 Washington? Or 1994 PSU v 1994 Nebraska? Most years, there aren't 2 undefeated top tier teams anyway, and now the BCS has solved that problem.

If you don't go undefeated, you have no room to whine anyways.

[HajiShirazu]

Ripoff from soccer and have a promotion/relegation system. Have the BCS conferences be division I (but equalize the number of teams), lump the mid-major conferences that are basically DII now anyway and have them be DII, and have the "championship division" be DIII. Bottom team in each conf. is auto relegated, top team in each DII conf. goes up, and 2nd worst have a playoff with a 2nd best DII team. Same for DII/DIII. Relegate/promote teams into conferences that make geographic sense whenever possible (or just have the conferences each have agreements with one another).
Each team plays 8 conf games, 2 against DI, and 1 against either DII or DI, to allow for traditional rivalries/matchups.
Best record in each top 6 conference goes to 8 team playoffs along with two wild cards. Have a DII playoff among conference winners as well.
Obviously the money/contractual issues would make this difficult but in the end there would be way better games and more excitement for fans of both small and big colleges.

[ThaSaltCracka]

If they could refine BCS and get rid of the human bias, it would be better than anything in any other sport league. The NC relies heavily on regular season performance, which is a great thing, and relies less on a dodgy playoff structure. As long as they can find a way to best ensure the title game has the best 2 teams in the country, its great. I think there has to be a way to measure this, and a possible answer could be a few more regular season games.

[ThaSaltCracka]

I want to add that College football has the best "post season" in American sports, with MLB being second, followed by the NFL. The NBA and NHL are disgusting.


and if you want to know why:
CF:2 teams
MLB: 8
NFL: 12
NBA 16

[jstnrgrs]

Well, i would be a fan of a 16 team playoff with all 11 conference champs getting a guaranteed spot. They do this in the lower divisiions, so there is no reason that the big schools can't do it. The other teams could still play bowl games if they want. They wouldn't be any more meaningless than they already are.

[ThaSaltCracka]

jstnrgrs, quite frankly, I am sick of playoffs and tourneys deciding champs. Regular season performance should mean considerably more than it currently does and college football is the only one where regular season performance means a ton.

Right now I am waiting for MLB and MLS regular seasons to end so they playoffs can start. Thats awesome.

[jstnrgrs]

I do, however, see the appeal of a regular season followed by a single national championship game. The problem is that this can't work for 117 teams. I would therefore recomend that the top division be limited to 20 teams. (two round robin divisions of 10 (probably a geographic east and west alignment) with the winners playing in the national championship game).

In order to ensure that everyon gets to participate, a system of promoting and religating could be used. Everyone could just accept that to take a school from somewhere in the 40s to national champion would be at least a 2 year process.

I think this would be an awsome system.

[jstnrgrs]

[ QUOTE ]
jstnrgrs, quite frankly, I am sick of playoffs and tourneys deciding champs. Regular season performance should mean considerably more than it currently does and college football is the only one where regular season performance means a ton.

Right now I am waiting for MLB and MLS regular seasons to end so they playoffs can start. Thats awesome.

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I do understand this (see my alternative suggestion). However, I don't think that a playoff with 16 out of 117 teams is enough to make the regular season meaningless. Espicially if 11 of those spots are reserved for conference champs.