College Football Playoff

So I'm sure we all agree that the NCAA needs a playoff to determine the national champion for division one college football, but how will they do it? I have got the answer! Follow me on this one...

While sitting at work discussing this topic with a coworker I had a real life epiphany. I have figured out a way to have a college football playoff system AND keep the bowl season. Please, read on...

The way to a college football playoff goes through the conference championship game. Year in and year out we see a football team from a conference that has an official game that determines the winner of the that conference wins the national championship. What if we took the conference champion from each of the conferences that have a conference championship game and put them in a playoff.

Currently, there are eight NCAA Division 1-A conferences that have a conference championship game to determine the conference champion. Take the winners of all eight games and put them into a playoff. There will only be eight teams in the playoffs. Not too long and not too short.  Once we have all eight teams determined, they are reseeded to determine who will be seeded first to eighth. Those eight teams then battle it out in a single elimination bracket style format to determine the NCAA Division 1-A Football National Champion.

The next question becomes what will we do with the losers of the conference championship games? Bingo! There's the new BCS!! Those other eight teams get automatic bids into one of the five BCS bowl games. But wait, that leaves one game open. In the fifth BCS bowl game you put two at-large teams that don't belong to a conference with a conference championship game. After the BCS, there will be upto around 15-20 bowl games left. I say we keep up to 10 of them and 20 teams that deserve to be in bowl games will play in those games.

Let's say you're a fan of a team that doesn't belong to that type of conference. Too bad! Guess your team should suck it up and join a REAL conference! Sorry! No National Championship for you if you don't want to play in a real conference! Not happy about it? Oh well! Don't say I left you out of the equation!

This idea is very rough. Keep in mind that with the transition to this type of format it means that teams could add upto three games to their schedule. This type of format will allow the NCAA to keep the bowl season, BCS, and give the fans what they want: a fair way to determine the national champion.