A REAL football Championship!
The two teams in the BCS Championship Game are University of Florida and University of Oklahoma.
Florida won 12 games but lost to good but not champion caliber team from Mississippi.
Oklahoma won 12 games and beat Texas Tech, but lost to a really excellent team from Texas. Texas beat Oklahoma but lost to Texas Tech. Texas Tech beat Texas but lost to Oklahoma. With those 3 way round robin victories and losses to each other, who is to say which team is the best?
In addition to these two teams there are several others that should be considered for the National Championship
University of Utah won all 13 of its games, including beating 4th ranked Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. As the only undefeated major college football team why shouldn't Utah be declared the Champion?
University of Texas beat Oklahoma, but lost to 8th ranked Texas Tech. With identical 12-1 records, and a victory over Oklahoma, why shouldn't Texas rather than Oklahoma be considered for the National Championship.
University of Southern California won 12 games but lost to Oregon State. USC has been playing very powerful football all year. Since they have no more losses than either Florida or Oklahoma, why shouldn't USC be in the Championship game?
What we need is some kind of playoff system to establish the Championship of college football. Even Barack Obama opined that if he had a chance he would establish a playoff system for college football.
It would not be hard to do. There are many fewer teams in big time college football than basketball, for example. By the end of the regular season it becomes pretty obvious to almost everyone that there are 4 or 5 or 8 teams that have none or one loss in the regular season and are playing excellent football this year. The best teams are usually ranked by various opinion systems from 1 through 25. While there is little difference and a lot of argument between team 1 and team 5, for example, there is a quite a bit of difference between the top 5 and the 20th ranked team. So we can effectively cross off all those teams that have lost 3 or 4 games. They haven't played championship level during the season, and are a step lower in overall ability this year.
So we take the top 8 teams. They can be ranked in the current BCS standings, or some other polling system. This year the top 8 teams in the BCS and other ranking systems before the bowl season were:
BCS AP
1. 1. Florida 12-1 (lost to Mississippi)
2. 2. Oklahoma 12-1 lost to Texas)
3. 3. Texas 12-1 (lost to Texas Tech)
4. 4. Alabama 12-1 (lost to Florida)
5. 5. USC 11-1 (lost to Oregon State)
8. 6. Penn State 11-1 (lost to Iowa)
6. 7. Utah 12-0
7. 8. Texas Tech 11-1 (lost to Oklahoma)
All of these are good teams, and their fans may argue with some justification, that they are the best or #1 in football.
To have an 8 team playoff it takes 7 total games on 3 consecutive game days. BCS already holds 5 games, of which 4 are of little importance other than pride.
The first 4 games should be held during the week before Christmas. They should feature the top 8 contenders for National Champion. There are already some bowl games that week. The Poinsettia , New Orleans, Las Vegas, and Sugar bowls could be played that week. If these particular bowl sponsors didn't want to be part of the championship eliminations some other sponsors could easily be found. The 4 winning teams go on to 2 bowl games to be held on New Years Day. Perhaps the Rose Bowl and the Cotton Bowl would be willing to host these two elimination games. The BCS/National Championship game would still be played on January 8th, one week after New Years Day, the same day it is played now.
It makes sense. The fans would have a REAL championship game. The teams that work so hard would have decided a REAL champion on the field of play, not in some incomprehensible BCS computer system. The winning team would not miss any more college classes than the two BCS “championship” teams do now. In fact, it makes so much sense one has to wonder who is making money by preventing it from happening.
Labels: Colleges, Florida, Virginia Tech