You think Palestinians and Jews hate each other? Put college football fans of different views on the post-season in a room and it will take four coats of paint to cover the blood stains on the wall. The crux of the problem is that Universities/Conferences/Media/Sponsors make more money than anyone can conceivably count on the bowls and don't want to change it. The bowls of course, do not provide the finality and closure that we as fans want at the end of a sports season. Both sides have legitimate gripes on why their way is best. Before I get into how I will make both sides happy and bring a time of peace and prosperity, let's look at who and why fall into each category.
Pro Bowl System
The people who like the system the way it is are the same people who profit greatly from it. The conferences make a ton of money with their sponsors off of this. Also included in this are media members. What? you might ask. It's true. Do you not think media talking heads enjoy having a ready made controversy to bitch about from Mid-November through early January? There's hundreds of hours on TV and an infinite amount of print that gets filled every year off of this. Also, fans of schools that win 6 games but are not in the championship picture want some kind of post-season experience. As Baylor fans, we have been waiting for this for longer than I care to say.
Playoff System
These people are purists who think the NCAA Basketball tournament is the end all be all in sports (It's not, unless you really believe that the best 64 teams are really in the bracket). The real backers of this system are fan bases of teams that get screwed by the BCS system (Texas, Utah, USC). They typically don't say anything if they're on the other side (you get a head coach that says: "Well, it's the system we have so we just have to go with it").
Other peace plans have been offered and rejected. Let's look at a couple and explain why they don't make the cut:
Plus One Plan
This one is stupid because it doesn't really fix anything. Take this season for example. Who plays the OU-Florida winner? USC? Texas? You are just creating more controversy.
Bowl involved in the Playoff Plan
This plan has each bowl as a different round in the playoffs. For example: the winners of the Peach and Cotton Bowl play in the Orange Bowl and the winner of that game plays the winner of the Sugar Bowl. This is dumb and would never happen because Bowl Committees would never allow their bowls to be diminished like that. This would also drive down attendance due to the frequent travel. This also leaves the teams that don't make the tournament but won 6-7 games with nothing.
My Plan
My plan calls for the season to be over the Saturday after Thanksgiving. All conference title games must be played before this date. Then, the top 8 teams are selected by the BCS or whatever else would govern this stuff. The teams play each other the first weekend in December and the winners play the week after, leaving the final two teams. These teams will meet in the designated championship bowl game (Sugar, Orange, Fiesta, Rose) that is rotated every year. The two losing teams in the second round play in another bowl, and the four teams that lost in the first round of the playoffs fill out the last two bowls. All other bowls would pick teams and play their games as normal.
This gives teams that are out of the tournament a post-season and gives the legit contenders a shot at the title. My plan is not without controversy. There will always be issues with who fills out the 6-8 seeds. Hopefully, there won't be any undefeated teams that get left out. If this plan is adopted with my previous BCS conditions outlined in a prior post, this won't happen. Another issue might be that it would be 4 months between knowing who was in the championship game and the game actually being played. To me, this is what happens every year so it shouldn't be a big deal.
That's my plan people. If we can make this work, we can stop any war on the planet. Who's with me?
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