Division 1 College Football Playoff vs. BCS

For years, I have been wanting desperately for Division 1 College Football to collectively pull their heads out and settle the National Championship on the field instead of by arbitrary votes. I've felt this way since the 1990 and 1991 seasons where the voting systems produced consecutive years of split National Championships. In 1991, I destinctly remember reading an article about how there were several voters on the east coast who hadn't even seen the Washington Huskies play a single game...and yet they were casting votes as to who should be the national champion. In that year, the Huskies had to share the National Championship with the Miami Hurricanes. Well, I came across an article a couple of weeks ago that was spot on, well, almost. Take a minute and read his article:

The Wetzel plan
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! SportsNovember 27, 2007

Like I said, his article was almost spot on. I couldn't resist replying to his article. Here is my reply:

Hi Dan,

I loved your article 'The Wetzel Plan'. It is almost identical to what I have been telling anyone who would listen for years. I only have a couple of suggestions for you.

I believe that the seedings have to be more systematic than relying on the polls. I believe that the five at-large bids should be the 12-16 seeds. If they argue, I'd respond by telling them to win their conference next year. (And when Notre Dame complains, I'd tell them to join a conference). I don't care if a team from a 'less important' conference gets a higher seed than the number two team from one of the 'power conferences'. There should be some benefit for winning your conference and being able to play at home is the right way to go. The number two teams should have to go on the road against champions from other conferences. Even in this scenario, three conference champions will still have to go on the road. I believe there are some pretty sophisticated ways of ranking the different conferences against each other. I would rather have a computer system that seeds the teams than voters or a selection committee who in all likelihood hasn't even seen some of the teams play. Another possibility for the seedings would be to do it based on the previous year. If a team from your conference won it all last year, then your conference gets the number one seed this year. In your sample bracket, you have an at-large Kansas hosting an undefeated Hawaii. That shouldn't happen. The only way Hawaii should be on the road is to play another conference champion from a stronger conference. The same logic holds true for BYU and Georgia.

A couple of other thoughts. In order to keep some of the other bowls afloat, if that's even desired, I would allow the eight teams that lose in the first round of the playoffs to be invited to bowl games. That means you really only remove eight teams from the bowl picture so four bowls at most fall by the wayside. As for schedules, all teams should complete their regular season by the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This allows the four rounds to happen in December and spill into the first few days of January while still accommodating the holidays and allowing for a bye week or two.

I think the key to making this happen is to show the BCS conference commissioners that they will actually generate more revenue from a playoff.