Saturday, No. 2 Michigan faces off against No. 1 Ohio State in the biggest game of the 2006 football season. Both teams, long-time rivals, enter the game undefeated, and are viable contenders for the BCS National Championship.
It’s a shame that one of these teams will have to lose the game and more than likely be eliminated from championship contention.
But that’s where it gets worse.
It happened in the 2003-04 season. In that season, no team finished undefeated, but six teams finished with one loss.
This created controversy among the BCS ranks, and that same controversy can result this year.
The BCS ranking system automatically assumes (and works best when) exactly two teams finish the season undefeated.
When this doesn’t happen, controversy ensues.
I have a solution to college football’s biggest flaw, and that is organization.
The NFL did a great thing when it expanded to 32 teams with the addition of the Houston Texans.
Instead of keeping the traditional East, West and Central divisions in each conference, whoever is in charge made the common-sense observation that 32 is divisible evenly by eight, and eight is divisible evenly by two.
Thus, the NFL debuted its new North, South, East and West divisions in 2002, making the playoffs fair and more even.
The NCAA should follow in the NFL’s footsteps.
Currently, in Division I-A football, there are 119 teams. That means in order for my plan to work properly, the NCAA needs to add just one more team to the Division I-A class, making the total teams 120.
Well, it just so happens that Western Kentucky is currently slated to reclassify from Division I-AA in the 2009-10 season.
Once Division I-A has 120 teams, the main transition that should take place is the reslating of the conferences across the nation.
For my system, each new conference will contain 12 teams.
This will allow for the nation’s biggest conferences, the SEC, Big XII and ACC, to keep their current teams.
However, big conferences like the Pac Ten, Big 10 and Big East will have to add more schools that are currently independent or members of other conferences.
Once Division I-A is comprised of 10 conferences with 12 teams each, each team will be able to play a schedule similar to those that SEC schools play now, with a mixture of conference and non-conference opponents.
In the new system, national rankings are thrown out the window.
Standings are what matters, and the only rankings teams would be fighting for is becoming first in the conference.
My solution to the postseason problem is a 32-team playoff tournament.
With the 10 new conferences, each conference would obviously produce a conference champion and have a runner-up.
With conference champions and runners-up, 20 of the 32 tournament spots would be filled.
This would allow for the big shots currently in charge of the BCS fiasco to still have their say in the postseason format.
They would get to vote on the remaining 12 teams, all of which would be at-large and mostly major conference teams.
Once the slate of 32 teams is filled, the football side of the NCAA can take a slice from the basketball side and create two brackets with seedings of 1 to 16 in each bracket.
This is another aspect of the postseason the big guys can control.
The tournament would only last five weeks in theory.
I feel that this solution would work in the NCAA, though I am certain it will never happen.
College football works totally differently than the NFL, and money is certainly an issue that would be a problem as well.
Perhaps I am idealistic, but fans can’t have their cake and eat it, too.
Either we take a risk with reconferencing and a playoff system, or we keep the same old system we have now.
You know my vote.