In the 2010-2011 bowl season 35 bowl games were played. 35!!!!
There are 120 Division I football programs. 70 of them received a bowl bid. Significantly more than half of all teams “earned” the right to play in a bowl game. This is unnecessary, ridiculous and for the most part uninteresting.
How many of these 35 bowl games did you watch from start to finish? Not many.
College Football has the potential to have the most captivating post season of any sport. Here is my plan. This would maximize the interest and excitement during the bowl season.
I’ll be using the 2010-2011 football season to accommodate my model.
All schools would be asked to drop the 12th game from their schedule. This was added within the last couple of years. Getting rid of it shouldn’t be a big concern. There will be no in season bye weeks.
All teams would start their schedule on Week #1 (September 4th for this past season) and end on Week #11 (November 13th). Conference championship games can be done away with, BUT I have a feeling that would never happen. So these can be played on the weekend of November 20th. Army and Navy can play this same weekend.
There will be a 16 team tournament. The “plus one” game is nice and the top eight is better but nothing, I mean nothing, will match the intensity and excitement of a 16 team tournament.
The BCS standings can still be used to determine the top 16. There will be no arguments in this scenario. The #17 team can’t raise a fuss and say, “What about us? This isn’t fair.” The #17 team in the BCS standings at the end of the regular season was Texas A&M at 9-3. You’re pretty much guaranteed to be in the top 16 if you finish with 2 losses or less. Utah would have been the only 2 loss team not to make the tournament. This would have been fine by me. They lost their two games 47-7 and 28-3.
The bowl games would need to be separated in three tiers.
If we need to maintain 35 bowl games. Fine. The lowest tier would include all of the non-tournament games. By my count this would be 20 bowl games. You know the ones I’m talking about (R+L CARRIERS NEW ORLEANS BOWL, BEEF 'O' BRADY'S BOWL ST. PETERSBURG, SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREDIT UNION POINSETTIA, etc.).
There would be no Division I football from November 21st thru December 1st. The long Thanksgiving weekend would be filled with NFL, NBA and over the top HYPE for the tournament that will be beginning in December.
The 20 lower tiered bowl games would be played between December 2nd and December 10th. That’s 9 days to pack in 20 games. No problem.
There would be 8 second tier bowl games. This would be the first round of the tournament. All 8 of these games would be played on December 11th, and when it’s all said and done this would be the biggest day in college football for the whole year. 8 completely meaningful win or go home games. They would be spaced throughout the day. You could start them in hour intervals starting at noon. Theoretically you could watch the ending of all 8 games. 4 different television networks would have to be involved so the money would be there (ESPN, CBS, ABC, FOX).
I envision these 8 bowls to fit the bill:
Outback, Gator, Liberty, Chick-fil-A, Sun, Alamo, Champs Sports, Insight
The match ups would have looked like this:
#16 Alabama vs. #1 Auburn (Are you kidding me?)
#15 Nevada vs. #2 Oregon
#14 Oklahoma St. vs. #3 TCU
#13 Virginia Tech vs. #4 Stanford (Love it)
#12 Missouri vs. #5 Wisconsin
#11 LSU vs. #6 Ohio St. (Really?!!!!)
#10 Boise St. vs. #7 Oklahoma (Statue of Liberty rematch)
#9 Michigan St. vs. #8 Arkansas
At the end of the day we would have 8 teams left.
Now we get into the top tier bowl games. There are 6 and they can be rotated on a yearly basis. So at the end of a 6 year cycle each bowl game would have hosted a “Final Four” game twice.
The 6 top tier bowls: Rose, Fiesta, Orange, Sugar, Cotton and Capital One
On December 18th the next round would be played. 4 games. Each television station could carry a game and hype the hell out of it. The times the games would be played could be determined. I wouldn’t start any game within 2 hours of another.
When this day is over there would be a Final Four. 2 games to be played on December 25 (It only worked out to be Christmas in the 2010 calendar year). 4:30 and 8:30 start times. The highest bidding network gets these two games (along with the championship game).
The championship game would still be the Tostitos Title Game. The location could be rotated amongst the 6 top tier bowl locations, or they could treat it like the Super Bowl and play it in the biggest venues available (think Dallas or Indianapolis). This game would be played on January 1st. It would be the last game of the year and (depending upon how the dates line up on the calendar that specific year) the college season would be completed on or shortly after January 1st.
Perfect.
We have a righteous champion with absolutely no arguments. We have created a “must watch” frenzy only duplicated by the NCAA basketball tournament.
So how would the money work out?
All 11 football conferences would get an initial equal share. The major conferences (I count 6, maybe 7) would get an additional sum. Each conference (and school) would receive more if they made it to the tournament.
Let’s say each conference receives ($10 million dollars). The 6 or 7 major conferences would get $10 million more. The conferences would get $10 million more per each team it placed in the tournament. Each individual school would also get $10 million.
Everybody is getting a piece of the pie. The bigger conferences get a little more and you are rewarded (monetarily) for your success. I’m clueless about the actual dollar amounts, so I used $10 million as a nice round even number.
The Independent schools would NOT get an initial piece of the pie. Join a conference! They would, however, gain double if they make the tournament. They would receive $20 million (team and conference money combined).
Any school is capable of finishing in the top #16. This is not an impossible goal. As the system stands now it IS impossible for some (many) schools to win the national championship.
Currently 70 teams make a bowl game. In my model 56 teams would appear in the bowl games. I don’t think getting rid of the worst 14 bowl eligible teams would be tough. “Sorry, maybe next year you’ll go 7-4 instead of 6-5.”
The team that ends up winning the championship would be playing 4 extra games. This could be as many as 16 games for a team that has to play a conference championship as well (that’s why they can get rid of the conference championship games). In this model they would become meaningless.
The dollar amount allotments and games dates could be shuffled as needed. These are details that can be worked out by the powers that be. The important part is to make sure we have a 16 team, winner take all tournament in place.
Make it happen!!
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