The College Football Playoffs According to Tommy

The BCS matchups were introduced recently, and of course, they chose #1 Texas vs. #2 Alabama as the National Championship game. Meanwhile, three unbeaten teams got left in the cold. TCU and Boise State will fight it out in the Fiesta Bowl so that they may play a competitive game against each other instead of one team going to the Orange Bowl and beating Georgia Tech and Boise State destroying Iowa in the Fiesta Bowl thus making the calls for a playoff louder, and Cincinnati and their lame duck coach/dumbest man on the planet gets to get whupped on by Florida in the Sugar Bowl. It’s very possible that at the end of the year, we could have three undefeated teams, and there will definitely be a controversy if Cincinnati beats Florida (considering a motivated Tebow and the fact that the Bearcat’s coach is a lame duck coach, not likely) and Texas beats Alabama (very likely).

Would I rather see a playoff similar to basketball’s March madness? Of course, and so would everyone, including the President of the United States. Will it happen? Well, probably not, too much money and tradition in the Bowl games. However, I’ll dispute that Bowl Game tradition by pointing out that once upon a time, each bowl meant something other than money (in other words, it’s all about money). So they bastardized the bowls yet won’t put in a playoff system, hell they even said they tried but yet couldn’t think of a playoff system.

I’m here to help.

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, college football fans of all ages, I Thomas Arsenio Galicia, am proud to present to you a whole new idea…The NCAA College Football Division I-A Playoffs! How will it work you might ask? Well, first off we’re taking 17 teams, why not a round 16? Because to become the 16^th team, just like in basketball with the 64^th team, the two lowest ranked teams have to play in the play-in game. Why? Well first off, 11 bids will go to the winners of all 11 college football division 1-A conferences (since we’re actually doing a playoff, no need for the Football Bowl Subdivision title, its back to division 1-A and division 1-AA). No longer will the teams from just the 6 BCS conferences have a better chance at a National Championship than teams from the five non-BCS conferences. The last 6 bids will go to at large teams based off of the BCS rankings, which will be changed to the Playoff Series Rankings. Simply put, if you’re in the Playoff Series Top 16, yet are not a conference champion, you will be considered for a playoff spot depending on your ranking, and the 7 highest ranking non-conference champions will get playoff berths.

To facilitate this and eliminate that stupid “co-champion” tag, each conference will have a conference championship game, regardless of how many teams are in each conference. (I find the whole “you must have 12 teams in your conference to have a conference championship game” rule stupid but that’s just me.) And, since they won’t get any special favors, Notre Dame must join either the Big East (of whom they’re a basketball-only member) or the Big 10 (where they’re geographically from, and by doing this they’ll still be able to play Michigan, Michigan State and Perdue every year, if they were a Big East team this wouldn’t be possible, fuck it, Notre Dame’s joining the Big 10 under my plan but it will still be the Big 10 despite having 12 teams, they already have 11 anyways and there’s already a Big 12, so why rock the boat?)

How will the conferences without conference playoffs do this despite not having divisions? I’ll make the divisions for them.

Big Ten

EAST WEST

Penn State Wisconsin

Michigan Minnesota

Michigan State Iowa

Ohio State Illinois

Indiana Purdue

Notre Dame Northwestern

The natural rivalries are even lined up with one another, although you have two, this way the schedule format would stay the same. Championship Game played in Indianapolis, IN.

Pac-10

South North

USC Oregon

UCLA Oregon St.

Cal Stanford

Arizona Washington

Arizona St. Washington St.

Why put Cal and Stanford in different divisions? Because the schedule won’t change at all, the divisions are only for the purpose of the championship game. Unlike with the Big 10 who’s championship game site would be fixed in Indianapolis, the Pac 10 would rotate their game each year between: Qwest Field in Seattle, The Coliseum in Los Angeles until they build a new NFL stadium, Candlestick Park in San Francisco until the 49ers get their new stadium, and University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

And you get the idea. I’m not going to break up the divisions for the WAC, Mountain West or Sun Belt because, well, I just don’t feel like it.

So how does this playoff system work? Well I gave you the short version already, here’s the long version.

Each conference champion makes it in without fail.

Whether you’re the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big XII, or Sun Belt Conference, if you can win your conference, you get invited to the party. Pretty simple right? Well there’s 11 conferences, meaning 11 births. Done!

Six at large entries are invited to participate to round up the playoffs.

Why not just have the 11 conference champions compete? Well, how shitty would it be if say Florida, which went undefeated in a tough conference all year until the final game was shut out of the playoffs, yet a team like Troy that went 8-5 and couldn’t even hold the jockstraps of the fourth best team in the Big XII (losing 55-24) could make it in? We need the at-large teams. How are they invited you ask? Well the way the bowls pick out what teams to invite actually has nothing to do with record, it’s based off of how many tickets they could sell. Well these are the playoffs, they should sell themselves! So, we base these at-large teams on the BCS now Playoff Series rankings. The six highest ranked non conference championship teams would get the invites.

The 16 teams will be split off into four regions of four.

And to keep some semblance of tradition, the brackets will be named after the four BCS Bowls: The Orange Bracket, the Sugar Bracket, the Rose Bracket, and the Fiesta Bracket. Why? Because those regional finals would be held in the locations of those bowls. I’ll explain the logistics considering that three of those stadiums are also used by NFL teams.

The first week of the playoffs all games would be played at the home stadium of the higher seed.

We’re looking at a good four weeks of games. Best place to play them is the stadium of the higher seeds for the first round right?

The second week of the playoffs, aka the regional finals, will be played in specific regions.

Easy. The Orange Bracket finals will be played in Miami, Sugar in New Orleans, Fiesta in Phoenix, and Rose in Pasadena. Sure this will take place about a week earlier than the actual games would, but trust me, this works out well.

Based off of a rotating basis, two of those sites will be used for the semifinals, one for the finals, and the other will take a year off.

Let’s say this year its Pasadena’s turn to host the Finals. The Sugar and Orange Bowl would then host the semis with the Fiesta Bowl left out for one year. Then Next year it would be the Fiesta Bowl hosting the finals with the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl hosting the semis and the Sugar Bowl skipping, the year after that the Sugar Bowl hosts the finals with the Fiesta and Rose hosting the semis and the Orange Bowl skipping, then finally the Orange Bowl hosts with the Fiesta and Sugar hosting the semis and the Rose skipping. It’s done, its fair, plus it makes sense because these are the only four locations I’d consider hosting these games anyways.

The championship will be determined at the same time as it is now.

We wouldn’t have to change much. Championship Saturday is still the first week of December, they get the second week off (except for the play-in game), the third week of December is for the first round, fourth week of December is for the regional finals, New Year’s day both semifinals get played, and the week after that, the finals. That wasn’t too hard now was it? Plus, New Years Day football games will mean something again!

This idea could work right? Well it should. In Fact, here’s a breakdown of how it would go if they implemented it for this year.

Sugar Bracket:

1. Alabama

2. Ohio State

3. Georgia Tech

4. Play-in game winner (East Carolina vs. Troy)

Fiesta Bracket:

1. Texas

2. Boise State

3. Iowa

4. LSU

Orange Bracket:

1. Cincinnati

2. Florida

3. Central Michigan

4. Miami

Rose Bracket

1. TCU

2. Oregon

3. Virginia Tech

4. Penn State

Already, this looks promising…haven’t even gotten to the games yet, and you know what? Here’s how I’m going to do it: Every Saturday I plan on using NCAA 2010 to simulate these games, and I’ll tell you how they pan out. Then we’ll crown a real National Champion, well, not really but, I’ll just show how exciting this is and how it would really help college football, and it wouldn’t take an act of congress to pull all of this off either.

Update: East Carolina defeated Troy 39-10. This Saturday: Round 1:

Orange Bracket: 4. Miami @ 1. Cincinnati; 3. Central Michigan @ 2. Florida

Rose Bracket: 4. Penn State @ 1. TCU; 3. Virginia Tech @ 2. Oregon.

Sugar Bracket: 4. East Carolina @ 1. Alabama; 3. Georgia Tech @ 2. Ohio State

Fiesta Bracket: 4. LSU @ 1. Texas; 3. Iowa @ 2. Boise State

Dilemma? What Dilemma?

Dilemma. It means a choice between undesirable alternatives. Well, Dolfans have a dilemma this week in the hugely anticipated game that could be a Miami Super Bowl preview: Patriots-Saints.

Um, Excuse me Mr. Kotex? But what kind of a dilemma would this hold? I mean, it’s a matchup between the team that is currently two games ahead of the dolphins in the AFC East race, and a team that’s in first place in the NFC South, which means the Saints aren’t even in the same division as the Dolphins; they’re not even in the same CONFERENCE!

Somebody will win, and, no matter who, it's going to be a blow to the current Dolphins' playoff hopes, or to the franchise's hopes of keeping a unique claim on the Perfect Season.

Oh GOD! That’s why this is such a dilemma? Ok, let’s sort this out once and for all.

This is not a dilemma, a quagmire (giggity giggity goo!) or even a tough choice to make. So if the Saints win, coupled of course with a Dolphins victory over Buffalo Sunday afternoon, then the dolphins will be exactly ONE game out of the AFC East crown going into a home game against the Patriots next week. If that all comes to pass and the Dolphins beat the patriots, then not only will there be a tie for first place, but the dolphins will hold the key tiebreaker in this situation, division record, meaning the dolphins only have to win out and they win their second straight AFC East title, while the Patriots would have to win out AND hope the dolphins lose sometime down the stretch. However if the Patriots win on Monday Night against the Saints, even if the dolphins beat them the next week, the Patriots would still be in first place in the AFC East, comfortably in the driver’s seat. (Of course if the phins lose to the Bills on Sunday all of this is a moot point.)

However if the Patriots lose, then that 72 Dolphins team will be closer to finishing the year as still the only undefeated team in NFL history.

Leave it to Greg Cote of the Miami Herald to tell us that we should be emotionally torn over this. (Full article here.) That as Dolphins fans we should root for the Patriots because of the fact that we should take pride in the fact that the 1972 Dolphins are the only NFL team to go undefeated throughout an entire season. It’s a load of horse shit honestly.

Fact is, the 1972 Dolphins do not resonate with me for the simple fact that I was born in NINETEEN EIGHTY FRIGGIN-THREE! That’s right, ELEVEN YEARS after they accomplished this feat, I was brought into the world. Since you really don’t begin to follow sports until you’re about five or six, that would mean there’s a good SIXTEEN YEARS between the time the 72 phins went undefeated and when I started watching football. They really don’t resonate with me, that’s like asking a Bears fan born in 1989 about the how 85 Bears and the Super Bowl shuffle affected their lives as sports fans, or a Yankees fan born in 1992 about what the Reggie Jackson Bronx Zoo teams mean to them, or a Lakers fan born in the late 80’s to early 90’s about Magic, Kareem and the Showtime Lakers.

Fact is the only teams that mean anything to you are the teams you grew up watching. Bears fans born in 89 can tell you plenty about Urlacher and Hester, but couldn’t pick out Gary Fencik or Richard Dent out of a police lineup unless their obsessive sports dorks. Yankees fans born in 92 know about Reggie from his Oscar winning performances in The Benchwarmers and BASEketball and know from history being handed down to them about his three home runs off of three straight pitches in game 6 of the 1977 World Series, but couldn’t tell you about it because they haven’t really seen it, to them their Yankee heroes are Jeter, Rivera, and after last year’s post-season even A-Rod. And Lakers fans born in the late 80’s and early 90’s will always be able to tell you that Kobe is the greatest basketball player in the world today, know of Magic Johnson as the guy who tested HIV Positive in 1991 yet is still alive and healthy enough to become almost a self-parody of himself, and know of Pat Riley as the head coach of the Miami Heat that traded Lamar Odom for Shaq and forced Stan Van Gundy to “spend some time with the family”, but their only experience of really seeing the Showtime Lakers is if they stumble onto some YouTube clips or ESPN Classic.

Well, myself, and many other Dolphins fans under the age of 40, are like the fans that I mentioned. To me, Bob Griese is the ABC College Football analyst and father of Brian, Nick Bunnocoti was once the host of Inside the NFL and is known for raising money and awareness towards curing paralysis after his son was involved in an unfortunate incident where he injured his spine playing football in college. Don Shula was Dan Marino’s coach who could never figure out how to build a running game around him, not the run-first head coach known for ball control. The Orange Bowl is the former UM stadium that got knocked down to make room for the new marlins stadium, not the “Home of The Miami Dolphins”. Larry Csonka is the former host of American Gladiators, I could go on. I’m not trying to deny the accomplishments of these men; I’m just saying that, to me they aren’t really relevant.

Fact is, no one is going to take away what they did in 1972, it’s an accomplishment that has only happened once in the NFL’s 90 year history, so even if it happens again this year, they’re still in an exclusive club and should still be proud of what they did.

But the NFL, like all sports, is about “What have you done for me lately?” (YES! I was able to work Janet Jackson into a blog post!) The 2009 Dolphins are more important to me than any other dolphins team. Why? BECAUSE ITS 2009! Next year the 2010 Dolphins will become the most important, and so it will go on.

A true Dolphins fan would rather see the New Orleans Saints go undefeated by beating New England on Monday night and make it so that the Patriots are one game up on the Dolphins going into next week in Miami, then see the Dolphins take advantage of that and beat New England and take control of the driver’s seat in the AFC East.

Now Cote did mention that the post-season seems “unlikely” for the dolphins even if the Patriots do win. I feel that unlikely seems like a strong word that encourages negativity (oh yea, like what the Miami Herald has done with this Dolphins team with the exception of LeBatard for the last 20 years, and LeBatard only has a part-time role with them because he’d rather do radio. And the Newspaper industry wonders why they’re in such trouble!)

A better word would be improbable, which means it’s still possible, still likely, but you’re not quite sure, but consider that their tough schedule is really a tough schedule with winnable games. First up is Buffalo, a game they SHOULD win. Then comes the Patriots at home, they already lost the first one, and usually when the dolphins are decent their due for at least one win against the Pats per season. Then comes Jacksonville in Jacksonville, which if the dolphins win their next two games, could potentially lead to road trips for Dolphins fans to Jacksonville making it like a 9^th home game, hell, it might even sell out! Jags are actually better on the road than at home, so this is good for the phins. That’s followed by a visit to Nashville to play the titans, which will be tough but winnable. (I think we can stop Vince Young and make him win the game with his arm.) Then it’s Houston, and, let’s be honest, we’re due to beat Houston, plus it’s at home. Then finally to round it out, we take on a Steelers team that might not have Polamalu (btw Pittsburgh is winless without him this season) and just lost to the Chiefs. Each game, while tough, is against teams with their flaws, and the Dolphins so far have beaten teams that they are better than, and have shown they can keep it close against teams that are supposed to be better than them. Now that you see everything, all of a sudden it doesn’t seem so “unlikely” hell, it doesn’t even seem improbable!

Then as impossible as it seems, if we can keep that momentum up, then the 2009 Dolphins can get their second chance against the Saints in Super Bowl XLIII, played here in Miami, and we could be the ones to end their run towards history.

So now that you have the evidence, why in God’s name would any right thinking Dolphins fan want the Patriots to win come Monday Night?