(10-19-2016 08:31 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/the-on...38736.html
Forward thinking. If Big 12 gets auto-bid to 8-team playoff, it could be more advantageous for UT/OU to stick around.
He hates bowl. With a passion. Wrote "Death to the BCS."
The only hold-up I see in his plan is teams and fans like free trips during the December holidays. A first-round playoff game on home campuses...seems to eliminate that (or at least take that money/power out of the conferences hands).
I'm a large proponent of an 8-team playoff, although I still believe the way to do it is through the bowls (both my personal desires AND what I think could be most realistically sold to the commissioners and university presidents in the near future). In fact, it would be a hybrid of moving forward to a larger playoff while also throwing back to tradition.
(1) Quarterfinals are simple:
Rose: Big Ten vs. Pac-12
Sugar: SEC vs. at-large
Fiesta (or Cotton): Big 12 vs. at-large
Orange (or Peach): ACC vs. at-large
(2) One of the at-large spots goes to the highest ranked G5 school.
(3) Play those quarterfinal bowls on or around New Year's Day just as now.
(4) Play the *semifinals* 1 week to 10 days later at the home stadiums of the highest two remaining seeds.
(5) Play the championship game at a neutral site one week prior to the Super Bowl (which is an open weekend on the sports calendar).
This (a) keeps and arguably even enhances the traditions of the bowls, (b) lets the playoff participants to continue to receive a trip to a nice warm weather destination as a reward for their superior season (as opposed to a trip to Columbus), © makes the regular season seedings matter even in an extended playoff by granting the highest ranked semifinalists home field advantage and (d) the week before the Super Bowl is simply a great spot on the sports calendar to play the national championship game.
I'm not the first person to think of using the *semifinals* as where home fields come into play, but I believe it's an ingenious suggestion. Most 8-team playoff proposals (like Wetzel's attached) start with quarterfinals at schools' home fields, which would completely gut the bowl system. (I know Wetzel actually thinks of blowing up the bowl system as a feature instead of a bug, but the reality is that the bowls are the contractual mechanism through which the power conferences maintain their power status, so they aren't going away.) Keeping the quarterfinals within the bowls preserves that system and gives all 8 playoff participants a trip to a nice destination. The semifinals being at the home field is a counter to the travel fatigue for fans while also providing a very large incentive for teams to be as highly-ranked as possible.
Now, there are certainly practical considerations (e.g. schools with cold winters can't as easily get a stadium up and running on short notice in January), but I think this a semi-plausible way that an 8-team playoff could be sold to the commissioners and presidents.